Afro and Indigenous Intersectionality in America as Nomen: Intersectionally Black (The Black Atlantic Cultural Series: Revisioning Artistic, ... Psychological, and Sociological Perspectives) 1666919578, 9781666919578

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Afro and Indigenous Intersectionality in America as Nomen

The Black Atlantic Cultural Series: Revisioning Artistic, Historical, Literary, Psychological, and Sociological Perspectives Series Editor: Emily Allen-Williams, Director, Educational Research Analysis & Consultation, LLC This series will embrace exploratory discussions that emanate from the latest Africana ideas from the Caribbean, Black Atlantic, and Southern United States. The series aims to examine ideologies, theories, aesthetics, and their cultural and global manifestations. From the music, dance, literature, fashion, linguistic nuances, and beyond, Africana culture is vibrantly original and requires significant documentation to avoid its loss in the vast imitation that abounds nationally and internationally. RECENT TITLES IN THE SERIES: Art and Ritual in the Black Diaspora: Archetypes of Transition, by Paul A. Griffith Recovering the African Feminine Divine in Literature, the Arts, and Practice: Yemonja Awakening, edited by LaJuan Simpson-Wilkey, Sheila Smith McKoy, and Eric Bridges Philosophy and the African American Modern Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze, by Anthony Neal Afro and Indigenous Intersectionality in America as Nomen: Intersectionally Black by Larry L. W. Miles

Afro and Indigenous Intersectionality in America as Nomen Intersectionally Black Larry L. W. Miles

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Miles, Larry L. W., author. Title: Afro and indigenous intersectionality in America as nomen : intersectionally Black / Larry L. W. Miles. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2023] | Series: The Black Atlantic cultural series : revisioning artistic, historical, literary, psychological, and sociological perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022059571 (print) | LCCN 2022059572 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666919578 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666919585 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: African Americans--Race identity. | African Americans--History. | African Americans--Relations with Indians. | Black people--America--Origin. | Maure (African people)--America–History. Classification: LCC E185.625 .M55 2023  (print) | LCC E185.625  (ebook) | DDC 305.896/073–dc23/eng/20230118 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059571 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059572 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

I owe my life and ability to love to my parents, Larry and Gloria Miles, Pop and Mrs. Capers. I am beyond thankful for their continued guidance. This is for my family and those who feel, and often know, that there is more to their human narrative than what is often told.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Preface xi Timeline xvii Chapter One: In Search of Identity: Who Named Him?



Chapter Two: The Imbedded Narrative: America’s Shores Chapter Three: So Much Moor, and More Than a Slave Chapter Four: More Than One Narrative Epilogue: The Intersectionality of Blackness Bibliography Index



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33 79 107



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About the Author



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Acknowledgments

I thank, first and foremost, my mother Bishop Gloria A. C. Miles. This book came to be only because she told me to write it. I am beyond appreciative of the guidance given to me at Clark Atlanta University’s Department of Humanities and the Africana Studies Department. My journey there began under the leadership and direction of Dr. J. Bradley, Dr. D. Black, Dr. V. Osinubi, Dr. A. Vinyard, Dr. J. Bess-Montgomery, and a host of other brilliant educators and fellow students who have contributed to my development and growth. I would also like to thank all those who have guided me in the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) and the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS). These institutions have played a vital role in who I am becoming. This book would also not be possible without the brilliant research of scholars such as Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. Runoko Rashidi, Dr. Clyde Winters, Dr. David Imhotep, etc., etc., etcetera. They have taught and continue to teach us that this is our planet. And it is an honor to add to this conversation about our global humanity. Finally, a special thanks goes out to my family and all of the young people I have been allowed to serve as a classroom teacher, adjunct professor, and college instructor. I am because you are.

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An intelligible way of asserting the full premise of this conversation is to affirm that people who identify as African American are more than meets the nomenclature. Being African American, or participating in African American culture, is accompanied by an historical narrative in which the people have traversed a myriad of cultural and historical identifiers. Therefore, part of the intent of this discourse is to talk about that seemingly monolithic designation, “African American” which is used to label people who pre-date and encapsulate more than the moniker. Racial classifications are both outside of and intra-cultural group narratives. For example, if an individual has the perceived characteristics (i.e., phenotypic traits) of being an “African American,” they therefore share the perceived cultural similarities and even stereotypes of what being African American is. The narratives of who eventually becomes the “African American” have traversed myriad name changes over the last two hundred and forty years, and it has coalesced almost into a singularity. The first so-called Negroes in the Americas are now African Americas, and with it comes a constructed, almost uniform, cultural identity with most of it rooted in the narrative of enslavement. However, there is, arguably, no universal construct of what it means to be African American. And, the people who have been universally attributed to the culture do not share any distinctive language, religion, or national heritage except, for the most part, narrative. It is, essentially, narrative that creates this groupthink and the subsequent culture associated with what it means to be “African American.” Another purpose for this dialog is to broaden the conversation about the narratives that encapsulate African American identity. The singular term “African American” does not properly give voice to the bodies or body politic of the people the nomenclature signifies. Essentially, the absence of or the marginalization of alternative narratives of this immense population of people, which is made up of more than the narrative of enslaved Africans of xi

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the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, does not fully celebrate their contributions to society and humanity as a whole. Negro, Black, Colored, African American (NBCAA) people are not monolithic, nor can they be concentrated into a singular identity. It must be acknowledged that the African American of today is not, for the most part, the Negro of colonial America. But what does that mean? This statement is not suggesting that people who identify as African American today, or since the term had become vogue in the latter part of the twentieth century, are not bio-historically related to the colonial era peopling of North, Middle, and South America. It is suggesting that the cultural identity that has been assumed by “African Americans” which presupposes being an enslaved Negro or African in the Americas cannot be married one to the other via a one to one correlation. Let me restate that in a different way. The earliest “Negro” populations during the colonial era are factually tied to the Americas (as they were Indigenous to North, South, and Central America) and not actually Africa of the trans-Atlantic Maafa or enslavement period of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. The enslavement of the Indigenous populations in the Americas was first. And they were subsequently enslaved by the thousands if not hundreds of thousands. And history cannot rightfully suggest that all of these enslaved Indigenous people subsequently died off. There are far too many records that demonstrate that many enslaved Indigenous “Negroes” were manumitted and they also became colonial land and slave owners themselves. During my initial research, I was studying the pre-Columbian African presence in early America with a focus on “Peewee River Indians” in South Carolina. It turned out that there was a strong West African (Malian) influence on the culture and people. These “Indians” were not identified as Negro, Black, Colored, etc., by the Spaniards who came to North America in the sixteenth century. In fact, the Moors or Moriscos (the Iberians who accompanied Cortez as conquistadors in the exploration of the territory) fled and joined in with the Peewee River Indians in revolt against the barbaric and ill-fated conquest of the southeastern region of North America by the Spanish at that time. And therein lies the major theme of this text. Western history begins with “when the Moors were exiled from Spain.” Almost all of our institutions and narratives that explain the development of the “New World” stop at that statement. We are not given instruction on what it means that the Moors were driven from Spain, where they went, why they were driven out, and who, actually, are Moors. I began studying what was available to me regarding the “Peewee River Indians” and pre-Columbia Africans in the Americas (using the works of Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Leo Wiener, Dr. David Imhotep, Dr. Clyde Winters, Jack D. Forbes, William

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Loren Katz, George Catlin, and a plethora of scholars who wrote about the Indigenous people of the Americas). From there I became intrigued by the narratives presented by the Moorish Science Temple of America and its founder, the Honorable Noble Drew Ali. Ali claimed that the “Indian” people who were here in North America proper (the USA) were, indeed, part of the larger Moorish Empire which encompassed North and West Africa, the Mediterranean, Al Andalusia (Spain and Portugal), the Caribbean, and many other locations in the Americas. After comparing the canonized narratives of African people in America to that of the MSTA, I have come to believe that the histories presented in many of the texts that I have been studying have been purposefully marginalized in the larger American society and subsequently American academic institutions. Throughout this text (conversation), I review some of the nations and confederacies that were here in the Americas, specifically North America. I cover the descriptions of the Indigenous people which were chronicled by sixteenth through nineteenth century travel logs. I challenge the notion that those early Americans were either “killed off” or decimated. I challenge the narrative that after the Indigenous people were killed off, the African subsequently became synonymous with slave. And I posit the notion that a very large portion of people who identify as African American today are, in fact, the progeny of the pre-Columbian Africans who had been coming to the Americas for millennia as well as the seafaring traders who were called Moors from the eighth through the twentieth century. While there were a substantial number of Africans stolen from the continent of Africa during the Maafa, many of the people who were enslaved in North America by colonial governments and the eventual US nation state, were from the numerous territories that were colonized in the Americas. Subsequently, NBCAA, as nomenclatures, do not fulfil the full narrative of a truly international people. The conclusions drawn within Nomen suggest that the negated narrative of the Moors in American history maintains Western hegemony. It is the conversion and forced suppression of the Islamic faith in the Americas via the conquests of the Holy Roman Empire and its Christianizing missions against the people in the Americas. Given the religious (Christian) character of Western society and academia, the marginalization of Moorish history and narratives are indispensable to the predominance of the Christian narrative. Consequently, revision would reshape national, cultural, and religious identities, especially for those who have traversed name changes from Moor (as claimed by the MSTA), to Indigo, to Indian, to Negro, to Black, to Colored, to Afro-America, and then African American. I do not claim that Nomen is, in and of itself, the only text available explaining the early African presence in the Americas. Many of the authors mentioned above claim and prove the pre-Columbian Africans in the

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Americas. Nomen is unique because it explains the four-part structure of the historical narrative which creates the one-to-one correlation of African with slave. I demonstrate within the text that the historical narratives which shape the United States of America, using Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States as the exemplar of the US narrative, have been expounded upon and become the narrative that permeates the whole of the society, even Black Studies. In a most remarkable way, the enslaved Africans of the seventeenth though the nineteenth century becomes the only Africans in North America. And all modern African Americans become the progeny of those enslaved Africans. This is done via narrative even though numerous texts admit to and record the pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas. However, as those narratives suggests, they, like the Indians, had been decimated or wiped out. Nomen, however, recognizes the brutality and impact of the enslavement and forced migration of African peoples into the Americas. Yet, it systematically explains how the identifier (African American) cannot be associated with slave and that it can, eventually, be used to recognize the centuries of African migrations to the Americas pre and post Columbus eras. It asserts far greater agency for African people. It asserts that they are not the product of someone else’s making. And it asserts that NBCAA people do not have to begin their historical narrative with “when they brought us here.” Chapter 1 of Nomen records the development of “Negro” or “Black” identity during the early colonial period. It reviews the arguments developed by the founding fathers of the US republic and how people who had been enslaved within that colonial system saw themselves in retrospect to the colonial government. It essentially explains that all governments are an agreed upon enterprise. Whether it be congressional petitioning or the use of the courts within that government, individuals who appeal to that government do so only under the belief that they are either subject to the government, subjects of the government, or equal partners in said government. Chapter 2 breaks down the four-part structure of the US historical narrative. It begins with the ominous and vague statement regarding the Moors and their exile from Spain. It explains the scope of the Moorish empire, the connection the Moors had to the Americas pre-Columbus, and the early African presence in the Americas. Part two of chapter 2 demonstrates how that four-part narrative has been coopted by the larger society without substantial backstory of the Moors. It is important to note that it had become established tradition to suggest that there is a one-to-one correlation of African American and slave. The main goal of the chapter is to disassociate the two. Chapter 3 is probably my favorite chapter because it explains how the cultural narratives of the Moors were turned into the dreadful personages found

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within Great Britain and eventually the US These constructs of Blackness (Moors) are the images and ideas that permeate mass media consumption in most of the western world. And, the majority of those images are derogatory and belie the actual history and current realities of IAFW peoples. We review the perceptions of Blackness in contradistinction to whiteness via the play Othello and the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. This chapter also details the history of the Moorish Science Temple of America and how its narrative of the Moorish Empire should and could fit seamlessly into the fuller narrative of the African in America. In chapter 4, the whole of the conversation within Nomen rests with the need to Re-Member. This chapter is the charge of the text. It implores readers, especially those who identify as African American, to re-member their fuller narrative. It is in knowing who we are as a full human, part of the larger human family with a whole narrative, that we are able to function fully within any government or societal system. Re-Member is purposefully spelled the way it is because it is a directive to put back together the whole of ones’ cultural narrative and, essentially, oneself. So, this conversation is constructed to address not only the identity issues that have developed because of the African Americanization of such a diverse group of people which encompasses thousands of years of untold narratives, but it also broaches the possibilities for remedy or the incorporation of a greater identity into the body politic of what it can mean to be African American. Intersectionally Black is not a denunciation of the atrocity of slavery anywhere, especially African enslavement and the brutal system of forced migration across the Atlantic Ocean into the Americas. This is not a rejection of enslavement itself. The African American (South American, Caribbean, et al.) identity is one which celebrates surviving more than two hundred years of concentrated warfare via the unification of multiple nations which shared in (and continue to reap the benefits of) the spoils of African and Indigenous American peoples’ degradation and free labor. They are people who have not just survived. They have also found a means to thrive and pursue freedom and justice. This alone is impeccable. I am in admiration of that gift.

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Source: Larry Miles.

The migrations, presented here, of African people only date back 100,000 years. However, there is significant evidence that Africoid (African) peoples were in the Americas more than 300,000 years ago. It is the contention of this author that these people were neither wholly decimated nor have they collectively died off. Intersectionally Black attempts to explain that these people make up the Indigenous, Autochthonous, First World peoples (IAFW) who have been rendered Negro, Black, and Colored, etc., by colonial aggressors and state actors.

Timeline

Chapter One

In Search of Identity Who Named Him?

My goodness, they’re just so precious, what’s its name? All they say was, we don’t know. So they just call’m, Nigger, Spook, Negro, Coon, Colored, Darky, Black Boy, Boon. And I tell you for sure, he’s just so precious. But what do he do? Nothing really, except run, jump, fly, swoon, sang, cry, and dance a June. Where’d he come from, can anyone tell? Not really, but some say, Cane, Satan, Ham, Hell, only the lord knows and god won’t tell. So, what do reckon you’ll do with him, Nothing really, he’s just a Negro, Boy, Criminal Goon, Blacky, African or Dead Soon.1 Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: to make a poet Black, and bid him sing. —Countee Cullen

As an adolescent growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, I’d been cultivated early on to believe that the Thanksgiving meal that spread throughout the kitchen, dining room, and a foldout table in the living room, was a product of Indians celebrating the coming of their new-found brothers, the Pilgrims. The narratives of the first Thanksgivings makes for wonderful stories and craft projects in school. And here I emphasize narratives, as there is far more than one narrative of events that would lead up to a celebration or the development of that holy day (holiday). The holidays allow us to ritualize and articulate family. It is one of the few days during the year when family, far and wide, would traverse long distances 1

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to spend time with each other. The most beautiful part of this narrative is that those are some of the days that have become imprinted in my memory, so they are easiest to recall and participate in when I daydream my childhood. The real reason for the instant access to memory data is practice. The days are practiced. The concepts of the days are more than mere observance. The narratives of the reasons for the rituals are made sacred cultural phenomenon. Non-participation in the yearly ceremonies could lead to penalties at home and especially at school. So, we are forced to remember. Every year. Remember and practice the narratives. We would become effectively cultivated until it is normalized as a part of our reality. In fact, it becomes so ingrained in us that we do it without thinking. Even more so, not participating creates a sense of alienation from the culture which is as painful as the penalties we would get as children when we attempted to forego the ritual. Here, Thanksgiving is only thematically useful because of the many areas I hope to cover during the course of this conversation. My goal is to narrate effectively what it means to ritualistically participate in a culture that essentially negates so many narratives that make up our whole selves. The narratives that have either been marginalized or completely negated could add to a fuller identity and broaden our conversations about who we are as a people. However, I’ve come to understand that I’d been cultivated to live in a society that has minimized our contributions to humanity and subsequently imposed a minority appellation which we often use to navigate our reality. We have become marginalized in a society that functions on the narratives that have marginalized our history. For example, I celebrate African American culture and identity. But that is not all of who I am, where I come from, my narrative, the narrative of my family, people, land, culture, etc., etc., etcetera. Being African American, to me, means participating in an amazing culture. And it is a beautiful culture. I have come to understand that being African American does not signify a specific group of people. It, as a nomenclature (nomen), is not sufficient enough to encompass the full scope of the people who employ the moniker. Let me state another purpose for sharing this. The body politic that makes up the African American is a phenomenal construction. Let’s stay here for a moment longer to elaborate. To be African American, or to become an African American, one must not only accept some of the worse insults man has ever imposed upon another set of human beings. To suggest that you are willing to be pridefully African American means that the insult and rape of one’s name, language, and culture are precursors to one’s identity. The African American says I have survived the worst and I am currently embroiled in sordid adversities, yet I aspire to thrive. There is one more quality to which the African American has adopted that is even far more important. The African American says that I desire to thrive within the greater brotherhood of humanity. I desire

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to be equal with all others who inhabit humanity. I want to fit in. I am willing to forgive, not forget as I must ritualistically teach my historical suffering, but I am willing to forgo revenge or retribution. That person is remarkable. RITUALIZING MEMORY AND BECOMING THE NARRATIVE On March 29, 2003, at a symposium conducted at the University I was attending, a professor was introduced for his presentation as a “Du Boisean, having a ‘Double Consciousness.’” Du Bois’ explication of identity is timeless. It will remain so as long as African Americans continue to find themselves in opposition to people who do not see their humanity. And it is not as simple as “others” not seeing their humanity. We remember that there were and are people who have attempted to either beat or even write their humanity out of existence. In fact, laws have been imposed upon them in order to remove their humanity and full rights to equality. So, the “Double Consciousness” will remain a reality because people who identify as African American still find themselves in contradistinction to the other branches of the human family who, historically, have not, and seemingly still choose not to accept them as equals. Dubois explains this split identity in The Souls of Black Folk. He writes, After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.2

I couldn’t understand the acceptance of this professor introducing himself as suffering from this split persona. I therefore had to listen to him to find a greater understanding. I subsequently enrolled in a few of his courses as he was the only “Black” professor in the entire English department, and I was the only “Black” graduate student enrolled. On quite a few occasions, I would keep talking to the professor long after the class was over, inquiring about many things, especially those things concerning “Black” people.

