AFRO-AMERICANS HAVE A HISTORY THAT PRE-DATES LIVING IN AMERICA
For hundreds of years black people in America were thought of as a "people without a history" or a people without a past. The dominant white culture thought that black history consisted only of barbarism in Africa, with cannibalism, and slavery in the New World. There was the Tarzan myth, with the image of sub-Saharan Africans as primitive savages with bones in their noses swinging through the trees like chimpanzees. Africans were characterized as an evolutionary missing link between humans and gorillas.
AFRICAN HISTORY U.S. HISTORY
3100 B.C. (Narmer)
1619 (20 black
people arrive in Jamestown, VA)
Molefi Asante insists that African American people, like everyone else, are a world-historical people. God did not suddenly create the so-called Negro in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African-descended people to Jamestown, VA. The history of African American people does not begin in the United States. Rather, the African people who came to the United States as slaves already had a history before they arrived on these shores. That history is African history.
EUROPEAN ETHNIC GROUPS ARE PERMITTED TO HAVE A PRE-AMERICAN PAST
Italian Americans had a history back in Italy before they came to America. No one would say that Italian history begins when someone's grandfather got off a boat in America in 1900. The Irish had a history back in Ireland before they came to America. The English and Scots had a history back in England and Scotland before they came to these shores. Anglo-Americans celebrate prehistoric Stonehenge, and the Norman Conquest of 1066, and the barons forcing King John to issue the Magna Carta at Runnemede. The Jews had a history before they came to America. The Poles, Greeks, Swedes all had histories in Europe before the came to America. No one would seek to deny them a knowledge of their ancestral past and a connection with it. So too Afro Americans had a history back in Africa BEFORE they came to America. And that history, TOO, is part of the history and the legacy and the heritage and the birthright of African-descended people in America. African-American history is NOT just 1619-present. It is not merely slavery and segregation to 1964 and the ghetto. Rather, as recorded history, it is c. 3100 B.C. to the present. (circa means at approximately the date)
Recorded African history goes back to Narmer, the first pharaoh of Egypt. Circa 3100 B.C., Narmer, the king of southern or upper Egypt seems to have conquered northern or lower Egypt. Through this conquest the two kingdoms of northern and southern Egypt were united under a single ruler. Egypt in the time period of the pharaohs is called Pharaonic Egypt. Thus we speak of the pharaonic time period.
There definitely were dark-skinned people in Egypt whom we would call black. There were also light-complected people in pharaonic Egypt whom we would probably call white, although not European. Europeans did eventually arrive in Egypt. Ancient Egypt was invaded by foreign conquerors in times of weakness. For example, the Persians, who are a light-complected, Indo-European people, from modern-day Iran, invaded and conquered Egypt in the 525 B.C. Alexander the Great and the Greeks, who were white Europeans, invaded Egypt in 333 B.C. and drove out the Persians and conquered Egypt in 332 B.C. Following the death of Alexander the Great, a foreign, Greek dynasty or royal family ruled in Egypt. This foreign dynasty began with Ptolemy, who was Greek. Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemies to rule Egypt. Julius Caesar and the Romans intervened in a civil war in Egypt in 47 B.C. In 30 B.C. Augustus Caesar invaded Egypt and Cleopatra committed suicide. Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, was put to death. The Romans were white Europeans. Thus, at the tail end of the Pharaonic Period, white Indo-European Persians, and European Greeks and Romans did arrive in Egypt.
However, prior to 525 B.C. there were very few Indo-Europeans in Egypt. Instead, the light complected people were people like the Arabs. They were Semitic peoples, like the Arabs and "Middle Eastern" Jews, who spoke Semitic languages. These Semitic peoples were groups such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Amorites, Canaanites, and Akkadians. The Egyptians typically drew these people as light in color, with long beards. Archaeological evidence from a graveyard at Badari, from ancient Egypt, showed that 1/3rd of the skeletons were black or Negroid, 1/3rd were Caucasoid (which is to say Semitic) and 1/3rd seemed to be a mixture of the two.
All evidence suggests that prior to 525 B.C. there were black people in Egypt; there were light-complected Semitic peoples similar to the Arabs, Babylonians and Assyrians; and there were people who were a mixture of the two. In other words, Egypt was a multiracial, mixed race society, with many black and brown people as well as light people. The ancient Egyptians certainly seem to have been people of color. The most accurate description of ancient Egypt would be to say that it was an Afro-Asiatic or Afro-Semitic society. The geographic fact is that Egypt stands at the crossroads and the intersection of black Africa with the Semitic Near East or Arabian Peninsula and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.
