Alafia! (a Yoruba greeting) and welcome to the web page for African history buffs
Terracotta sculpture from the Yoruba, of today's Nigeria.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "Benin Bronze?" This is one of the
Bronze sculptures for which Benin (today's Nigeria) is famous. Did you
know that the country that is today called Nigeria was once Benin and today's
Benin was once Dahomey?
I am a graduating senior (thanks God) here at Hunter. Been here a long darned time. I am a Psychology and Africana studies double major. And while I have enjoyed learning the psychological method, my true love has become that which is African; in me and in the world.
Since that first African American studies class I took with Professor Edey-Rhodes, which opened me up, and because of all the subsequent courses I took with Drs. Richards (Ani), Hernandez, Canoe, Rodriquez, Iweriebor and Payne, I have dedicated my life to the understanding and reclamation of things African. That is from our extensive history and ancient most cultures, to whatever problems we had that led us into the jaws of what is called the "transatlantic slave trade," to our lives on the continent and in the diasporan aftermath.
To that end, I have become an avid reader and lecture attendee, and have a lot of information to share. If you are taking any of the Africana series in the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Department, I am happy to suggest supplemental readings and may even be able to impart some additional insight to something you might be having trouble with.
I spent all of my childhood and, as I said, quite a few years here at my beloved Hunter, being taught things European and American, and remember and use quite a bit of it. I only pray that I am given at least as many years remaining, to discover half as much about the place, history, and people from whom I originally come. I would like to share that information and that love with YOU. How people of African ancestry lost knowledge of all there is to know about ourselves may not have been so beautiful, but so much of what there is to rediscover certainly is.
If knowledge is power, I will one day explode! Before I do, drop me an email if you love to learn about some of the things we are seldom taught in school--from theory, to actual occurrences that are often rewritten or simply written out of the "the respectable commentary of human history" (the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Professor emeritus, Hunter College).
Below, I offer you a sample of the materials I have found along my journey to my most African mind, to whet your appetite!).
Enjoy the delicious intellectual meal I have prepared for you, from my heart to your head.
These are the Pyramids at Giza, in what the Greeks named "Egypt." Why is it that people who seek to reclaim African history study Egypt? Isn't Egypt in the "Middle East?"
Did you know that Egypt is now, and always has been in Northeast Africa? When, for what purpose and by whom would that area of the earth have been renamed, effectively moving Egypt from it's continent, in the minds of most people? Hmmm. Find out Why we study Kemet.
This is the Great King Amenhotep III of the 18th Kemetic (Egyptian) Dynasty.
This is the head of Queen Tiye (Tiy), 18th dynasty, ca. 1350. Tiy was the daughter of Yaya and Tuya, a family from Akhmim in Upper Kemet which gained prominence when Tiy became the principal wife of King Amenhotep III.
Did you know that since the Kemetic thrown was always MATRILINEALLY inherited (meaning that in order to be king, you had to marry the daughter of a king. A "prince" or son of a king did not automatically inherit), Amenhotep III broke a tradition extremely important to the political stability of his country in order to marry this woman, a NUBIAN "commoner" by the name of TIYE? You can read about her in Black women in antiquity, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, from which I have quoted below:
"...Tiye was born about 1415 B.C. In Tiye, dark brown skin graced
wide-arched brows, height cheekbones and a nose with delicately flared nostrils.
Full lips curved above a slightly jutting jaw. And if she met Nubia's physical
ideal of feminine beauty, she was broad hipped as well (p. 57)."
It is said that there were the first royal couple to have EVER been depicted as you see them at the right, of equal size, even though he was about 40 years her senior when they married. Those little statues about and between their legs are meant to depict 3 of their daughters.
"...the Princess, the most praised, the lady of grace, sweet in her love, who fills the palace with her beauty, the Regent of the North and South, the Great Wife of the King who loves her, the lady of both lands, Tiye...(p. 57)."
This is Giza, located in Cairo, in the north or lower Egypt, as the sun is setting. I saw this myself in 1997. It was the most beautiful thing I had every seen. I can't wait to go again.
Did you know that Africa has the greatest biodiversity of any continent? Even South America? Knowing this, do you begin to wonder how it is so many of its indigenous inhabitants are starving while the products of their countries are exported to feed others who waste so much of it?
Do you know about Great Zimbabwe? You can find it here,
in the southern African country that was once called "Rhodesia," after
the Great British conqueror Cecil Rhodes. Do you know what it is called today?
You can find a great essay about it in the book, Blacks in science: ancient and modern, also edited by Ivan Van Sertima
You can also try: GREAT ZIMBABWE: HOUSES OF STONE. By DAVID MARTIN.
Ohio State University has a great library of essays on Ancient African topics.
If you are taking African History with Iweriebor, this is a perfect site to visit, as many of the topics he covers in African history 2 are covered in the essays made available here. But don't try to plagerize any of them for you papers though. I will be emailing him about this site, if he doesn't already know about it! Here is a sample from the essay entitled "The Negus Gives Way as Rome Falls and Islam Rises." It's about the kingdom of Axum, one of the Iweriebor's topics:
"The Axum (Aksum) people developed when Kush speaking people in Ethiopia migrating from the Sahara, and Semitic speaking people from southern Arabia (the Sabaeans) settled in the area known as the Abyssinian Plateau around 500 BCE and intermingled into one culture."
"The Door of No Return," Goree Island, Senegal
Do these images look familiar to you? I bet they do. "Slavery" was hardly the beginning of what it meant to be a "black" person of African origin, although you might think so if all you ever learn about us is from mainstream education and media. Enslavement was a low point in the extensive "human history" of African people, about which I hope to learn more in the years to come.
This is a statue of a Fulani girl. Did you know that the Fulani are a nomadic group that can live anywhere on the continent? The Fulanis that most of us in the diaspora know best tend to have lived longest in Nigeria and Senegal.
Thank you for visiting my page, and please come again. Now that I know what I have to offer the Hunter community, please consider this a work of love in progress.
Medasi (thank you, in the Twi language of Ghana),
Kheru Djhuti (which means "Voice of Wisdom" from the ancient Kemetic language)
Until we meet again, here is another lovely websites that awaits your visit.
The Global African Presence, by Ronoko Rashidi