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In one course titled, African American Liberation Tales, I can’t remember what I said to have him respond the way he did; however, the response is what stayed on my mind as an echo reminding me that I was still unclear as to what I was as a human or what it really meant to be either “Black,” “African American,” “Negro” or if it even mattered. The response to what I said or asked was (paraphrasing) “when was there ever an us?” Du Bois identified the “us” my professor questioned that evening. They were a seventh son of humanity, namely Negro. Therefore, at that time I was very confused. I have to accept today that I simply might have misunderstood the intent of his question. At the same time, it could also be a completely disjointed recognition as to what was being discussed, which could happen when a student attempts to challenge the depth in which educators are willing to sacrifice personal opinions and feelings into their political, spiritual, and educational wellbeing. But I was stuck, and I needed more answers. I reacted to the remarks because of “Black” movements during the early 1900s through the 1970s, and I was under the impression that they were caused by an us. So, to rethink that notion, it wasn’t an us who participated in the uprisings, altercations, marches, and celebrations; rather, it was a body politic of situationists. So, the concept of there being a unified body of Blacks fighting for Blacks was wrong, and these people were only having situational reactions. I had to synthesize whether or not there is a collective us, who created the us, and whether or not identifying this us as Black, African American, or simply situationists is the proper nomen. Around the same time, I came across a text written by a gentleman named David Dent. The premise of Dent’s book is his travelling from door-to-door interviewing Blacks in America to illustrate that there is no one Black mindset. In one interview with an elderly woman in Lawnside, Massachusetts, the conversation of E. Franklin Frazier’s book, Black Bourgeoisie came up. The woman stated: It wasn’t unsubstantiated. It was his life. He was my mentor. I knew E. Franklin Frazier. . . . But the main problem of the book is he didn’t make a clear distinction between the Aristocrats and the Nouveaux Riches. He put them all in the same pot . . . it was all mixed up together. You had the Aristocrats, the Nouveaux Riches, and then you had the Shadys, and they were the ones who had made their money pimping and gambling. He put them all together. And everyone was angry when he wrote it. He should have broken down the groups.3

Earlier, Dent mentions an unnamed Black woman who had been quoted in an article saying:

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There are various grades of colored people just as there are various grades of white people. The lowest grades of whites and blacks are about on a par. No respectable negro would want to associate with either. We are not to be judged by the street loungers and drunkards of our race.4

The common thread is that the segregation that these individuals are clinging to is more than economic. It is a cultural identity that they seem to be hinting at. But what is the genesis of that cultural identity? I suggest it is the reinforcement of a cultural narrative, even if the narrative is not wholly true. So, I went in search of the narratives and where we acquired them from. Carter G. Woodson stated that “the first real educators to take up the work of enlightening the American Negroes were clergymen interested in the propagation of the gospel among the heathen of the world.”5 Claud Anderson elaborated on this acquisition of a cultural narrative when he pointed out that, The American war for independence gave blacks, both free and enslaved, cause to express their interest in religious freedom. But fearing blacks would use the Bible to seek freedom, education, or black unity, whites applied strict limits to black religious services. Once white slave owners realized that religion could serve as an excellent mechanism to control slaves, they allowed field blacks to attend services as long as they were accompanied by a white overseer. (W)hite society controlled black religion, its ministers, and churches. Catechisms for religious instruction of slaves commonly bore such passages as: Q: Who gave you a master and a mistress? A: God gave them to me. Q: Who says that you must obey them? A: God says that I must. The licensed black ministers were expected to encourage their fellow blacks to be meek, obedient, and accepting of whites as masters.6

In The Mis-Education of the Negro, Woodson says of those friends who sponsor the education of the Negro: This unsound attitude of the “friends” of the Negro is due to the persistence of the mediaeval idea of controlling underprivileged classes. Behind closed doors these “friends” say you need to be careful in advancing Negroes to commanding positions unless it can be determined beforehand that they will do what they are told to do. You can never tell when some Negroes will break out and embarrass their “friends.” After being advanced to positions of influence some of them have been known to run amuck and advocate social equality or demand for their

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race the privileges of democracy when they should restrict themselves to education and religious development.7

What I begin to realize, over time, is that the narratives that would shape NBCAA identity or whether or not there is an us is found in both the education system and religious institutions. The religious institutions are not within the full reach of this conversation. The major focus here will be on the institutionalization of identity via our academic and socialization processes. When, at times, identity is married to religious affiliation, it will be addressed. However, the scope of this work is not to identify any religious institution as being the most prone to advancing a greater, more collective, identity for African Americans. This is about the narratives that have shaped African American culture and identity within our familial structures, compulsory education, and political institutions. The narratives that have become ritualized in the culture determines far more than just the nomenclatures adopted by African Americans over the course of their individual and collective experiences in our society. The narratives function on a far greater scale. They socialize the populace to perform and function within the society in which they live. Dr. Amos Wilson suggested that they function as a means to control. A realistic and objective analysis of the social structure and dynamics of American society, particularly those pertaining to White-Black race relations will vividly reveal that Blacks are “doubly socialized,” i.e., first by the environing and dominant White culture and secondly, reactively and proactively by partly Indigenous Black culture. Consequently, Black culture and each of its members are interjected with and afflicted by the “double consciousness” so famously defined by W. E. B. DuBois. Socialization, broadly defined, is the process by which the infant [subordinate culture] learned the ways a given social group [the dominate culture] and is molded into an effective participant. Because of imperfections in this process, the infant [subordinate culture] is not completely “molded,” but in the course of his [its] development he [it] acquires behavior, attitude, values and other personality [cultural] traits that are at once unique to him [it] and at the same time characteristic of the group or groups [dominate culture] that serve as the socializing agent.8

The socializing agent which has had, arguably, the most profound effect on the identity of African Americans is the academy and its compulsory education. So, we must start with the institutionalization of the narrative of America. A familiar adage is that if the lion does not tell his/her story, the hunter will. And aggressors, enslavers, or conquerors do not celebrate the humanity of its victims. It also does not bother to make the conquered equal parties in the

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narrative of the new society that is erected in the wake of its conquest. The European nations that invaded (colonized) the Americas reconstructed the identities of those they conquered and dehumanized them in their narratives and histories. The construct of most of Western history is a compilation of victories against a people they would define as savages needing to be civilized, or even Christianized. As James Loewen points out, “perhaps the most pervasive theme in our history is the domination of black America by white America.”9 As such, one does not find in the common core or the canon of the American (United States) academy a celebration of or a humane narrative of the Africans who preceded them into the Americas. Rendering them positively or humanely in the narratives of the “Westward March” of the colonizers would be a departure from the constructed narratives of modern American history. As Jan Carew states in his article “The Caribbean Writer and Exile,” “the early accounts written by European colonizers, about their apocalyptic intrusion into the Amerindian domains, are characterized, with few exceptions, by romantic evasions of truth and voluminous omissions.”10 The story of America, as taught in the education system of the United States under the aegis of the Department of Education which influences the academic and social development of people in the Americans including North, South, Central America, and the Caribbean, is an intergenerational transmission of Western cultural hegemony. To explain this a little more, it must be understood that the purpose of the academic and social institutions is to develop the personalities of and within the society. The stories are not told as things actually happened or were; rather, they have been translated and diligently revised to convey a narrative of the conquered and conqueror. Subsequently, there is so much more to the narratives of humanity which has gone untold. Therefore, this conversation is about two institutionalized narratives and one not so much institutionalized narrative. First, we will converse with the narrative of America as canonized in the academy and diffused into our larger society using A People’s History of America which, when it was first published, was actually considered a radical construction of the American social project. Secondly, we will examine how African Americans have adopted the narrative of the people’s history which subsequently narrates and shapes African American identity and culture. Interwoven in each construct, as we will demonstrate, is a connection to the narratives of IAFW11 people which have been maligned in order to construct the story of America which subsequently shapes our historical, cultural, and social dynamics. Ultimately, I am suggesting that the accepted narrative and cultural identity that is African American could be and should be amended. The African

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American is more. And inclusion of a larger narrative will help to create a larger identity not shaped solely via enslavement. They are more. The narratives of the first people of America often do not communicate an abundance of what took place during the initial moments of contact and the historical lives of those people who were subjected to the onslaught and waves of European colonizers. There are very deep implications to this narrative. Those who have had difficulty constructing a historical legacy that predates European incursion become the progeny of the colonizer’s desired form of thinking as demonstrated in the WPA reports of the twentieth century. “Frank Bell, eighty-six at the time of the statement and a native of New Orleans, fixed his face to say, ‘You know, the nigger was wild till the white man made what he has out of the nigger. He done ed’cate them real smart.’”12 This is the reason for this approach to studying the development of the African American narrative and the omission of their full humanity in the academy. One of the most influential and erudite Caribbean scholars, Jan Carew, writes that “after Columbus and his sailors were discovered by the Arawakian Lucayos on their beaches in 1492, the Americas of the colonizer came into being as part of both a literary exercise and one of the most appalling acts of ethnocide in recorded history.”13 The ethno-genocide referred to here is not a mass slaughter or depopulation of an entire people. Rather, it is the imposition of a cultural narrative that redefined (renamed, reordered) the people. The most egregious part of the narrative of conquest by European nations is that it inverts the history and humanity of the conquered while relegating them to a permanent underclass in the Americas because their narratives begin via their enslavement and conquest. They exist only because they were sold to the conquerors. Who can rise to be equal with the conqueror when they are nothing more than a byproduct of their conquest? Carew points out that the modern understanding of the Caribbean world came from Columbus’s diaries which he calls a “blend of fantasies fed by writings from the Middle Ages—(and) his writings about the people he met are contradictory, inaccurate, biased, and in the midst of pious declarations about converting ‘natives’ to Christianity, sprinkled with asides of racial arrogance and a lust for gold.”14 And this is, in essence, the narrative of the Americas as taught in the compulsory education system wherein those who can assert bio-historical relationships with the conqueror are superior and all others are subjects of their conquests. Carew also mentions Alberigo Vespucci, preferring to call him by his authentic Christian name and not his adopted name Amerigo. He does so to point out the fact that America does not get its name or nomenclature from Vespucci, the Florentine. It was, Carew asserts, in fact; a name Vespucci

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adopted from the peoples he encountered in the mountain ranges of Nicaragua called the Sierra Amerrique. He writes, Dr. A. Le Plongeon, a nineteenth century scholar from Merida (Yucatan)—In a letter to the French Professor Jules Marcou dated December 10, 1881, wrote: The name AMERICA OR AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and sometimes the suffix “-ique,” “-ik” and “-ika” can mean not only wind or air but also a spirit that breathes life itself.15

As such, those of us who have been educated into the culture of America were taught that before the coming of the conqueror, this land really had no name. This narrative functions as a detriment to the early people of America and a negation of their very identity. If we ever took a little time to consider the ramifications of a narrative which suggests that someone else named the land and therefore the people, we are propelled to ask: who then are the people to themselves if their nomenclature comes from a conqueror. According to C. L. R. James, the traditional narrative of the Americas reads as such: Christopher Columbus landed first in the New World at the island of San Salvador, and after praising God enquired urgently for gold. The natives, Red Indians, were peaceable and friendly—the Spaniards, the most advanced Europeans of their day, annexed the island, called it Hispaniola, and took the backward natives under their protection. They introduced Christianity, forced labor in mines, murder, rape, bloodhounds, strange diseases, and artificial famine (by the destruction of cultivation to starve the rebellious). These and other requirements of the higher civilization reduced the native population from an estimated half-a-million, perhaps a million, to 60,000 in 15 years—Las Casas, a Dominican priest with a conscience, travelled to Spain to plead for the abolition of native slavery—The Spanish Government compromised. It abolished the repartimientos, or forced labor, in law while its agents in the colony maintained it in fact. Las Casas, haunted at the prospect of seeing before his eyes the total destruction of a population within one generation, hit on the expedience of importing the more robust Negroes from a populous Africa; in 1517, Charles V. authorized the export of 15,000 slaves to San Domingo, and thus priest and King launched on the world the American slave-trade and slavery.16

This narrative is, essentially, the narrative we have been taught about the “New World.” However, it is not complete, and we must, therefore, investigate this narrative and the people in more depth. And we will do so using, as stated above, Howard Zinn’s text, A People’s History of the United States.17 While there are numerous texts that can be used to reconstruct a narrative of the people who came to populate the United States of America, Zinn’s text represents what can be considered to be the compulsory narrative of America

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within the academy. Essentially, the narrative of the West, or the accepted narrative within our culture, asserts that it all began when the Moors were driven out of Spain. That narrative states that when the Moors were driven out of Spain, the Western world, driven by a need for resources and expansion, set out to conquer the “(un)known world.” Upon reaching the Americas, they came across a people that they could rename “Indian,” and these “Indians” of the Americas had no real origin narrative. They, as the narrative suggests, were expressly awaiting their conquest, and the robust Negro his also. This narrative does little to humanize, historicize, or identify exactly who or what a so-called “Red Indian” is. Likewise, it dehumanizes and falsely historicizes the origin of the robust Negro even though there is so much information, both oral and written, which develops a fuller description of the native populations of pre-Columbian era America and Africa. WHERE DID THE AMERICAN INDIAN COME FROM AND WHAT IS THEIR ORIGIN STORY? The places of origin for the pre-Columbian peoples in America, according to numerous scholars, have almost exclusively been the continent of Africa even though the successive migrations have been documented as having taken place at varying times in so-called pre-recorded history. Some reports have them appearing in the Americas more than 70,000 years ago (see Gladwin Thesis and the Australopithecus/Negritoes), and later as explorers and immigrants to these shores during the Xia or Shang Dynasty c. 1788–1122 BCE.18 More modern pre-Columbian studies of African contact in the Americas often focus on West African seafaring capabilities and the constant migrations of the Mande/Mandingo peoples. Based on the many similarities between the cultures of West Africa, the Caribbean, and ancient Mexico, particularly the Olmec society, many anthropologists, historians, and scientists such as Ivan Van Sertima in his work They Came Before Columbus,19 Leo Wiener and his works African and the Discovery of America Vols. I, II, III,20 and modern craniologists have concluded that there was a significant ancient African presence in these areas. Another note on the make-up of the inhabitants of North, Middle, and South America must consider the vast expanse of the Moorish Empire which dominated the Ethiopian Sea (now called the Atlantic Ocean) before and during the Columbian era. Jan Carew, in his The Rape of Paradise, states that, “at its zenith, Muslim power stretched from China, across the Himalayas into India, through the Middle East, and deep into the Nile Valley. It criss-crossed (sic) all of North Africa, reached down to Dar-es-Salaam in East Africa and

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went as far South as Ghana in West Africa.”21 Carew also ensures that he establishes, with great detail, who the Moors were when he suggests that they were often identified as Arab, Berber, Tuareg, etc. and that the origin of these people were Ethiopian as “Arabia was the oldest Ethiopian colony . . . that . . . the Cushites were the original Arabians.”22 In his address to the Smithsonian, Van Sertima pointed out that the Mayan oral tradition describes artifacts and materials brought to Mexico by people who came from West Africa via the Nile Valley. “These things came from the East (east of the Gulf of Mexico), from the other side of the water and the sea. They came here, they had their thrones, their little benches and stools, they had their parasols and their bone flutes.” These items are of West African origin, particularly the Ashanti and Yoruba nations, and they are the property of kings. They symbolize power and authority. Van Sertima goes on say, I do not exaggerate when I say that it would be impossible to find a mirrored duplication of such a complex and arbitrarily fused twin-trait, in any other cultural context, in any other historical period, in any other part of the world, without some demonstrable evidence of contact between the mother of the original trait and her daughter or duplicate. Observe the bird and serpent on the crown of the boy-king Tutankhamun, son of the Nubian queen, Tiye. Observe it again on the head of yet another Olmec dignitary. Lastly, on the head of a Mayan Chief, to whom it diffused from the Olmec high-culture. There is the royal crook and the royal flail, part of the ceremonial regalia of priest-kings in both areas. Jairazbhoy cites an Olmec painting at Oxtotitlan where the Olmec king seated on the throne has the same type of flail as the Egyptian and it is in the same position behind his head. But there is also, in this interconnected cluster of monarchic traits, the sacred boat or ceremonial bark of the priest-kings. What is so remarkable about this is that it not only has the same function but the same name (sibak in Egyptian, cipac in Mexican. The b and p, of course, are interchangeable plosives).23