In the U.S., for much of our history, intermixture with black people made you black. If you had black African ancestry you were considered black. By that definition Egypt was a black civilization. And Egypt is an African civilization because Egypt is in Africa. The great achievements of pharaonic Egypt are part of the ancient history of African Americans.
I will not recount all of the history of ancient, pharaonic
Egypt. Suffice it to say that Egypt went through periods of greatness and
decline like any other society. Egypt was a warlike society. At it peak
Egypt conquered her neighbors, including Nubia to the south and Canaan
and Syria to the west.
NUBIA
To the south of Egypt, in what is now called Sudan, was Nubia. Sometimes it was called Kush. In fact, the Bible calls it Kush. Some people wish not to recognize Egypt as a multiracial, mixed race, Afro-Asiatic, African civilization. There is no such ambiguity about Nubia. Nubia is unmistakably and irrefutably black.
Egypt traded with Nubia, and Egyptian copper axes and winejars have been found in early Nubian tombs. By 750 B.C. pharaonic Egypt was in turmoil, and the rulers of Nubia began to assert themselves in southern Egypt. About 727 B.C. Piankhi (Piye), the king of Nubia (Nubia was also called Kush) intervened in a civil war in Egypt. He entered Thebes and occupied most of Egypt, and proclaimed himself pharaoh. He ushered in the 25th dynasty of rulers of Egypt (a dynasty is a family of rulers, usually father to son). Piankhi was succeeded by his brother Shabaka (716-702 B.C). The best known of the Nubian rulers was Taharqa (690-664 B.C.). In his reign the Assyrians invaded Egypt and occupied the delta. By 660 B.C. (in the reign of Tanutamun) the Assyrians defeated the Nubians, and they lost power in Egypt. Taharqa and many of the Nubian rulers were buried in pyramids, in Nubia. Some time after Taharqa the Nubians moved their capital south to the city of Meroe. It became an early center of iron production in ancient Africa. The Nubians developed their own written script, called Meroitic. This refutes the idea that black African people never developed and writing. After 60 A.D. Nubia converted to Christianity.
Egypt became a province of Rome after 30 B.C., and converted to Christianity. Alexandria was an early center of the Christian church until 640 A.D.
AXUM OR ETHIOPIA
Another African civilization that rose in ancient times was Axum (Aksum). It was located in what is today called Ethiopia. Ethiopia is mountainous, and at the higher elevations is cooler and drier. It was an early center of agriculture. Ethiopia is directly across the Red Sea from Yemen. Archaeological evidence indicates that as early as 600 B.C. Semitic traders from Yemen settled in Ethiopia. This brought about a mixture of the black Ethopian population with the lighter Semitic or Arabian population on both sides of the Red Sea. Consequently, today, many Yemenis are brown. In ancient times Yemen was called Sabaea, or Saba, or even Sheba. The Ethiopians developed a Semitic language called Geez, which is the ancestor of modern Amharic. Hebrew traders also settled in Ethiopia in ancient times, and this intermixture gave rise to a population of thousands of black Ethiopian Jews called Falashas. Indeed, between 1985 and 1991 the state of Israel airlifted 26,000 Falashas to Israel. By 200 B.C. Axum had trade relations with Ptolemaic Egypt, and became a center of international trade. In time, Axum became a center of trade between Rome, Persia and India. Ethiopia turned to Christianity in the time of King Ezana (320-350 A.D.). The kings of Axum claimed descent from one Menelik. Menelik is the mythological son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Sabaea, or Yemen).
RISE OF ISLAM
Between 622 and 632 A.D. the Prophet Muhammad gave rise to Islam, at Mecca and Medina, in Hejaz, in Arabia, now called Saudi Arabia. The Arabian people, or Arabs, were converted to Islam. In 639 the Arabs, now Moslems, began the invasion of Egypt. Most of Egypt was overrun in 640 A.D. Over the centuries, the people of Egypt and North Africa intermarried with the Arabs, Arabic became the dominant language, and the people converted to Islam. From Egypt to Morocco, North Africa became Arabicized and Islamicized. Nubia, which fell before the armies of Axum in the 300s A.D. also became Islamicized after 640 A.D. In time Islam would also spread across the Sahara Desert to the kingdoms of the savanna.
The kingdoms of the savanna were Ghana, Mali and Songhai.