These commonalities among the Olmec Maya people and that of the African still seems to not be enough to demonstrate that the populations and cultural constructs of the majority of people in the Caribbean and many parts of North America are, in fact, of pre-Columbian and pre-enslavement African descent. Even when we do discuss the pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas, these people somehow are not connected to the people of the Columbian and colonial era conquests. And note, we refer to them as Manding, Olmec, Maya etc., etc., etcetera, and not African American. Van Sertima, in addressing opposition to his research, asserts that he never claims that the people of the Caribbean, Mexico, and many of the native populations of North America are the Egyptians or Malayan people,

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but rather he explains that there is so much cultural exchange that one must forthwith conclude that there is major influence on the Americas from the African continent. However, there is an addendum to that narrative, interwoven here, which asserts, unlike Van Sertima, that there was not only cultural exchange but a considerable proportion of the people who inhabited North, Middle, and South America is a combination of an Indigenous-Africoid stock of people who are part of and partial to the Moorish Empire whose decline is subsequently the rise of the so-called West. Hence, we get the narrative of the Moors being “forced from Spain” at the outset of the Columbia era. This Moorish Empire encompasses the Nile Valley and West African seafarers who not only influenced the cultures, they also made up a substantial bulk of the populations or peoples of the Caribbean, Middle, North, and major portions of South America. This is also, in a way, an affront to many of the current inhabitants of the areas who also have been colonized by European nations. That colonization has led many to suggest that they are not part of that Moorish Empire. Carew explains this contradiction when he asserts that the modern Caribbean seems to have no affinity for the African or Moorish heritage which antedates the European. He states that, It is ironic that, to this day, the Spanish in their homeland, and the mestizo (Hispanic, African, and Amerindian racial mixtures) ruling elements in Latin America, continue to make derisory noises about the “purity of their blood” in order to banish unconscious memories of ineradicable Moorish/Jewish/African cultural and racial infusions. Regardless of skin color and feature, they are forever ready to choose the barbaric white Visigoths as ancestors rather than the dark skinned and civilized Moor.24

We are aware that in our culture, both in the academy and the larger society, when alternative narratives are brought to the fore, the first thing that often happens is the information if denounced. If the narratives begin to take hold, then those who control the dissemination of information will distort the original message. When that does not quash its growth, it will tax the narrative or attack the messenger. When taxation and attack does not foil the new narrative, the final option is to mute or ignore it. It is assumed that if the larger society is not engaging in the conversation, there is no conversation being had. When muted, it is as if we can see the mouth of the speaker moving and the spectacular genuflections of the scholar declaring the alternative narrative, but we do not hear them. Therefore, the active listening necessary for incorporation of the narrative into a larger society does not fulfill itself. But we are, whether the larger society knows it or not, still talking and moving toward liberation.

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Dr. David Imhotep and his text The First Americans Were Africans is one example of that. His research is beyond capable of telling this story. He is within the tradition of those brilliant scholars like Van Sertima, Carew, G. M. James etc., etc., etcetera. He explains the Carib Indians as “after whom the Caribbean was named—probably first lived inside the Amazon River Valley in South America. After migrating to the Northern coast, the Caribs moved into the Caribbean around 1000 CE. In the process, they drove out the resident Indians. There is an Egyptian/Carib Indian connection.”25 There is far more to this assertion, and Dr. Imhotep is best capable of explaining it more. He writes, At different times in history, the same land was given different names—Eminent historian and linguist, Dr. Clyde A. Winters wrote that, “A major ethnic group among the Kushites were the Manding people.” The Kushite people were from Kush, which was comprised of the parts of: Southern Egypt, Sudan, and Northern Ethiopia that ran along the Nile River. This makes the Manding, Egyptian, even though they were one of several ethnic groups of ancient Egypt. During the wet African Aqualithic period, the ProtoManding migrated to Mauritania in west Africa and lived along the wandering Niger River. Manding is also the language of Mali—which is spoken in Western Africa today—and is a major language group in Western Africa. . . . Recall that the Manding were later found in the Americas, especially Central and South America, whose Eastern and Northern border the Caribbean Sea. So, it should not be very surprising when you are told that it is documented that the Carib Indians spoke Manding.26

Dr. Imhotep’s assertion that these people probably lived in the Amazon River Valley in South America and migrated north into the Caribbean and then subsequently “drove out the resident Indians” establishes an admixture of peoples in these areas. I don’t want to focus too much on the notion that the Manding “drove out” the peoples because notions of the mass removal or genocide of particular populations is part of this overall conversation. We will return to that notion later. However, between Dr. Imhotep and Jan Carew, we can reconstruct the populations of the Caribbean. Carew suggests that the Carib people were called and called themselves Taino which means “The Good People.” “As ‘Taino’ was the name by which the people of Guanahani called themselves.” He writes, “it is only right and fitting that it be the name by which they should be remembered.”27 The Taino were a racially homogenous group who migrated from South America around the time of Christ or circa 100 BCE. They inhabited the Greater Antilles, primarily Cuba, Espanola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. Also, notice that the

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name Guanahani is linguistically connected to the word Ghana which was the region and Empire inhabited by the Mandi of West Africa. Dr. Imhotep’s statements on the KMTic (Egyptian: KMT is one of the terms in the Medu Netcher/hieroglyphics used to designate the Nile Valley region of the African continent) contribution or roots of the Manding people are clear, and it does much to explain or reason the cultural/ceremonial products of kings in the America’s as pointed out by Van Sertima. However, the Amazon River Valley orientation of said people may be difficult to embrace. More must be delineated about the proposed origin of these Carib people before expanding into more of the region, specifically the islands of America and the North American continent. This is all necessary to explicate the people and their culture. In his text, Africa and the Discovery of America, Leo Wiener does a remarkable study on the linguistic connections between pre-Columbian Mande, South American, and Carib words like cotton. Tracing the origin of cotton, Wiener explains that it was being grown in Peru and other parts of South America before Columbus and “it must have been introduced into Peru directly or indirectly by Mandingo Negroes.”28 He writes, We have Bambara kotondo, korandi, kori, kuori, Ma-linke kotondin, Mandingo korande, kutando, koyondyi, kodondi, Soninke kotollin “cotton,” Dyula korho “cotton plant,” which are all derived from the Arabic word for “cotton.” . . . In South America, the Mandingo kotondo words are found southwards from Venezuela to Peru, and Central Brazil. In Venezuela the Mandingo word is best preserved in some Carib languages—All these words apparently proceed from the shores of Venezuela, in any case from the north. But there is another series of words which began at the eastern shores of South America, from somewhere in Brazil, and from there proceeded northward and westward.29

By tracing the language of a particular word/product, Wiener is able to establish a southern root with a north and northwest migration pattern. It is the same migration pattern that Dr. Imhotep’s Carib people take. Yet, how did such a vast population (if vast could be attributed to these people) of Mande speaking, KMTic cultivated people end up in South America before making the journey northward into the Caribbean and elsewhere? And when did these migrations take place? In his text They Came Before Columbus, Ivan Van Sertima replicates the “worldwide winds and currents, emphasizing Atlantic drift routes from Africa to America.”30 In it we are able to see that the majority of the currents that flow out of or off the coasts of West Africa have its first contact with land on the South American continent. Furthermore, these areas coincide with the migratory pattern of seafaring traders and merchants. It is reasonable

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to suggest that once making landfall on the easternmost shore of the South American continent, these Mande people migrated both inland and northward into the continent and continued on into the Caribbean. Therefore neither Dr. Imhotep, Wiener, nor Van Sertima’s arguments regarding those migrations could be proven to be complete speculation; rather, their assertions are quite reasonable. Van Sertima, like Wiener, asserts that the migrations of the Carib/Taino people are pre-Columbian migrations. “There were several bases from which the African traders spread in the two Americas from the Caribbean” Van Sertima writes. “(In) the Songhay period (circa 1462–1492); from northeastern South America in the Mandingo period (1310 onward) into Peru; and from a base in Darien moving along roads marked by the presence of burial mounds into and beyond Mexico, as far north as Canada.”31 Dr. Imhotep places their migrations into the America’s as early as 1300 BCE and onward. As stated above, Dr. Imhotep asserts that these people, of Mande origin, migrated from the Amazon River Valley and made their way into the Caribbean. This is not inconceivable because the Amazon River’s mouth opens up at the Atlantic. These merchants and immigrants could have located the Amazon and, staying on board their ships, could have travelled westward and northward through the continent, stopping to create new trading posts along the way. This construct is not alien to these KMTic cultivated, West African navigators. In agreement with Dr. Imhotep is Paul Alfred Barton, author of A History of the African-Olmecs. He explains that, There are a number of Black ethnic groups who currently reside in the Americas today, who are the direct descendants of the ancient and pre-historic Blacks of North, South, Central America and the Caribbean, who contributed to the development of civilization in all these regions. These Blacks arrived during the early periods of human history back to about 100,000 to 70,000 years ago, and perhaps even earlier—Those for whom records and archeological evidence point to a period ranging from about 6000 BC to the 1500’s AD include the Ouachita of the former Louisiana Territories—the Black Californian of California who may have arrived via the Pacific Ocean From Eastern Africa—the Jamassee who owned parts of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, the Afro-Darienite who still exist as a distinct national group in parts of Panama and—the Chuarras of Brazil, the Garifuna of the West Indies and Central America, and many others.32

Let’s remember that Dr. Imhotep suggested that there is evidence of a 1000 CE migration of Manding who drove out the “Indians.” It would appear that even those Indians who would have been driven out are of an Indigenous-Africoid stock. And it should be asserted here as Barton suggests

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that, “all these Nationalities and groups continue to exist today” in many different forms under a myriad of names, especially, Negro, Black, Colored, African American, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Jamaican etc.; a people “who have lost their culture and are now part of the invaders’ culture.”33 These people of the Caribbean, after successive migrations from the continent of Africa into South America and northward would also become much of the foundation of English Colonial America. Silver Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and former President of UNESCO’s International Scientific Committee for the Slave Rout Project, Michael A. Gomez, explains that the Caribbean was the initial supplier of forced labor for the British led colonies. He writes, “in contrast to the other colonies in British North America, South Carolina’s early population grew out of Caribbean rather than European antecedents. It is Wood’s estimate that in the very early years, from 25 to 33 percent of the colony’s population was black, and that prior to 1700 most of these were from the Caribbean.”34 By the eighteenth century, and post Cristobal Colon execution of the Reconquista via Aragon, Castile, and the Catholic Church against the Moorish Empire, the African continent was being collectively overrun by European wars and slavers, and the mass majority of captives who came into South America, the Caribbean, and North America entered via the many ports and already established trading posts of the former Moorish Empire. These “salt water” Africans were grouped in with the proto-Americans, made up of a pre-Columbian stock of Asian and African immigrants, with the larger portion being made up of an Algonquian (Indigenous Africoid stock speaking the Mandi language) people, and those Carib people are identified today as Cubano. They were forced into a sordid bondage that changed their names and cultural identities. Carew writes, Robbing peoples and countries of their indigenous names was one of the cruel games that colonizers played with the colonized. Names are like magic markers in the long and labyrinthine streams of racial memory, for racial memories are rivers leading to the sea where the memory of mankind is stored. To rob people or countries of their name is to set in motion a psychic disturbance which can in turn create a permanent crisis of identity.35

This crisis of identity, as W. E. B. Dubois suggests, creates the double consciousness of this seventh son. It reads like an endless grappling for a fuller identity and a desire to participate in the whole human family on equal standing. Yet, the difficulty of not being able to identify with a narrative that predates a conquerors’ renaming is jarring.

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The majority of the above material is readily available to the scholar, student of history, novice reader of African American narratives, and the larger population of African Americans. However, these narratives do not seem to permeate those audiences so that even the enslavement period can be measured in proportion to their larger human narrative. The enslavement period functions as the earmark for self and cultural identification. They are African American because of that narrative of slavery and not because they are of an African people who have been in the America’s for more than 10,000 years. There is a rhetorical question meandering about African American culture which asks “how does it free us.” In some circles that question negates intercourse with some narratives which, I believe, are part of the myriad of voices who are trying to find or get to this thing or place called freedom. The other part of the narrative that it must fit into is whether or not this matters in the grand scheme of freedom. This is equivalent to suggesting that the narrative of a particular people should produce, in the people, more than just a positive self-image. The historical narrative of a people is not individualistic. It is meant to converse with the largest part of the body politic, and it must fulfill and complete a particular task. I believe there are many reasons to rework the historical narrative of African Americans. Some of which are geared toward ensuring that the narrative itself has a particular function for the people. 1.  What is the genesis of the people’s and culture’s narrative? 2.  How do the producers of the narratives define or describe the people within the narrative? 3.  What is the meaning or purposeful goal of the narratives of the individual, people, and ultimately, the culture?36 4.  Does the narrative of the people (i.e., the yield of the narrative for survival of the people) create or move the people toward progress? 5.  Does the procured or begotten history (what has been told or what will be told) of the people and cultural products, in its capacity, function as a guide for the people and culture toward a productive living experience which produces freedom? These questions do not direct the whole of this conversation. Rather, they are used to help examine the development of a more inclusive narrative for African Americans. While Dubois, also, is not the impetus of this conversation, his theory of the double consciousness explains how the narrative of what it is to be Negro, or Colored, or African American creates the mental bifurcation of NBCAA people in American (US) society. The current narrative seems to create not only division, but also divisiveness among people. We are still struggling to determine who an African American is or who should be classified as African

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American. So here, I pose another identifier, IAFW, to add to the plethora of names that are superannuated and in vogue at the same time. It is a recognition of one people out of many (historically the Ethiopian, Moor, Indian, Negro, Black, Colored etc., etc., etcetera).37 IAFW people are observed, and seemingly behave, according to the historical renderings of themselves in retrospect to the overall American (US) narrative. IAFW people have been subjected to the oppression of “historical myth-making.” This myth-making is filtered through color ideology which creates, reproduces, and enforces color supremacy via all facets of human interaction. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing has elucidated this on many occasions to assist IAFW people to analyze the incipience of color classism which fosters color racism.38 The narratives that we review here, in all forms of cultural production, exude a certain type of power where-in they define reality and force the participants within the culture to accept their views and definitions of reality as their own. For example, prior to 1988, there was arguably no such collective identity or grouping of people in world history as African Americans. The new identifier essentially redefined reality for and of NBCAA people in American (US) society. It essentially disavowed the pre-Columbian existence of IAFW people and the fact that there is an extensive bio-historical connection in which the greater part is essentially pre-Columbian. African American identity developed in the 1980s essentially suggests that NBCAA people are the product of the enslavement period in American society. In the case of IAFW people in America, the African American identity redefined, reconstructed, and eventually grouped all IAFW peoples’ self-definition in contradistinction to people who had come to identify themselves as “white.” This, in no way, says to the people you are fully human with a full human historical narrative. Dr. Amos N. Wilson, in his monumental work Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century, articulates the destructive nature of this redefinition when he asserts that, “(t)o control the definition and depiction of a group’s ethnicity is to control a group’s self-definition, its self-perception, and is thereby tantamount to the reactionary control of its behavior.”39 As such, this has major deleterious effects on both the narratives and behaviors of all the peoples involved in this redefinition. Dr. Wilson further suggests that this essentially makes the redefined group powerless. He states that “when the members of a group internalize the negative definition of their ethnicity and a host of negative associations regarding their ethnic identity and character, the organizational ability of the group is severely weakened and made dysfunctional—a condition of relative powerlessness.”40

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This also, ironically, renders the authors (conquerors) of the narrative powerless where-in they have little to no control over when and where the redefined group will eventually assert their power of self-awareness. It is tantamount to reading the backlash or superimposed criticism of The 1619 Project as developed by Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones or Critical Race Theory which no two opponents of the theory can pin down and actually define. The opposition to those narratives looks like the flailing genuflections of individuals who understand how a particular narrative is necessary to govern people. Changing the narrative renders the people ungovernable. Like the narrative of thanksgiving, the narrative of the “founders” of the US nation state is also both problematic and ritualistic. It is imbedded in what James Loewen argues is the bedrock of the narrative of the US when he suggests that “perhaps the most pervasive theme in our history is the domination of black America by white America.”41 Lines from the Declaration of Independence of 1776 demonstrate the problematic nature of the current narrative, ideology, or story of America’s making. While maintaining their African/Negro (IAFW people) as captives in slavery, Jefferson (the architect of the independence doctrine and document) and other human enslaving individuals argued against the British crown for the right of freedom. They reasoned that the crown had abdicated its right to govern the colonies by waging war against them. In short, the declaration itself was shaping the American narrative as a nation forced into existence and ordained by providence. Throughout the recording of America’s history and the subsequent propagation of that history, none of the enslavers were held accountable for the sheer magnitude of their hypocrisy.42 As Loewen points out, “textbooks have trouble acknowledging that anything might be wrong with white Americans, or with the United States as a whole.”43 As painted in the capital of the United States of America, and often written into the narratives of the first governors (presidents) of the US, these individuals were mythologized like Zeus and Hercules. The narrators created, in the psyche of the American citizenry, Christ-like figures that are both omnipresent and immortal in the institutions of the United States. They were divinely ordained by God. As such, their contradictions, even if they are questioned, are not changed and they are often reinforced to maintain the cultural hegemony of the myth-makers. Since history defines to the society what is beauty, good, and true, which are elements of divinity, it has become one of the primary means by which the narrative of America has been able to propagate and institutionalize the desires of the predominant (colonizer) society. America is invested in teaching the greatness of its founders. As far as their human captives and the progeny of that population, Loewen argues that “the very essence of what we have inherited from” history “is the idea that it is appropriate even ‘natural’

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for whites to be on top, blacks on the bottom. In its core, our culture tells us—tells all of us, including African Americans—that Europe’s domination of the world came about because Europeans were smarter. In their core, many whites and some people of color believe this.”44 At its most basic level, the narrative of a people fosters their culture which carries rules for thinking; it is the agent provocateur of knowledge. Dr. Molefi Kete Asante points out in his book The Afrocentric Idea, quoting from Daudi’s Discourse, “all knowledge is political, not because it may have political consequences or be politically useful, but because knowledge has its conditions of possibility in power relations.”45 By imposing their culture and mythology on their victims, American historians and enforcers of its culture have been able to limit the creativity of its victims in such a way that its victims have become willing to submit to its power structure. The American narrative has, arguably, destroyed its victims’ ability to act in their own interest. The historical narratives also dictate all of the power and social dynamics of US society, especially in education, politics, and economics. Derrick Bell, in his book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, points out the economic disposition of IAFW people to their white counterparts. He states, Though seldom acknowledging the fact, most business leaders understood that blacks were crucial in stabilizing the economy with its ever-increasing disparity between the incomes of rich and poor. They recognized that potentially turbulent unrest among those on the bottom was deflected by the continuing efforts of poorer whites to ensure that they, at least, remained ahead of blacks. If blacks were removed from the society, working- and middle-class whites—deprived of their racial distraction—might look upward toward the top of the societal well and realize that they as well as the blacks below them suffered because of the gross disparities in opportunities and income.46

This narrative encompasses the economic spheres of Western hegemony along with the social, political, and intellectual subordination of IAFW people in America in contradistinction to a “white/colonial” superiority narrative in America (US). The current narratives, as propagated throughout the culture versus a more inclusive and humanistic narrative of IAFW people, as suggested earlier, fosters the behaviors of the people within the society. The mass majority of IAFW who identify as NBCAA people have also come to believe that they are part of American (US) society according to the narrative. As such, many IAFW people who participate in the society according to the codified cultural narrative seem to believe that their culture is American culture no matter the disparities between them and that produced by the mythmakers which created the alternative class narrative of people who identify as “white” in

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the US. NBCAA people often believe that the interests of America and the ruling class is also theirs. Paulo Freire explains this phenomenon in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He states that, This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of “adhesion” to the oppressor. Under these circumstances, they cannot “consider” him sufficiently clearly to objectivize [sic] him—to discover him “outside” themselves. This does not necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden. But their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.47

The canonized narrative of American (US) society disarms IAFW people wherein their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness goes hand in hand with the destiny of the colonial society, and it also contradicts the human right to freedom from oppression. From the vantage point of culture, individuals gain the capacity to see the world. “In the West and elsewhere, the European has propounded an exclusive view of reality that creates a fundamental human crisis. In some cases, it has created cultures arrayed against themselves.”48 This dysfunction can be seen in the many organizations that IAFW or NBCAA people in America have created which seem to be at odds with one another while their stated goals are to improve the lives of NBCAA people. The lack of internal accord or cooperation among institutions that have been created to serve the needs of IAFW and NBCAA people is produced because of the narratives that the institutions have developed to validate its existence. But it must be noted that historical narratives are not monolithic. The way a narrative is developed and essentially canonized is also not monolithic. Therefore, at no point during this conversation can we assert in any way that the canonized narratives that we peruse here are universally accepted throughout North, Middle, South America, and the Caribbean. Therefore, it would be a mistake to suggest that adding to the overall narrative of African Americans will solve every issue of identity among the people. This foray into the larger discourse looks back at the research of mostly non-canonized narratives to help contribute to the larger narrative and articulation of what it means to be African American. One of the sole purposes of which is to assert that IAFW or NBCAA people’s narratives do not begin with nor should they be centered in the enslavement error (era) (sixteenth through nineteenth century). They are not NBCAA because of enslavement.

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THE NARRATIVE OF AMERICA: The Consent to Be Governed Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.49

James Baldwin once stated in his speech, “A Talk to Teachers,” which was subsequently published in the Saturday Review in 1963, that “what passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors.”50 W. E. B. Dubois, writing for World Meridian in 1935, states in his article “Black Reconstruction,” One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.51

In an outstanding revisit of the early founding fathers of the American government and some of the court cases that shaped the landscape of American politics, its judicial system, and the rights of citizens, Dr. Imari Obadele, in his book America The Nation-State, states that, The books treat slavery and its astounding cruelty without any sense of the horror which this monstrous system was, and with no acknowledgement that the system of slavery and its cruelty were not accidentally but purposely and deliberately protected by the US Constitution and an array of laws made—pursuant to the Constitution. (History does) not discuss—genocide (killing part of a group) and (resolve that) robbery of—people were an acceptable cost for the rise of the American nation-state.52

When the Continental Congress declared the United States’ independence, announcing the principles justifying independence from Great Britain and the crown, it was understood that those principles were universal. Stemming from an understanding of the laws of nature and of God, (creator of nature) all men everywhere, rooted in the principles of human reason, had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence (D.O.I.) states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

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created equal.” Equality therefore becomes the first self-evident truth, upon which all the others rest. The founding members understood that humans differed in intelligence, talents, strength, will, and the disposition to achieve and acquire property. Equality simply stipulates that men are equal in life and liberty which they are born with and deserve to keep. Men are by nature equally free and independent. The abridgment of that one natural right is best stated by John Locke in his “Second Treatise.” And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth [sic] the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is in that state, put into every man’s hands, whereby everyone has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation. For the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature, had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders, and if anyone in the state of nature may punish another, for any evil he has done, every one may do so. For in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one, over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law?53

The maxim of equality, as proclaimed in the D.O.I., is that human beings are endowed by their creator with unalienable rights which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And as articulated by Locke, the state is created to ensure those rights, and if, at any time, one party within the state becomes superior in any way wherein it may oppress any other party, it is the state’s responsibility to make remedy thereof. But what happens when the oppressive state creates and propagates a narrative of the superiority of one group over the other wherein the parties within the state function under said narrative of oppression? Who is responsible for changing the oppressive narrative and thereby the state? The founding members of the American state (the US) saw rights as a proclamation that a person, state, or government could make against another person, state, or government who deprives one party of ownership of property or infringement of equality in their state of nature. The natural right is rightfully adhered to the individual in nature as a human, and they are unalienable because they cannot be given away. The D.O.I. defines three unalienable rights by birth or nature: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These three rights are natural rights.54 As an aside, what does it mean when something as inalienable (something that cannot be given away even if the individual wanted to) as a natural human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can be abrogated and replaced with civil liberty? Is a civil liberty of

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equal or lesser value to that of a natural human right? We will return to this very important part of the conversation later as an addendum. An important element of the self-evident truths within the D.O.I. is the securing of those rights by government because governments are instituted by men giving powers to said government at the consent of the governed. Since the founders believed that before government men were in a state of nature with natural rights and freedom, the subsequent problem of man living free in nature created the possibility of tyranny. Many believed that the weaker individual in his state of nature was at the mercy and possible violence of the stronger individual in his state of nature. The American (US) founders also understood that man without government is forever seduced by self-indulgent passions rather than reason. Jefferson suggested that “He (the King) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.”55 Lost in most accounts of the European presence in the Americas is that the larger majority of “colonists” were, in fact, property of the Kings of England which Jefferson assails in his D.O.I. However, it behooves us as readers to understand that Jefferson, while asserting the tyranny of King George, also asserted the need for the government to protect the spoils of wars (captives) against IAFW people on three continents which he benefited from. Yet, he suggested that King Georges’ wars were against “human nature itself.” Dr. Obadele states, Interestingly—Jefferson, still celebrated today as a “renaissance Man” because of his breath of interests and passion for human liberty, (however he) may have been the worst human rights violator ever to have lived in North America. During his lifetime it is estimated that Jefferson held 181 people in slavery; he went to his death holding people as slaves counting them as property. Mr. Jefferson’s own writing betrayed his knowledge that the enslavement of Afrikans [sic] in American was wrong.56

James Madison Jr. states in the federalist papers that, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” and Jefferson suggests that, “history has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible to the spirit of tyranny.”57 Subsequently, these men understood that men were not all together rational. It was irrational to demand independence from King George based on the crown’s maintenance of perpetual slavery of its North American colonies, while those same practitioners were, themselves, enslavers of human beings also. The subsequent arguments that would follow would be that without government man would inevitably engage in war and slavery

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as seen in the pre-government state of nature. Yet, it is noteworthy that the US government, once founded, would then become the protectorate of the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which at its foundation is the protection of property, hence slavery and the perpetuation of enslavement and servitude of IAFW people in the US. It has to be emphasized that government (according to the founders) receives its just powers from the consent of the governed. The only legitimate or recognizable powers of government are those that have been agreed upon by the people. At the D.O.I.’s foundation is the list of grievances that identify King George and the British Parliament as tyrannical and unjust. More importantly, the founders understood that the people do not have the right to consent to unjust powers and they could only consent to a government that upholds and does not violate the rights of the people. It is very important that the concept of consent is identified as one of the most important aspects of this conversation because, as explained above, IAFW people seemed to have acquiesced consent based on their acceptance of the canonized narrative of American society. Not only do people consent to a particular narrative, in the process, they can also consent to being governed according to the dictates of the narrative. Jefferson and the founding members of the US believed in the viability of government only on the grounds that the people be educated enough to know their rights and recognize when government becomes tyrannical. Therefore, it is important to understand that the consent of the people can only be accepted by government when it is duly understood by the people and government that the reputation of the people is such that they could only consent to good or just government. To put it simply, human nature dictates that people do not have the right to consent to tyrannical government. It is a direct affront to the security of one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Another important aspect of consent is derived from a social compact defined in the Massachusetts State Constitution ratified in 1780. It states that “the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.”58 Again, consent suggests that when the people agree to form a government, on a regular basis, they must consent to be governed and this cannot be abridged by any person, state, or government. This theory of natural rights is grounded in the principles derived from human nature and requires government to operate only by the consent of the people to secure the equal rights of all individuals. In May of 1774 (note that this petition was submitted before the July 1776 approval of the D.O.I.), a petition was presented to the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. This petition becomes valuable in the context of a plea, as is the D.O.I. to the governing bodies. It states,

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The Petition of a Grate Number of Blackes of this Province who by divine permission are held in a state of Slavery within the bowels of a free and christian Country. . . . Humbly Shewing That your Petitioners apprehind we have in common with all other men a naturel right to our freedoms without Being depriv’d of them by our fellow men as we are a freeborn Pepel and have never forfeited this Blessing by aney compact or agreement whatever. But we were unjustly dragged by the cruel hand of power from our dearest frinds and sum of us stolen from the bosoms of our tender Parents and from a Populous Pleasant and plentiful country and Brought hither to be made slaves for Life in a Christian land— Our children are also taken from us by force and sent maney miles from us wear we seldom or ever see them again there to be made slaves of for Life which sumtimes is vere short by Reson of Being dragged from their mothers Breest Thus our Lives are imbittered to us on these accounts By our deplorable situation we are rendered incapable of shewing our obedience to Almighty God— equal benefet from the laws of the Land which doth not justifi but condemns Slavery or if there had bin aney Law to hold us in Bondege we are Humbely of the Opinon ther never was aney to inslave our children for life when Born in a free Countrey. We therefor Bage your Excellency and Honours will give this its deu weight and consideration and that you will accordingly cause an act of the legislative to be pessed that we may obtain our Natural right our freedoms and our children be set at lebety at the yeare of Twenty one for whoues sekes more petequeley your Petitioners is in Duty ever to Pray.59

This letter strikes out at the understanding of natural rights by all men, especially that of the wrongfully enslaved. However, for the next eighty years, it would not be adjudicated by the eventual American (US) government. Unlike any narrative found in the canonized story of NBCAA peoples, the above petition could only be submitted because the petitioners had, at some point, consented to be governed, and they were seeking redress from those in authority that they’d consented to. Even though the petitioners assert that they did not forfeit their natural rights as freeborn human beings, they did submit to some divine will that had rendered them enslaved, and they submitted the treatise to individuals they believed should remedy their grievances. That, essentially, is a submission to some form of authority. Naturally freeborn people need not petition for redress; rather, they assert what their issues are with the aggressor and dictate the terms of the redress. The only alternative would have been what John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise. It states, Though in a constituted commonwealth, standing upon its own basis, and acting according to its own nature, that is, acting for the preservation of the community, there can be but one supream [sic] power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate, yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supream power

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to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them—And thus the community perpetually retains a supream power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject. For no man, or society of men, having a power to deliver up their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of another; whenever any one shall go about to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to preserve what they have not a power to part with—power of the people can never take place till the government be dissolved.60

The above petitioners’ request went on deaf ears because they were not considered US citizens. Therefore, any redress requested from the government could not be rectified by said government if the petitioners had no seating in the laws of the government. The inability of the American government in securing the rights of its IAFW/NBCAA people stemmed from early ideas regarding the fact that they could not be a citizen of the US This perspective would also apply to the ruling of the Dred Scott Case. Don E. Fehrenbacher, in his book, The Dred Scott Case, endeavored to extend the scope of academic study on the historical effects of one of the most influential judgments in the Supreme Court’s history. He begins by asserting that even though much has been written about the Dred Scott case, often at the expense of truth and objectivity, the previous discourse and examination may prove to be inadequate. He states that, “error has been a conspicuous feature of the Dred Scott story from the beginning.”61 Fehrenbacher counsels both his readers and students against analyzing the case solely for its verdict. Failure to do so, he believes, would detract from some of the more intuitive findings of the case. A more in-depth study of the Dred Scott case should shed more light on the complexities of the early development of the United States of America. It could also demonstrate the absence of a general consensus for the status of IAFW/NBCAA people whether free or enslaved because of the lack of a secure national/federal identity in the US since the country, at that time, was neither succinctly self-governing states nor individual colonies. Fehrenbacher contends that the case is significant for more than understanding slavery in America. It also brings to light other relative forces, powers, and historical problems. Because the North, although free in essence, experienced increased racial discrimination against NBCAA people, Fehrenbacher is able to assert that this assisted Roger Taney (Supreme Court Justice) in determining the inability of “free blacks” to be citizens. However, a greater study of the decision would demonstrate that IAFW/NBCAA people

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in the US were not citizens. Dr. Obadele, in regards to the Dred Scott decision, states that, The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representative. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement (Africans) compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.62

More importantly, as Dr. Anderson points out, the decision played a powerful role in the abridgement of rights for IAFW/NBCAA people in the US “whether they are enslaved, free, or benignly neglected. For more than 150 years, the Dred Scott decision has been denounced and repudiated, but the Supreme Court has never reversed it.”63 The Fourteenth Amendment was supposed to remedy the judgment of the Supreme Court; however, Dr. Obadele asserts that, After the Civil War in July 1868, the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It had several purposes. One was to enact rule of ju soli to “make” the newly freed (Africans), four million persons, citizens of the United States. (It is important to note that the African conducted neither a plebiscite to allow people to decide whether they wished to become US citizens, nor a registration process to allow people—in the US as a result of kidnapping and forced retention—to register their individual choices on this matter).64

What Dr. Obadele is suggesting is that there had never been consent by IAFW/NBCAA people to agree to be governed by the US. Also, the Massachusetts State Constitution from 1780 stating that “the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good,” becomes void in regards to IAFW/NBCAA people because there was no convening of voice and body to decide on government. And, to further the dichotomy, no other group of people on American soil had citizenship forced upon them, unannounced to them. Consequently, there will always be this underlying/unspoken (deep down inside I kind of know this truth) understanding that many of the narratives of NBCAA people in the US do not suggest NBCAA people’s

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rights to full unabridged citizenship with natural human rights within the US nor self-governance with the natural human right to form their own state and government. Before dying, Jefferson reiterated his understanding of equality stating that, “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”65 Also, the Federalist Papers, as part of the foundation for the US Constitution, cites one of the most important principles of a social democracy according to the republican principles of majority rule. It is the responsibility of the majority to protect the rights of the minority population. The founders knew that if or when (because they also understood the inevitable immorality of majority rule) the rights of the minority are abridged, the nation would be at risk for revolt. Jefferson spoke consistently about majority rule, stressing the right of the minority to revolt when their rights are ignored and abused. He believed that not only must the majority respect the rights of the minority, but they must “never impede the minority from becoming the majority the same way the existing majority formed.”66 Should the majority cause the minority to be a permanent minority, the abused minority has no obligation to respect the laws or authority established by the ruling majority. Ending his summary views on the “Rights of British America,” Jefferson states “that these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”67 Like other very important points addressed so far in this discourse, Jefferson nor the D.O.I. functions as an impetus for this conversation. However, all of this is important as we consider the scope and enormity of the historical narratives that have been abridged to outline and conceptualize who an African American is and what is her/his nadir. Where do they really come from? How have they come to function in this country dubbed the United States of America? There are so many more questions attached to what constructs the multiple personality development of a people who have not determined, for themselves, by themselves, how they desire to preserve their rights to life, liberty, and happiness as human beings. NOTES 1. Author. 2. W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, 5. 3. David J. Dent, In Search of Black American, 124. 4. Ibid, 18.

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5. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The Education of the Negro, 18. 6. Claud Anderson, Ed. D. Dirty Little Secrets About Black History, 7. 7. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 30. 8. Amos N. Wilson, Blueprint For Black Power, 61. 9. James W. Loewen, “Gone With the Wind,” 37. 10. Jan Carew, “The Caribbean Writer and Exile,” 454. 11. Indigenous, Autochthonous, First World People (IAFW). 12. George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave, 355–56. 13. Carew, 454–55. 14. Ibid., 455. 15. Ibid., 458. 16. C. L. R James, The Black Jacobins, 3–4. 17. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1980. 18. Harold S. Gladwin, Men Out of Asia, 1947. 19. Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus, 1976. 20. Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, 1922. 21. Jan Carew, The Rape of Paradise, 22. 22. Ibid., 23 23. Ivan Van Sertima ed., “Evidence for and African Presence in Pre-Columbian America,” 45. 24. Carew, 32. 25. David Imhotep, The First Americans Were Africans, 144. 26. Ibid., 149. See also: For eyewitness description of the people of South America, see also Frederick Schwatka, In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers (Boston: The Cassell Publishing Co., 1885), 183–84. 27. Carew, 78–79. 28. Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, 80. 29. Ibid. 30. Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus, Plate 10. 31. Ibid., 106. 32. Paul Alfred Barton, A History of the African-Olmecs, 186. 33. Ibid., 187. 34. Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 22. 35. Carew, “The Caribbean Writer and Exile,” 457. 36. This question asks whether or not the narratives suggest that the people have a divine purpose. 37. IAFW people are defined as Indigenous, Autochthonous, and First World people which include, but are not limited to, the Indigenous of the African continent, American (both South and North) continents and inhabited islands, the Indian Sub-continent, Australia, or anywhere the majority population of the planet earth have been re-imagined by “Western” cultures, which include but are not limited to, any Christian nation state under the aegis of the Vatican and the Pope of Rome since the Medieval Inquisition (1184–16th century); the Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834); the Portuguese Inquisition (1536–1821); and the Roman Inquisition (1542–c. pres).

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The terms IAFW and NBCAA people will be used interchangeably throughout this conversation. 38. Frances Cress Welsing, The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, 1982. 39. Amon N. Wilson, Blueprint for Black Power, 107. 40. Ibid. 41. James W. Loewen, “Gone With the Wind.” 42. The term shear is used to explain the structural strain in a substance or body caused by parallel layers shifting against one another in opposite directions, specifically the narratives of “white” America and NBCAA America. 43. Ibid., 39. 44. Ibid., 40. 45. Molefi K. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, 32. 46. Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, 181. 47. Paulo Freire, The Paulo Freire Reader, 47. 48. Ibid., 18. 49. Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View on the Rights of British America,” 2. 50. James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers,” 1963. 51. James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 18. 52. Imari A. Obadele, American the Nation-State: Scholastic Edition, 9. 53. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 163. 54. This tenet of natural rights also distinguishes between the natural equality and the natural inequalities in human nature. Individuals have claims to life and liberty, but they also differ in talents and virtue. 55. Imari A. Obadele, America the Nation-State, 59. 56. Ibid., 59. 57. Ibid., 60. 58. Massachusetts State Constitution of 1780, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 59. “Slave Petition to the Governor, Council, and House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts,” 5th ser., vol 3: 432–33. 60. John Locke, Second Treatise, 241. 61. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, 3. 62. Obadele, 36. 63. Claude Anderson, Dirty Little Secrets, 204. 64. Obadele, 145. 65. Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Roger C. Weightman,” 585. 66. Anderson, 210. 67. Jefferson, 2.

Chapter Two

The Imbedded Narrative America’s Shores

Like Langston knows of rivers, I know America’s shores . . . All of her banks are imbued by the sludgy residue of melanin. Its thickness is oily and rich. These shorelines rose up out of the waves of the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Gulf-spilling Black opulence throughout the whole of this massive land. But Oh,’ I do declare that there are beds along America’s shores that house the dead. And there’s a necromancer who traverses the shorelines waddling in the black milky melanin which had been washed ashore. So, I just call her Necro. She walks from El Quique to Nain and Yakutat to Isla Hornos and back again. She, like I know . . . America’s shores got secrets to tell.1

The people who have been classified as Negro, Black, Colored, Afro, and African American (NBCAA), or the narrative of the NBCAA, essentially began in the latter part of the antebellum period of US society with the Dred Scott decision. The cultural identity and behavior of NBCAA people are governed, in large part, by that decision. Essentially, that case became the demarcation line for ethnic identity in the US. The society, as a whole, has 160 years of practice and praxis in defining and relegating the majority of IAFW people to the status of NBCAA people. Not only is it practiced at identifying the people as such, it is also practiced at disseminating rights and privileges within the society thusly. According to Edward Said, The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course; but when it came to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, 33

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who won it back, and who now plans its future—these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative. As one critic has suggested, nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them.2

IAFW people who have been taught and accept the narratives of NBCAA people participate in the overall US society according to that narrative. On their official website, the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) suggests that “Black” is an adjective: which is a descriptive word, and not a noun according to proper grammatical rules. A noun is a person, place, or thing; therefore, a person cannot “be” black. Colored, is often offensive. However, it is still used, such as in the title of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In the late 1950s, Black began to replace Negro, and it is still widely used and accepted.3 It is not only accepted in some modern parlance, it is often the chosen descriptor of NBCAA people who believe that they have no tangible connection to Africa, so they refuse to be identified as African American. The MSTA goes on to point out that “the first use of ‘Negro’ to describe a human can be traced back to 1441, when Portuguese kidnappers operating below the Senegal River used the term to designate their captives. Designations of black and negro are references to persons legally transformed into ‘property.’ Official nomenclature illustrated a person’s legal and social status in the USA.” To sum it up, IAFW people cannot be either of the descriptors associated with NBCAA people because even, “African American” is not a nationality. In the United Nations there is “no African representative or nationality.” There are Ugandans, Moroccans, Egyptians, Sudanese, etc. “African American, black, colored, and Negro are all manufactured nomenclatures for people who were stripped of their nationality in 1774. The true nationality of the so-called black person of America is Moorish American.”4 I came across this particular stance some time ago, and it added so much more to the overall conversations about identity, humanity, what are rights, privileges, etc. It was Dr. Ivan Van Sertima’s wonderful work in Golden Age of the Moor which sent me to the MSTA. It was this text, and more, which suggested to me that beginning the narrative of the eventual development of Western nations at the expulsion of the Moors out of Europe without any detail as to who the Moors are or where, was and is quite destructive. This is tantamount to a twenty-one-year-old individual beginning their narrative of existence at the age of seventeen. And, that seventeen-year-old has come into existence without knowledge of her/his parents. The particular narratives determine the self-concept of the people, and the self-concept of the people determine their participation in whatever society they are attached

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to via consent or compulsion. It is equivalent to suggesting that “a person can only do with themselves what they know of themselves.” The historical narrative of a people is the most central aspect of the individual or group’s identity complex. What people know of themselves, their history, their culture, shapes personal and interpersonal relationships. Because the narratives shape the individual, it therefore shapes the family. The family, subsequently, participates in and shapes the community. The community then develops into the city and so on and on until the individual participates in the whole of the society and nation. The importance of this is based on where and when we begin to learn and internalize our historical narrative. It also asks how we are socialized into the narratives. As mentioned earlier, the primary locus of the narratives is, in our case, the myth makers who produced the textbooks we were given during our primary schooling. The secondary (media) is fed from the first. The narratives have been codified into classroom or history textbooks, and these narratives have become the basis for even the visual portrayals of the narratives in mass media formats. James Loewen explains that for the average citizen of the United States of America, the narratives are predictable.5 It is essentially a tale of good over evil. The narratives explain and often celebrate the conquests of one group of people over all others. Even the titles of the textbooks that permeate(d) compulsory education classrooms reveal that the narrative is essentially a valiant or victorious tale of the (“white” colonist’s) American past. Titles such as The Great Republic, The American Way, Land of the Promise, Rise of the American Nation, The United States—A History of the Republic, The American Tradition, Life and Liberty, Triumph of the American Nation, etc. are the guidelines for the narrative of American history and the psyche of the American (US) populace. It must be stated that it is equally important to recognize the narratives that have been effaced while the producers of the canonized narratives were making heroes of “actors” participating in the development of the American (US) Republic. The narratives essentially determine the import of the particular phenomenon or moment in history. This is why Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is significant to our conversation. At the publication of his text, many people (institutions) who were culturally entrenched in the mythification of America’s narrative found issue with Zinn. He was radically redressing the narrative of this “great” nation. But for us, his text is essential because it explicates the narrative within the standard four-part plot. Zinn’s narrative of the American Republic begins like all of the aforementioned texts on American (US) history. The narratives, in all, suggest that the founding and development of the “new world” began with the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Missing from the narratives of the Moors’ expulsion is an explication of who the Moors were, why they were in Spain, Portugal, France,

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England, etc., etc., etcetera, what were they doing there, why did they need to be expelled, how long were they there, where did they go once they were expelled and on and on ad infinitum. We are going to converse with many of those questions here. So, let’s time travel to review what was going on in Northern Africa, the Mediterranean, and much of Western Europe to understand why the “West” needed to expel the Moors. From the sixth century (c. 500 CE) through the twelfth century (1100 CE), the western portion of the Holy Roman Empire was in a deteriorated state. That period in “history” has been aptly termed the Dark Ages even though most of the civilized world did not go dark. Most of the world did not suffer the same fate as that of Rome. In fact, we could suggest that most of the civilized world was not concerned with the Goth, Vandal, and Visigoth attacks on the Roman Empire. They were industriously busy building their own cities, pyramid marvels, and living in some of the most refined forms of republicanism. Historian Joseph McCabe, in his The New Science and the Story of Evolution, published in 1931, explained that “at that time the Arabs have a splendid civilization in Spain, Sicily, Egypt, and Persia, and it linked on to those of India and China.”6 McCabe doesn’t explain the culture and history of the Arabs that he writes about in his text, and the use of the term Arab can be, in a way, misleading. However, it is significant that McCabe does explain that western historians are often conditioned to write the history of the world focusing on a “small squalid area” of the world and humanity while ignoring the “brilliant civilization(s) that ran from Portugal to the China Sea.”7 McCabe’s text is a wonderful source; however, he too decides to omit the fact that these Arabs who developed those civilizations were also crossing the Ethiopian Sea, now called the Atlantic Ocean, and coming into the Americas. The narratives of the Moorish Empire in Spain have been recorded for the western world by many individuals. Flora L. Shaw (Lady Lugard) in her 1905 text (reporting) titled A Tropical Dependency took a look back at an empire that was going into ruins because of the many wars that would force the Moors out of Europe and back into Africa and across the Atlanta into the Americas. Extremely important about her report is that she explained that in Cordoba alone, the “greater” part of the area “was covered by mosques, palaces, and the houses of the great standing in beautiful gardens. These houses were palaces of luxury, magnificently decorated, cooled in the summer by ingeniously arranged draughts of fresh air drawn from the garden over beds of flowers . . . wormed in winter by hot air conveyed through pipes bedded in the walls . . . bathrooms supplied with hot and cold water. . . . There were menageries of curious animals, and aviaries of foreign birds. Botany, horticulture, zoology, and ornithology were passions no less of the learned than of the rich.”8

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McCabe explains the scholarship in Moorish Spain far outpaced any other nation in Europe at the time. He suggested that books were in constant demand. He writes, “Cordova alone produced 70,000 to 80,000 a year. . . . The Caliph had a superbly housed collection of at least 400,000. . . . Even the humbler classes thirsted for books” A proverb suggested that “the whit of the learned is as precious as the blood of the martyr.”9 The splendor, profundity, and sagacity of Moorish rule in Spain become oddly juxtaposed with the paucity and poverty of the Spanish nation state that would ensue in the wake of the eviction of the Moors from Europe. The wealth that would aggrandize the Spanish crown after its rapacious assault of the Americas, once they were able to independently traverse the Atlantic without Moors at the helm, pale in comparison to the pomp and opulence of Moorish held Spain. It is from one of the most eminent scholars/compilers of Moorish history, Stanley Lane-Poole, in his text The Story of the Moors in Spain, that we are able to add to our understanding of the consequences of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. He writes, In 1492, the last bulwark of the Moors gave way before the crusade of Ferdinand and Isabella, and with Granada fell all Spain’s greatness. For a brief while, indeed, the reflection of the Moorish splendor cast a borrowed light upon the history of the land which it had warmed with its sunny radiance. The great epoch of Isabella, Charles V., and Phillip II., of Columbus, Cortes, and Pizaro [sic], she a last halo about the dying moments of a mighty State. Then followed the abomination of desolation, the rule of the Inquisition, and the blackness of darkness in which Spain has been plunged ever since. In the land where science was once supreme, the Spanish doctors became noted for nothing but their ignorance and incapacity, and the discoveries of Newton and Harvey were condemned as pernicious to the faith. Where once seventy public libraries had fed the minds of scholars, and half a million books had been gathered together at Cordova for the benefit of the world, such indifference to learning afterwards prevailed, that the new capital, Madrid, possessed no public library in the eighteenth century.10

Neither The United States—A History of the Republic, The American Tradition, Life and Liberty, nor Triumph of the American Nation record the culture introduced to Spain and many parts of Europe by the Moors. As well, the Zinn narrative does not address the contributions of the Moors to the west except the expulsion. Even more-so, neither of these texts mentions the consequences of the removal of the Moors from Spain. Lane-Poole goes on to explain that the land had been deprived of the workmanship and skill that was developed under Moorish rule and the once irrigated terrain grew dry and impoverished. The public baths became objects of scorn and were destroyed because the very notion of cleanliness was seen as anti-Christian and the constructs of infidels. The once populous cities

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fell into ruin and decay filled with “beggars, friars, and bandits” who “took the place of scholars, merchants, and knights.”11 Zinn simply explains the removal as such, Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, (and) driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything.12

This, in no way, is a negative critique of Zinn or his text. In no way is this an attempt to invalidate any of his scholarship. If we could simply state “this is what we were taught in school,” and leave it there, and everyone agrees, “yup, that’s what we were taught,” then this would be a whole different conversation. However, this conversation relies on Zinn’s structured narrative for many reasons. For one, as stated above, it is structured in a four-part, step-by-step narrative, and it clearly is one of the more liberal treatments of the US enterprise. We could use a number of texts to demonstrate the same omissions of historical narrative; however, it’s not just the omissions that matter here. Oftentimes, the wording will determine and eventually assist in the development of perception. For example, when Zinn suggests that they “expelled the Jews” and the Moors were “driven out,” there are multiple things happening. The Jews and the Moors become two separate people as if a Moor could not practice Judaism. It implies that Moors are different socially, culturally, religiously, racially etc., etc., etcetera from Jews. Also, there is a difference between being driven out, which in a way suggests animals in nature, versus being expelled which is what happens to humans. Spain tied itself to the Catholic Church and expelled the Jews and drove out the Moors. There was a western unification of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), and it essentially removed from Spain and Portugal the Moors, whose compatriots within the Ottoman Empire had taken over the eastern portion of the HRE by taking Constantinople. The western victory of the HRE over the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula and their subsequent removal was built on concerted military campaigns that lasted for more than eighty years. And, not ironically, the final phase of the war (the siege of Grenada) was predominately won because of Castile and Aragon’s use of gun powder. The surrender (Capitulation of Grenada) by Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII (Boabdil), or the succession of land writes of the Moorish Empire in Spain to Queen Isabella and Franz Ferdinand, inaugurated the expansion of

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Christendom into the Atlantic and the dwindling of the Muslim (African) presence in many parts of Europe. We have to consider that the eventual surrender of Grenada was not a last-minute choice where an individual decides to cede their position of authority, or someone simply decides to move out of another people’s way. The relinquishing of the land rights were years in the making, and the HRE had never ceased its aggressions against the Islamic world which had been raging for hundreds of years. PHASES OF ARTICULATION—ONE THROUGH FOUR To further illustrate how the canonized narratives of the US have been shaped and embedded into our consciousness, it would make sense to enumerate the narratives in the form of phases of articulation. Phase One of the narratives is, of course, the reunification of the western wing of the HRE via Spain and Portugal and the expulsion of the Moorish Empire. As mentioned earlier, the HRE, which has its genesis in the third century BCE (its height in the fourth century CE), was in decline by the fifth century. It had been languishing in a dark age for more than 500 years and waging incessant wars against all non-Christian states, only to eventually reestablish Spain and Portugal as Catholic strongholds by the thirteenth century. All this while so much of humanity who lived in Africa, America, and Asia were thriving and trading the “gold” that Spain desired. Phase Two of the historiographical narratives of the US is the “discovery of America” by Columbus, the exploitation of the “Indians,” the importation of African to replace the Indian, and the eventual exploitation of Asia after a fuller reunification of the HRE. In the larger portion of texts that describe the movement of the HRE into the Americas, that narratives are often similar. Columbus et al., would come across the Arawak Indians who would swim out to meet the “explorers” who had just experienced a tumultuous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean which consisted of threats of mutiny and being lost at sea. These Arawak, as the narratives suggest, lived a humble half-naked life in villages or communes, not communities. The language matters, and we will return to this misconception of the Indigenous people of the Americas soon, but let’s continue. Arawak people developed and traded agricultural goods like corn, yams, and cassava. As a side note, all of these goods would be found to have been traded from America to Africa to Asia before the coming of the HRE, but that’s not in our US history textbooks. Anyway, these people also had industries in cloth making, but they were vulnerable to the weaponry that came across the Atlantic on board the ships of the explorers. The gold that was so sought after by Spain was seen on the persons of these Arawak people, and

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this led Columbus to confiscate their persons and make them prisoners on board one of his ships. The bargain for their freedom was to take him to the sources of the gold. They “sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola (the island which today consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). There, bits of visible gold in the rivers, and a gold mask presented to Columbus by a local Indian chief, led to wild visions of gold fields.”13 The way these confrontations are described in the narratives within our culture and history textbooks suggest almost benign encounters. The language of articulation is explicitly important also. How the people and events are written into our imagination matters. It allows us to understand further the marginalization of certain people and narratives in the development of the historical narrative of the US. The Arawak, like the many other people who would be “subjugated” by gun powder and the written word, had no agency. They were objects either of or for domination. The subsequent effect of the landing of Columbus in the new world is the rape of the people, land, resources, and the eventual enslavement of the so-called Indian. The subjugation narratives state that after months of “Indians” working in the mines for the resources which would be transported back to Europe to benefit the HRE, one third of the men died. “While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants. Thus, husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met, they were so exhausted and depressed—they ceased to procreate.”14 In 1508, Bishop Las Casas would suggest that more than three million people had been killed due to war and slavery. To stem the tide of the rapid death of the “Indians,” the colonizers would benefit most by importing continental Africans for slave labor. He’d had the example of the Portuguese in Brazil for proof. A People’s History, however, does read as if there is a lament that the narrative of the American Republic often marginalizes the atrocities of the colonizers. It says that “the history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.”15 Yet, it suggests that the historian should not be on the side of the executioners in the recording and articulation of the narrative. The irony of the assertion is that the “history of any country,” is not always dualistic or Manichean all of the time, and the relationships among humanity are not always master and slave or conquered and conqueror. Phase Three of the narrative is the eventual conquest of the North American continent, and that began with the death of the leader of the Aztec Empire, Montezuma. When Spain initiated its westward expansion of the Inquisition after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, its multi-group (Christian conquistadors

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and converted Muslims and Jews) lay siege on the Emperors of the Americas. Missing from nearly every narrative of the westward march of Christianity into the Americas, is a humanizing of the expansiveness of the empires that existed on this part of the planet. We are told that Moctezuma, the last effective emperor of the Aztec Empire, had expanded the territory of the nation by extending southward via conquest. We are educated to imagine a waring culture. They were at least capable of conquering nation states to their south, but they could not deter the Spaniards. We are introduced to the brilliance of the empires in the Americas thanks to the pyramids and palaces that dot the landscape of the Americas (North, Central, South, and Caribbean). Yet, we are not given details into the expansiveness of the empires. Did the Aztec trade with the Inca? Did the Carib or Arawak use their family-sized ships (canoes) to traverse the Gulf of Mexico to trade their crops with the Aztec or even the nations that dot the Mississippi? Did the Inca traverse the shores of the Pacific to trade their wares with the Aztec? Could they have navigated the three thousand nautical miles along the Pacific coast to trade with the Ohlone along the western seaboard of north America? These questions are myriad. For the sake of attempting to connect dots, how is it that the confederations of North America (to be discussed later) had no treaties with their Caribbean neighbors and southern cousins. It is a strange narrative of the peopling of the Americas prior to Christian expansionism to suggest that all of the people who inhabited this region of the planet are of unique stock and they had no commercial ties with one another until the coming of the inquisitors. And it was only through the violence of colonizers via enslavement of the Indigenous people that they would finally come in contact with one another. The simplistic, controlled narratives of the Americas suggest that the people of the Americas can build pyramids, but they did not have enough curiosity to venture out beyond their own borders to meet and trade with their neighbors. They could build enormous ships that could transport whole families with their households and often more than sixty men, but, for some reason, did not venture to traverse the eastern seaboard of North America to visit a people who phenotypically could not be distinguished from themselves. The way the narratives of the Americas are developed suggest only western nations were imbrued with such curiosity or a “frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism.”16 The frenzy for “capitalism” diffused worse than the viruses and diseases that traversed the Atlantic Ocean with its Christian inquisitors. That desire for exploitation travelled in the coffers of ships via journals, letters, and

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reports of the spoils of the wars being waged by the Spanish in the Americas. Many of the “early British settlers” on the North American continent sought to mimic the successes of the Spaniards and Portuguese, even decrying that the tactics employed by the British crown was insufficient in guaranteeing similar gains from the exploitation of the land and the people. They read texts like Decades of the New Worlde by Peter Martyr which explicated Spanish exploits in the Caribbean. They were studying tactics like capturing or killing leaders, governors, or important people within the community to quell rebellion by the Indigenous. And they employed an awful presumption that they had the right to murder whole communities of people for the most trifling of incidents as a tactic for British colonization. Even before a permanent settlement in North America, vessels under the command of Richard Grenville burned an entire Indigenous community over a “silver cup” in 1585. What happened to the survivors of Grenville’s raid into the Indigenous township? Were any of the Indigenous people captured and sold into slavery? If they were sold into slavery, where in the world were they shipped off to? What of the women, children, and elderly in that community? We see many of the tactics employed by the inquisitors being attempted by the British in North America. The first “official” British colony, was set up in Virginia among the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the Chief (Sheik, Sachem) Powhatan. Wahunsenacaw adopted the name Powhatan as it was the principal chiefdom (territorial city states often called tribes) of the confederation. As a note, the word tribe is often inefficient in fully delineating all of what a territorial city state entails. However, it is adequate when seen as a people who have cultural (not racial) similarities which are governed through political associations that regulate interactions between numerous families and communities who have a common language and often times ancestry. In the case of the Powhatan confederacy, and in the case of the majority of Algonquin speaking peoples throughout the Americas (especially north) particularly, what is most common among each of them is that they are a matrilineal people. And it is through the female line that chiefs are selected and land is allotted for use. The Powhatan confederation consisted of the Arrohattock, the Appomattock, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, and the Youghtanund, with the Powhatan being the chief. Chief Powhatan allowed and “watched the English settle on his people’s land . . . maintaining a posture of coolness. When the English were going through their ‘starving time’ in the winter of 1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. When the summer came, the governor of the colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways, whereupon Powhatan, according to the English account, replied with “noe other than prowde and disdaynefull Answers.”17 Like their

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predecessors before them, the colonists sought to retrieve for themselves, not just their “property” or indentured, they also sought to acquire for themselves the necessities of their survival, which Powhatan portioned out according to the behavior (friendliness, civility) of the colonists. The Jamestown colony had gone through some difficulties, and to ensure that they do not lose out on the possibilities of reaping all of the benefits of colonization like the Spanish and Portuguese, Britain would appoint Lord De La Warr the governor of the colony. The governor would institute new “Lawes Divine, Morall and Martial,” where he would control all interactions between colonists and the Indigenous and institute extremely punitive punishments for the most trivial of offences by either the colonists or the Indigenous. Powhatan’s refusal to return the “property” of the British was met with “revenge. They fell upon an Indian settlement” (the Paspahegh), compatriot of the Powhatan Confederation, and “killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard ‘and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.’ The queen was later taken off and stabbed to death.”18 The remaining Paspahegh would disperse themselves among neighboring tribes, never to have a Queen Mother to oversee the city state again. This is of particular importance because this does not suggest that the Paspahegh had been killed off or eradicated. Rather, they were re-incorporated into larger Algonquin communities. This idea about eradication will be addressed later on. However, there are other points that should be emphasized in this portion of the narrative because they do not fit into the Manichean narrative of the new world and the Indigenous people who inhabited it. As stated before, the narratives are often overly simplified, and this may be the reason Loewen suggests that History is the most rejected subject by students in American (US) academics. Students are given incomplete narratives that they are told to remember and eventually regurgitate without explication of the actual phenomena. Even more-so, many students do not seem to be able to understand the development of particular societies because the narrative of that society has been greatly hyphenated. When A People’s History suggests that there was a frenzy to finance a burgeoning capitalism in Western Europe while it was in the process of wrenching itself free from the feudalism that was par their existence, the text is essentially stating that the gold, slaves, and resources of the soil would create the new economic system in the western world.19 What it is not mentioning in detail is the number of Indigenous (so-called Indians) inhabitants of the Americas who were transported to Spain, Portugal, England, many parts and ports in Europe, and Africa as commodities as valuable as the gold they were forced to mine. This is important because when the canonized narrative of

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the Americas suggest that the new world had been depopulated, they do not record the numbers who had been shipped to Europe and Africa, which would contribute to the reshaping of the cultural dynamics of those nations also. Published in the Quarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians, volume three, in 1915, an article titled “Scotch Indians in Scotland” explains that “many of the most prominent men and the most respected families in the North of Scotland edging in from the Orkney Islands are of Indian descent. Most of these persons are of Cree blood. For many years the Scotch have been active traders” in goods from North America including human cargo, “and scores of them have brought back with them their Cree wives.”20 It was reported in the London Gazette as early as the 1680s and in the British Tatler of the 1700s that there were run-away Indians in Britain who were referred to as black boys, Indians, and Tawny Moors. Less than a hundred years earlier, as explained in “Too Many Blackamoors: Deportation, Discrimination, and Elizabeth I,” in 1596, Queen Elizabeth “issued an ‘open letter’ to the Lord Mayor of London, announcing that ‘there are of late divers blackamoores (sic) brought into this realm, of which kinde of people there are already here to manie’”21 The article goes on to explain how those so-called Blackamoores, who were designated for exportation, came into London. It must be noted, however, as Bartels seems to suggest, it was more than a racially motivated edict, and the Blackamoores who had arrived in London actually came from the Americas. Bartels explains that “what gets notably—and, I would argue, strategically—lost . . . is the fact the initial group targeted for deportation were ‘Negroes’ captured from a Spanish colony in the West Indies.” The individuals were brought into London after the Battle of San Juan when the English, under the leadership of John Hawkins and Francis Drake, failed to loot and pillage Spanish ships carrying its ill-gotten goods from Peru through the isthmus of Panama. General Drake, “with some hundredth and fiftie men . . . tooke the Rancheria a fisher town, where they drag for pearle. The people all fled except some sixteen or twenty souldiers, which fought a little, but some were taken prisoners, besides many Negroes, with some store of pearles and other pillage . . . Drake’s company then departed, taking with them captured Spaniards and ‘Negroes.’ In addition, the English took two more ‘Negroes,’ this time from a ‘Negro’ settlement at Nombre de Dios.”22 The account of the raid against the town of Rio de la Hacha was recorded in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation. In her article, Bartels attempts to explain why the expulsion order has an underlying racialism imbedded in it where Elizabeth is asserting a difference between her subjects and the Blackamoores who were either being brought into her realm as prisoners of war or those who immigrated to the island post the 1492 expulsion of the Jews and Moors

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from Spain. However, somewhat more interesting is that Hakluyt identified Rio de la Hacha as a Negro settlement in the Americas. These individuals would then, according to the edict, be referred to interchangeably as Negars and Blackamoors in Queen Elizabeth’s orders from 1595–1601. From whence did this settlement begin? No doubt, many scholars will suggest that it would be run-a-ways from the Spanish, but were they from West Africa or Andalusia? If they were from Andalusia post 1492, how many more settlements would appear in the Americas filled with Moors who fled Spanish rule? And how many raids took place on land and at sea that would transport hundreds of thousands of IAFW people from the Americas to Europe wherein they would undergo a name change from Indian to Negro or Blackamoore according to the port of call? The enslavement of the Indigenous people in the Americas would be as valuable and intricate to the eventual development of continental Europe as the enslavement of the African would be to the development of the Americas. Before moving on to phase four of the narrative, it is important to converse about a few more points of interest. The narrative reads that the “Indians” were hospitable, and Jamestown was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the (C)hief, Powhatan. We must stop and inquire what it means that the Powhatan lived in a confederacy. We know of the Arrohattock, the Appomattock, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, and the Youghtanund by name, often used as a moniker applied to a land grant more than a hundred years later. But we do not have, in whole, a narrative of the people who inhabited the land prior to their removal by colonizers. How large were their estates? How large a population did each chiefdom encompass? What we do know is that these people were in a league of states similar to what would eventually evolve out of thirteen British colonies. It is not a leap to point out that the confederate model of the Indigenous people would be emulated by the eventual US after its revolt against their king. Ironically, the Indigenous confederacies which the US would model its constitution on would, at the same time, be defending itself from aggressions by the citizens of the newly confederated US. However, this is not a part of the narratives we have been taught about this country of ours. Also, the leader of this Confederacy is a Chief, which is often spelled with a lower case “c” in many texts as if it were not a title like the Commander in Chief of the US. We should also note that the word Chief is not of English origin. The Commander in Chief Powhatan observed, via emissaries to the colonies, that the English were encroaching on more and more land which had not been allotted to them through land grant or treaty that we can suspect the British had any intent to abide by. Yet, the Powhatan did not attack, and they made themselves amicable enough wherein those who were toiling on the colony under slavery and would escape were able to flee to the Confederacy

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for safety. The narrative suggests that by the winter of 1610, many of the colonists were starving. Some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would be taken care of and possibly, for the first time, be free (savage). The term “going savage,” was a literary trope that was developing throughout Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In the Americas it was going savage; in Africa it would be called “turning Turk.” Whichever way we would like to remember the term, it is suggesting the same thing. The essence of the statement is that the “Christian slaves,” “settlers,” “war captives,” etc., etc., etcetera, ran away from, escaped, absconded, fled, bolted, or hightailed it off of their plantations and refused to return to the colony or nations of origin. One must ask how or why would a “free person” run away, and what would they be running away from. At the end of the winter and spring seasons, the warden/governor of the plantation/colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways. However, Powhatan, with the full assurance as the Commander in Chief of his branch of the confederation declined to return the property/prisoners/captives of said colony. It has been suggested in some narratives that the individuals who were in Powhatan’s possession were actually captives who were taken during skirmishes between the Indigenous people and the colonizers. However, as A People’s History explains, some of the individuals who were requested for return, absconded from the colony on their own. Even so, either Powhatan was functioning with the full authority of Chief and ensuring that the governor of the Virginia colony negotiate on equal terms, or the runaways were refusing to return of their own volition even after the winter had passed. The Governor had to dispatch a messenger to “request” the return of these runaways, of which Chief Powhatan says no with disdain. Why would the sovereign leader of a nation or confederation look upon the colony with disdain and refuse to return to the colony individuals who would flee to their territory? There is so much that has gone unexplained in so many parts of the narrative. However, the text helps us to understand this dilemma once it doubles back to explain the living conditions of the early colonists, which also might explain Powhatan’s refusal to return those who would flee to “savage lands.” It begins by stating that “everything in the experience of the first white settlers acted as a pressure for the enslavement of blacks.” That is extremely problematic as it prepares readers for what had become incorporated into our knowledge of US history, the enslavement of African people. The text situates the time period at 1619 to elucidate that those who were still alive and remaining on the colony over the past ten trying years were in dire needs to find a way to stay alive. The remnants of the 1607, 1609–10 colonization scheme had endured starvation so much so that “they roamed the woods for

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nuts and berries, dug up graves to eat the corpses, and died in batches until five hundred colonists were reduced to sixty.”23 The atrocities that are recorded to have taken place on the Virginia colony have not been projected on the greater narrative of the United States of America. We are told that some of those who were driven by hunger would lay in wait to kill one another so that they could devour the corpse, yet we are not taught to see them as cannibals. We are often told that the Indigenous and African people were cannibals, and because of their lack of civility and savage ways, their murder or enslavement was justified. Whole towns could be assaulted by British colonists for something as trivial as a tin cup, but the colonist who survived by slaying “his wife as she slept in his bosom, cut her in pieces, salted her and fed upon her till he had clean devoured all parts saving her head” is removed from the overall narrative we receive during our K–12 compulsory education. To clear up the captive verses absconded debate, A People’s History explains that the laws for the colony were so cruel and the “allowances for food were” often “moldy, rotten, full of cobwebs and maggots, loathsome to man and not fit for beasts, which forced many to flee for relief to the savage enemy.” Upon capture or return to the colony, they are “put to sundry deaths as by hanging, shooting and breaking upon the wheel . . . of whom one for stealing two or three pints of oatmeal had a bodkin thrust through his tongue and was tied with a chain to a tree until he starved.”24 Under what conditions, modern or old, would an “indentured servant” who is in service for only a particular time period, be subjected to torture or death? Said punishments would be relegated for “slaves” and not voluntarily indentured passengers. At least, that is what we were taught in school. We were taught about heroic and intrepid settlers who would take it upon themselves to cross the treacherous waters of the Atlantic to the colonies in search of wealth and a new life. Also, what would the culture or reality of the Indigenous peoples, under the leadership of Powhatan, be which could facilitate and protect defectors from the British colonies? Powhatan’s refusal to return runaways led to many raids on Indigenous territories, often even those who were not in confederation with Powhatan. And more often than not, it was the crops and store houses which were looted along with captives being taken and used as slave labor on the colony. Contrary to many narratives, Indigenous people were stolen all along the eastern seaboard wherever the British and eventual Dutch made landfall. And these IAFW people would be sold into slavery on colonies throughout the Americas and, as stated above, to Europe and Africa. In Virginia, the conquest or “massacre” of the Indigenous people was circumstantial or due to Powhatan’s refusal to return the “property” of the Jamestown colony. However, North of Virginia, the many massacres of

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IAFW people were ordained by the God of the colonizer. When the “puritans” set up Massachusetts Bay Colony, Governor John Winthrop suggested that the Indigenous people there had no legal rights to their own land. They were not functioning under an ecclesiastical law, and therefore only had a natural right to the land and not a civil right. This ecclesiastical law was based on the puritan’s use of the Bible which suggests in Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”25 Subsequently, the puritans would massacre the Pequots and then set their sights on the lands of the Wampanoag. The British, looking for any reason to wage war for land, found their excuse. The Puritans attributed a murder of one of their colonists to the Chief Metacom, and this led this Christian branch to create its own sordid form of inquisition. However, to justify it, they would suggest that their attacks on the Pequot and their neighbors were to prevent the Indigenous peoples from attacking them instead.26 We still use that excuse in the twenty-first century. Like their predecessors before them in Virginia, the puritans would sell numerous captives of King Phillips War (Metacom) into slavery in none other than Virginia, along with the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America etc., etc., etcetera. There was one ship of captive Pequot who were considered so unruly that they had to be sold to ports in North Africa, as no port in the Americas dared take them. When wars and enslavement do not fully explain the removal of IAFW people from their lands or the subsequent “depopulation” of the Indigenous peoples in America, the importation of disease is often used to explain the decline in the population. A People’s History explains this when it says that on the Island of Noepe (land amid the streams), today called Martha’s Vineyard, prior to 1642 when the English first colonized, there were about three thousand Wampanoags inhabiting the island. Even devoid of warfare on the island, the population would dwindle down to only 313 Indigenous peoples there by 1764. “Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one.”27 One of the things we will revisit in this conversation is the notion that the mass majority of these early people in America were subsequently killed off. As is much else of what we try to understand about the colonial era Americas, the narratives that suggest that the Indigenous people of the Americas had been mostly killed off is extremely over simplified. The history suggests that there were more than 75 million people throughout the Americas’

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and 25 million in North America alone. The majority of the accounts advance the notion that the mass majority of these people were killed off. Let’s briefly take an aside to discuss this. We will return to the notion more fully later, but for now, I’d just like to stop and think that humanity has not changed much in the past five hundred years. This is suggested based on the numerous wars that have been waged even in the past one hundred and twenty years. Take, for example, some of the wars which have taken place over the past ten years. Let us, just briefly, think about warfare. Since 2011, there has been a multi-faceted civil war being executed in the nation of Syria. Syria is a nation with access to a major waterway (the Mediterranean Sea). It shares a border with Turkey to its north and Iraq to its east and southeast. The rest of its land is bordered on its western flank by Lebanon and Israel, with Jordan representing the west/southwest nation separated only by lines drawn on a map. This is true for each of the “bordering” nations. Other than the Mediterranean, there is no true boundary other than those imposed by the bordering governments or the vastness of the desert, which would prevent the people from moving about in times of crisis. This is unless they are Bedouin and they know how to navigate desert terrain. In a nation like Syria in the twenty-first century, with a population of 17 million people scattered over 71,000 square miles, this civil war has lasted for more than ten years. Yet, it has not decimated the whole of the people. One cannot suggest that the 17 million people had dwindled down to barely 5 million. Yet so many narratives suggest that nearly 9 million or more people (numbers developed without a census) could be decimated from 1607 to 1656 in or around the US colonies alone. And this miraculous feat was done so without the use of weapons capable of destroying whole towns that we have become familiar with in the twentieth century. None of the narratives take into regard the mobility of the Indigenous populations in the Americas. Not only do the reports not consider the possibility of mobility, it negates the confederations that existed on the North American continent prior to the forced removal of the Moors from Spain. Even when some authors or researchers suggest that there were possibly three thousand Wampanoags (without a census) residing on Martha’s Vineyard around 1642 and only three hundred remaining one hundred years later (without a census), they minimize the agency of the people. They do not suggest that the people may have migrated away from the area given their mastery of canoe, ship building, and sailing capabilities. They do not take into regard the inter-territorial (eventual interstate highway system) trade routes they developed prior to the colonial era. Rather, everyone is always “killed off.” The Moors of Spain and the continental American nation states, prior to 1492, were engaged in a worldwide trade network that included nearly

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everything from agriculture to manufactured items, animals, and precious metals. Most of western Europe did not participate in that enterprise during that time. Asia and Africa participated in a three-ocean trade system via the Atlantic from the Americas to Africa, from the African eastern coast into the Indian ocean, and the Pacific Ocean into Eastern Asia and much of the Pacific Islands. The HRE and some European nations did benefit directly from that world trade system because it was controlled by the Moorish Empire. Therefore, the notion that the Indigenous of the Americas were unaware of the rest of the world or that the rest of the world had no access to the Americas until Columbus stumbled upon these shores is disingenuous. That insincerity nullifies the trade routes that Spain, Portugal, and England would eventually gain control over after the removal of the Moors from Europe. It also negates the movements of non-European peoples prior to the Columbus era. A very large portion of the nations in North America lived in “settled communities where there was more food, larger populations, more divisions of labor among men and women, more surplus to feed chiefs and priest, more leisure time for artistic and social work, for building houses”28 and for engagement in trade with member states within their confederation and their confederations’ trade relations beyond their own borders. Also important is that there was an intricate, highly sophisticated civilization that pales in comparison to the notion of a savage, uncivilized, heathenistic people who had no “civil rights” among their people because they had not developed it. We know about the Hopi who build communities, or smaller sized cities, that are equivalent to modern day apartment complexes into the sides of mountains. Their use of irrigation canals and dams can be compared to other ancient city states that were thriving during that time along the Nile Valley and in Mesopotamia. The Ohio River Valley was home to a complex trading system that stretched from the Great Lakes reaching into Canada, westward into the territories of the Hopi, southward into the Gulf of Mexico, and eastwards into the territories of the Iroquois Confederation. While the people would be referred to as the Mound Builders, it is of particular note, that the largest “mound,” which is situated in Cahokia, Illinois, is larger in diameter than the Great Pyramid of Giza. The city states were massive and the people were advanced in all aspects of human ingenuity. The Iroquois Confederation, consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, was bound by not just language but also a constitution that had been passed down via legend. At the center of the legend is Dekaniwidah, an individual who it is said to have stuttered when he spoke and therefore needed a translator, similar to the narrative of Moses within the Hebrew Bible. And according to some scholars, the nations that make up the Iroquois Confederation had traditions very similar to Hebrew and Islamic

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cultures. To ensure the binding of the constitution, Dekaniwidah explained that the Iroquois should bind themselves “together by taking hold of each other’s hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace and happiness.”29 Even though many of the descriptions of the Indigenous people in the Americas, regarding their technologies, engineering, farming, architectural developments, etc., etc., etcetera, humanizes them to a degree, it still primitivizes them. Somehow, our imaginations were trained to think that when scholars suggest that any group of non-European people were toolmakers or they made jewelry that those people were still functioning from a pre-civilized state of existence. We are not taught that in order to build the pyramids (mounds) that dot the Mississippi that the people were mathematically and scientifically sound, and there had to be educational institutions in place to develop enough continuity for the nation states to continuously develop over the course of two thousand plus years. Many narratives attempt to give us a census of the people who populated the Americas, pre-Moorish expulsion from Iberia. A People’s History makes mention of some of the cities that housed upwards of 30,000 people or more. Whatever the number, we can imagine that the nations described above encompass the eastern seaboard of today’s Washington, DC, northward into Canada, westward beyond the Mississippi, and all the way south into present day Mexico. If these people expanded all the way into Mexico from New York, wouldn’t they have a pre-Columbian relationship with the Aztec empire under the aegis of Montezuma, if for nothing else but trade? Let’s take a look at a travel narrative regarding the peoples south of the Iroquois Confederation spanning from present day North Carolina to Florida, westward through Georgia, Alabama, and into Mississippi. This territory was inhabited by a confederation of no less than five nation states which had built a massive trade network. William Bartran details many of the intricacies of the South-Eastern confederations in his Travels . . . narrative. He covers the traditions, the town structures, trade goods, relations with other nation states and so much more. Describing what seems to be a senate chamber, he writes, The piazza or front of this building, is equally divided into three apartments, by two transverse walls or partitions, about breast high, each having three orders or ranges of seats or cabins stepping one above and behind the other, which accommodate the senate and audience, in the like order as observed in the rotunda. The other three buildings which compose the square, are alike furnished with three ranges of cabins or sophas (sic), and serve for a banqueting-house, to shelter and accommodate the audience and spectators at all times, particularly at feasts or public entertainments, where all classes of citizens resort day and night in the

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summer or moderate season; the children and females however are seldom or never seen in the public square. The pillars and walls of the houses of the square were decorated with various paintings and sculptures; which I suppose to be hieroglyphic, and as an historic legendary of political and sacerdotal affairs: but they are extremely picturesque or caricature, as men in variety of attitudes, some ludicrous enough, others having the head of some kind of animal as those of a duck, turkey, bear, fox, wolf, buck, &c. and again those kind of creatures are represented having the human head. These designs were not ill executed, the outlines bold, free and well proportioned. The pillars supporting the front or piazza of the council-house of the square, were ingeniously formed in the likeness of vast speckled serpents, ascending upward; the Otasses (sic) being of the snake family or tribe.30

Bartran’s description is indeed fascinating, and anyone who have read or seen images of other pre-1492 IAFW nations may think that he could be describing nation states that are more indicative of Egypt, Mexico, or even Peru. However, he did, with great detail throughout his text, recount what he had witnessed among people who would eventually be referred to as Creek, Cherokee, and eventually Negro. The “Negro” designation will be explained soon. Given the grand structure of civilization as described above, how do people with such an advanced civilization and a network of trade and commerce become so vulnerable as to be able to be decimated in less than one hundred years? Which of the constructs of this vast civilization does the decimated narratives that we have been taught via our educational systems in the US consider? Is it possible that, at any time during the invasions of the British during the construction of their colonies, the Indigenous populations could have moved from city to city for survival? For example, we do not say that the 4 million plus inhabitants of Louisiana were decimated in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina. We know, firsthand, that the people migrated to neighboring states, and some have chosen not to return to their native lands. Another example is that “African Americans” made up nearly 65 percent of the population of Atlanta, Georgia, during the latter part of the twentieth century and into the first five years of the twenty-first. However, by 2020, the “African American” population was down to nearly 54 percent. One does not suggest that the “African American” population in Atlanta had been killed off. We have even been taught to accept the narratives of the decimation of the “Indians” in America as an ordained phenomenon. There was something unique to colonizers that fostered their ability to massacre whole peoples. The narrative of the mass slaughter of Indigenous peoples is often explained as something that we are not able to either substantiate or even justify.

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Many of the authors who record phase three of this US creation story suggest that the expansion into the Americas was about this quest for freedom. This drive for the theft of land was the consequences of the pursuit of private property. Zinn explains that “behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property.” What this “special” drive was has not been explained. It may be possible that he is suggesting that only the British had this special drive. He does, however, seem to suggest that this drive was both murderous and bordering on barbarous.31 For this conversation, it is not presumed that the Iroquois Confederation, the Yamasee Confederation and other nations in the Americas were wholly decimated. Columbus and his successors did not encounter an “an empty wilderness” of the pre-civilized. Western nations encountered people who were as densely populated as many European cities with a more advanced cultural complex that was far more egalitarian that most Western European nations. Even more so, the lifestyles of the Indigenous people of the Americas offered more internal security, interpersonal socialization institutions, and “relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world.”32 Yet, as explained and taught in our compulsory education facilities, the “decimation” or removal of these people from their land is a phenomenon of the past, and therefore only relevant to a study of the past. There is no wonder that history, in US classrooms, does little to assist students in comparing modern issues to historical phenomenon. Zinn, for the most part, seems to regret that there is inability to properly analyze historical events and apply a moral judgment on the behaviors of colonizers and inquisitors.33 While much of the cultural narrative of the US suggests that the Indigenous people in the Americas were not as sophisticated as the eventual inhabitants of the 13 colonies and that they were subsequently killed off, it is extremely difficult for that narrative to apply here. I contend that the losses, especially regarding the notion of the decimation of the Indigenous, are severely over-exaggerated or outright fabrications of the truth so that it fits seamlessly into US history and the heroizing of this nation’s founders. Even more so, the decimation narratives absolve the criminals of their crimes against humanity, and therefore no one is left to enact retribution for those past wrongs. The case can be closed. It’s all old memory. Let’s continue . . . The Fourth Phase of the narrative is the subsequent enslavement of the African in the Americas, especially the early colonies and the US. The accounts that have become ubiquitous in this culture suggests that there came a larger need for free labor, and the African or Negro was better fit than the Indigenous populations for a myriad of reasons. For one, it is suggested that the decimation of the Indigenous had reduced their numbers so much that

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they could not supply the numbers needed to produce the goods necessary for transport back to Europe. If the narrative did not focus on the decimation of the Indigenous population, it suggested that enslaving “Indians” on their own land was difficult because of their familiarity with the terrain and they were prone to escape. Therefore, Europe would seek to replace the Indigenous labor with that of the “indentured” servants of their own nations. When enough could not be procured, or they could not survive the rigors of the workload, the “robust” African was the next best choice, and the African continent had hundreds of millions of them to spare. Jay Saunders Redding, the first African American to teach at a US Ivy League institution, discusses the purported first arrival of African people into the British colony in Virginia. Zinn uses his text, They Came in Chains, to explain this phenomenon in US history.34 It is not only the accepted narrative of the academy, it is also the narrative, shaped into the 1619 Project, which divides so many people along racial and political party lines today. The narrative suggests that the first so-called Negroes to be accounted for in the British colonial plantation system were delivered in chains. Redding suggests that “probably no ship in modern history has carried a more portentous freight. Her cargo? Twenty slaves.”35 This narrative is a very important part of this story. It essentially explains the whole of the US social hierarchy from 1619 to the present, and possibly the future. The most important aspect of the narrative is the designation “slave” for those twenty-odd individuals who would come into the Jamestown Colony. Before we get to the “slave” narrative, what did Redding mean by portentous? Was he suggesting that this group of twenty individuals who were traded by a motley crew of Dutch privateers were fateful, foreboding, or an ominous group of people? Were they an auspicious group of individuals who would have a favorable and prophetic effect on the early colony? Or could that prophecy be sinister in essence? Was Redding suggesting that these twenty were exciting a menacing fear or wonder into the Jamestown colony? Were they an ominous or marvelous group of people? Were they even considered an amazing, astonishing, or awesome group of people who just so happen to have been traded for victuals? Or were they an awful, black, dark, foreboding, and maligned group of people? Whatever Redding’s intent was for the descriptor, these twenty-odd individuals would be marked with an excessive display of importance. They would become the most important humans in Colonial America, and they remain the most important “African” immigrants into North America. A People’s History explains the phenomenon of the arrival of these individuals into the colony by suggesting that in the early years of colonial America, the British had not developed a distinction between the “white” indentures

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and any other peoples reduced to a servile class within the colonies.36 However, imbedded in the understanding that there were no laws created by the colonial governments early on to distinguish peoples based on a racial category, still it was probable that any non-white servant was considered more “slave” than servant because, in some way, they were different.37 This is important because A People’s History, like the many other narratives, attempts to explain modern race relations or social stratification via the notion that while slavery developed into a necessary institution in colonial America, it began to normalize relationships between Blacks and whites whether free, indentured, or enslaved.38 As James Loewen observed, and so many narratives of the history of the US republic, the subordination of African people in the Americas is indeed a normalized relationship. Slavery, according to our twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural orientation wherein race is the arbiter of human relations and not religion, slavery in the seventeenth–nineteenth centuries implied an inferior status of Blackness.39 What makes those twenty-odd Negroes important to the narrative of the US is that they have the responsibility of explaining the degradation of NBCAA peoples over the course of their presence in the United States of America. So much responsibility has been heaped upon their existence. As stated earlier, the “colonists” could not enslave the “native,” and “white” indentures were not sufficient enough to subdue the Virginia wilderness. Therefore, some solutions had to be crafted for the eventual security of the Virginians. Black people, somehow, would become synonymous with slave even though the institution of slavery had not been “regularized and legalized for several decades.” It is that “natural” condition of Blackness associated with slave which is the impetus for this entire conversation. More than likely, it is a twentieth-century assessment (pen and ink rendering) of conditions within the realities of seventeenth-century colonial America that would suggest that those twenty-odd Blacks are responsible for the development of a racial caste system on the North American continent where Blackness would be bestowed slave and whiteness master.40 Much of this must be addressed before continuing on with this final phase of the narrative. This suggests that many of the European colonists were servants and they had not, up until that time, been brought over from England in a sufficient enough quantity to guarantee the manpower needed for the laborious duties of taming the wild, untilled Virginia soil. It also claims that these colonists “did not come out of slavery” which would imply that there was no system of slavery that these colonists would have been familiar with. The Portuguese enslaved Africans, the Spaniards under Columbus enslaved Americans, but the British had no real affiliation with that sordid institution. The British colonists who arrived on these shores were simply contract labor for only a few years. Therefore, they were not a sustainable workforce

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for the colony, the corporation they contracted with, or the Crown to contribute to the necessary manpower needed for the colony. It is essentially suggesting that Britain did not practice slavery, and the start of slavery in the British North American colonies, or even Europe, begins with the transportation of black Africans into Lisbon by the Portuguese. There is no pretext for the constructs of slavery or what constitutes slavery and enslavement. For example, when it is suggested that it was natural to consider Blacks slaves because it had been regularized and eventually stamped via a colonial law, these several decades are only counted after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain/Europe.41 Therefore, in the subsequent 120 or so years, the whole of humanity would come to see Blackness as synonymous with slavery. This is not even possible in physical warfare. The only space this could happen is via a narrative. Who has the authority to legalize slavery of any group of people, and under what conditions does a whole people, due to their physical characteristics, become a slave. These constructs also do not address the 600 or so Taino inhabitants of the Caribbean islands that Christopher Columbus also took to Lisbon in 1493. If by 1619, as it is suggested, that a million or so Blacks had been transported across the Ethiopian Sea/Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America and the Caribbean under the aegis of the Portuguese and Spanish, that 120-year period of exploitation by those two nations is truly prodigal. From 1493 until 1607 (the establishment of the first British colony on North American soil), the Portuguese had colonized Western Africa and parts of Brazil. They subsequently transported more than a million Africans to and from Africa, Europe, and America. And they somehow acquired this ability encompassing the military and industrial knowhow only a few years after believing the world was flat. Are we really suggesting this of Portugal alone? To explain this phenomenon, there must be something that could render these African people capable of being reduced to slavery. This comes in the form of another narrative. It is rooted in the explication of the twenty-odd Negroes theory of a “normal labor relationship” between Blacks and whites. Ergo, the Negro is naturally inferior. To explain the inferiority of the black African, for the canonized narrative of US history, there is only a brief explication of the culture of those “natural” slaves. A People’s History explains this helplessness of black Africans by suggesting that they, unlike any other group of people, had been wrenched from their native homes and driven into the territories of a foreign people leaving behind all of the wherewithal of their former culture.42 As for their culture, Zinn wonders if it was inferior in essence and easily subjected to destruction. Even though these Africans who were reduced to a servile class came from nation states that were as advanced as any on the European continent.43

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All of this short-hand analysis of the culture of the “black African” should be analyzed in the context of marginalization. Zinn says that African civilization was as advanced, in its own way, as that of Europe. This suggests that advancements across civilizations can be subjective. It also implies an inferior form of civilization developed in Africa as compared to Europe. This African civilization could be admired, but because of its cruelties and privileges and readiness to sacrifice human life for religion or profit, one must, it seems, be fastidious in comparing a black African civilization to that of the European. It was a civilization of 100 million people as if the whole of the continent of Africa could be relegated to being the product of one singular development. Even Europe, which the whole of it could fit into the interior of the continent of Africa, had successive developments, and none of that portion of the Eurasian continent could be considered to have developed monolithically. But “Africa,” with its 100 million inhabitants, seemed to have developed along a singularity wherein it, as a whole, would come to develop the ability to use iron implements and become skilled in farming. The whole of the 100 million inhabitants of the African continent would create in the singular development of culture large urban centers with remarkable achievements in weaving, ceramics, and sculpture. It is particularly interesting how much of the actual narrative of Africa and its people become non-extant in the narratives of the US. But it should be noted that it is not the responsibility of the colonizer to redeem the colonized with their own historical narrative. Leo Frobenius, a German anthropologist and researcher, wrote of Africa in his Histoire de la Civilisation Africaine that in the Gulf Coast of Guinea in West Africa that, (T)he streets (were) well laid out, bordered on either side for several leagues by two rows of trees; for days (European merchants) travelled through a country of magnificent fields, inhabited by men clad in richly coloured [sic] garments of their own weaving! Further south in the Kingdom of the Congo, a swarming crowd dressed in “silk” and “velvet”; great states well-ordered, and down to the most minute details; powerful rulers, flourishing industries—civilized to the marrow of their bones.44

Like the Moor’s accomplishments in Spain and many parts of Europe, nation states in Africa were far more advanced, cultivated, and internationally known and incorporated than the majority of the nation states in Europe at that same time in our collective histories. French scholar and writer, Major Dubois, in his Timbuctoo the Mysterious writes,

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(Y)es, a real town in the European sense of the word; not one of those disorderly conglomerations of dwellings which we call towns in this country (France). Here were true houses; not primitive shelters crowned with roofs that are either flat or in the shape of an inverted funnel. Streets too; not seed-plots of buildings amongst which one wanders by paths that serpentine more than the most serpentine serpent. . . . What is this town, then, with its wide, straight roads, its houses of two stories built in a style that instantly arrests the eye?45

Dubois’ reactions during his travels throughout Africa seem to be commonplace among European merchants and explorers. It is almost as if they’d been given a narrative of Africa and African people that did not seem to be truthful. Many of these early explorers seem to have been looking for lands that were inhabited by heathenish cannibals, yet they were finding themselves among people who were often more civilized and advanced than any European nation. In his Culture and Imperialism, Edward W. Said explained that, A great deal of recent criticism has concentrated on narrative fiction, yet very little attention has been paid to its position in the history and world of empire. Readers of this book will quickly discover that narrative is crucial to my argument here, my basic point being that stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history. The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course; but when it came to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back, and who now plans its future—these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative. As one critic has suggested, nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them. Most important, the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment mobilized people in the colonial world to rise up and throw off imperial subjection.46

Subsequently, it is reasonable to suggest that it is the narrative of the phenomenon that determines more of the effect on any particular people rather than the actual events that have taken place in history. Even more-so, one can argue that it will be in the development of a narrative wholly contrary to the primitivizing of IAFW people within western narratives which will contribute to IAFW people’s relief. We can circle back to the monolithic civil advancement of the African people and the continent embedded in the western narratives of Africa and its people, but more should be said of the development of these people as the “slave” of the Americas. We have to consider the fact that many historians

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record the narrative of fifteen- and sixteenth-century Africa via the lens and language of a nineteenth- and twentieth-century US language and culture. It could be suggested that rendering early African culture through the language and culture of America (US English) severely diminishes and misrepresents the actual people, culture, and civilizations of the African continent. In order to diminish the many African nation states that existed prior to the 1492 expulsion of the Moors, western narratives of Africa attempt to project their own illnesses or way of living on other people. So, the narratives suggest that like Europe, Africa had a kind of feudalism. This is baseless. It suggests that Europe’s feudal system was based on agriculture with its genesis in the slave societies of Greece and Rome which destroyed ancient tribal life. But this was not so in the African construct. It claims that Africans maintained a powerful tribal lifestyle with its better feature being a communal spirit in which the law treated transgression with more kindness than punishment. Zinn returns to the primitive notion of the African and African societies when he suggests that their system of governance was most likely due to their lack of weapons that African lords would not be able to command obedience as easily. Yet, as A People’s History explains the slave system of Africa, there seems to be no equivalent comparison, at all, to the societal construct of the European slavocracy and feudal system wherein the nobility or the lords of the lands, granted by their Kings or Queens in exchange for military service, would hold in servitude (abject poverty and slavery) the majority populations of Europe. European slaves were controlled via violence and poverty as tenant farmers with no social mobility, possibility of land ownership, or even share in the productive yields of the land. Basil Davidson’s text The African Slave Trade, is often used to explain “slavery” in Africa. It states, Basil Davidson contrasts law in the Congo in the early sixteenth century with law in Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of private property was becoming powerful, theft was punished brutally. In England, even as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a rag of cotton. But in the Congo, communal life persisted, the idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with fines or various degrees of servitude. A Congolese leader, told of the Portuguese legal codes, asked a Portuguese once, teasingly: “What is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground?”

He continues, “but, as Davidson points out, the ‘slaves’ of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe.” Let’s stop and think for one moment. To observe a phenomenon among any people and attempt to explain that phenomenon via your own language and culture is misleading. It suggests

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that slavery in African was “like most of the population of Europe. It was a harsh servitude” However, there is a major “but,” that juxtaposes African societies and Europe. The so-called “slaves” in Africa had rights. Their lives were nothing comparable to that of the people who were brought to the Americas. We are given account of the fact that among the Ashanti of West Africa, people who were of the servant class could get married, own property even in the form of a servant themselves. They could participate in legal matters, marry into the family of those they served and become an heir of the estate in which they served.47 There aren’t many ways to state this. How absurd an idea it would be to think of a slave owning a slave in the United States of America. Davidson’s description of slavery in Africa among the Ashanti reads nothing like European feudalism or slavery. Let us say this more clearly. The system in Africa is not slavery. It should not have and should never be compared to anything like slavery. It is not slavery. The descriptions of the two societal constructs seem similar in no way, especially the non-existent construct of owning humans or land as private property. These two concepts, indicative of feudal Europe, did not exist in Africa, so why the continued associations of the different societal constructs. To explain this, A People’s History suggests that African slavery is hardly to be praised. It explains that the conditions of enslavement on the American plantations were often for life and extremely cruel, “slavery” in Africa should not be applauded because it too was a brutal system.48 First, the text explains that the need for such cruelty was based on capitalistic agriculture, which one has to wonder if any African nation in the fifteenth century or earlier had an agricultural economy. The second reason, it suggests, is that reducing the slave to less than human was based on racial hatred based on color wherein the master was white and the slave was black. Europe, under the HRE, had slavery which was neither based on an agricultural economy nor white/Black social divisions. This cruelty existed almost everywhere in the European world under the rulership of the HRE. However, we do not see any evidence of this form of cruelty in Africa. Another important aspect of the Fourth Phase of the US narrative is the entrenchment of the concept that slavery, as a system in America, being relegated to the black African while servitude (indentured service) was relegated to people from Europe. These narratives attempt to suggest that there is an automatic and natural hierarchy among human populations, and the black African is naturally inferior and slave. Yet, as suggested above, European societies were developed under a slavocracy via Greece and Rome. And even as historians suggest that Africa had a slave system, they admit that the systems were in no way similar. As suggested, the so-called slave in Africa was more equivalent to a serf in Europe. The problem with even that

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comparison is the fact that the European serf was tied to the land and they had no chance for social mobility. In Africa, the laborers could not only become lords, they would also, more than likely, eventually marry into the family they served. Yet, the canonized narratives attempt to define seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial societies through a twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury concept of race and oppression. To explain the development of the modern concepts of race, it has been suggested that there was an unequal treatment between the Negro in colonial society and the white servant. Zinn questions whether or not this apathy between Blackness and whiteness is indeed natural.49 To explain the ideas of a natural racism and the bifurcation of racial identity in colonial America, he ponders whether the importation of African people into the colonies, violently separated from the home and culture and being brutalized in a strange land, is it possible that Blacks could ever be treated similar to Whites in colonial America.50 In order to drive home our twenty-first-century experiences with race hatred to explain colonial era societies, Zinn points out the laws that were passed were almost always race based. A 1639 decree stated that “all persons except Negroes were to get arms and ammunition.” And in 1640 “three servants tried to run away, the two whites were punished with a lengthening of their service. But, as the court put it, ‘the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life.’”51 The irony of the last point is that Punch’s “master” was actually one of the twenty-odd negroes or portentous freight who had arrived in Virginia on that ominous day. As before, there are a few points that we are going to sit in and discuss to attempt to gain some clarity. The above statements leave out extremely important information and it defines, again, early colonial society via a modern interpretation. In a collection of letters written by William Eddis titled Letters from America, 1792, his sixth letter is most telling and extremely enlightening. He writes, The Negroes in this province are, in general, natives of the country; very few in proportion being imported from the coast of Africa. They are better cloathed [sic] better fed, and better treated, than their unfortunate brethren, who a more rigid fate hath subjected to slavery in our West Indian islands; neither are their employments so laborious, not the acts of the legislature so partially oppressive against them. The further we proceed to the northward, the less number of people are to be found of this complexion: In the New England government, negroes are almost as scarce as on your side of the Atlantic, and but few are

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under actual slavery; but as we advance to the south, their multitudes astonishingly increase, and in the Carolinas they considerable exceed the number of white inhabitants.52

Essentially, Eddis is explaining that the population of people from the Carolinas to New England along the coast of North American proper is made up predominately of the Negro who is native to the Americas. And we do want to reiterate that he is recording this at the dawn of the “American Revolution.” At the same time, these colonies were being peopled with convicts (slaves) from England, Germany, Ireland, etc., etc., etcetera. He continues, Negroes are, therefore, almost in every instance, under more comfortable circumstances that the miserable European, over who, the rigid planter exercises an inflexible rigidity. They are strained to the utmost to perform their allotted labor, they frequently try to escape, but very few are successful, and when apprehended, are committed to close confinement, advertisement, and delivered to their respective masters. The unhappy culprit is doomed to a severe chastisement; and a prolongation of servitude is decreed. Those who survive, seldom establish their residence.53

We should not wonder why Chief Powhatan would refuse to return the runaways from that Virginian colony. Again, it is the eventual canonized narrative of the Americas in the US academy where Eddis’ account of North American colonies will become extinct. His first-hand account, especially his understanding that the Negro in North America is native to the continent and they had not been brought from Africa, contradicts most narratives that NBCAA people in America are the progeny of Black “slaves” from the continent of Africa. When the narrative suggests that it was impossible to use the Indian and difficult to use the white, it belies accounts of firsthand reports of early North American colonists. Many authors make no reference to the fact that it was the Indigenous (Indian) populations from all over the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, and North America who were being forced into forms of slave labor for the British, Portuguese, and the Spaniards in the Americas. These same Indigenous people were labelled “Negro” by those enslavers. Therefore, it would not be far-fetched to claim that many of the “Negroes” in early colonial society were made up of the Indigenous populations and not predominately African imports. This is why it is extremely important to disassociate African with slave in any of its facets. We have to change the narratives that created the one-to-one correlation of African American slave and white European master.

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So, let’s address the suggestion that it was difficult to use whites for slave labor. There is a major portion of European history that does not communicate that white (Christians) were enslaved from Africa to the Americas and the Middle East, and other areas, and they were treated most harshly. The issue that we find ourselves in is trying to explain the foul system of racism and the exploitation of one group of people (IAFW) by people who would come to refer to themselves as white. We are attempting to peer into the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries with a post-1865 narrative of the US. We struggle with ascertaining whether racism (race hatred and the subjugation of one group of people based on the concept of race) has always been a part of the narratives of America. Zinn struggles with this as well. To explain this he cites a 1691 (seventeenth century) Virginia law that “provided for the banishment of any ‘white man or woman being free who shall intermarry with a negro, mulatoo [sic], or Indian man or woman bond or free.’”54 However, we know that many, if not all, colonial laws were the product of necessity and immediate invention based on the present-day situations that would arise within said colony at that time. They were not solely the product of race hatred. A similar law was passed in Maryland in 1664. The law suggested that any white woman who married a Negro should serve the master of the Negro. According to Dr. J. A. Rogers, “slave holders took advantage of this law to induce the white women, some of whom were recent arrivals, to marry the Negroes.” This Maryland law “enabled avaricious and unprincipled masters to convert many of the (White) servants into slaves.” The law would be amended seven years later in 1681. That Virginia law from a twenty-first-century perspective seemed to strengthen the notion that it was race based. However, the Maryland law a few years later seems to be more about expanding slavery to include those “whites” who were new arrivals to the colony and some who were considered freeborn. Part of the necessity for the laws was the status of the children born from the marriage between freeborn, servant, and enslaved people also. The courts, at that time, had to develop a system to adjudicate claims by masters who sought to claim the children born from those unions and also the freeborn person’s claims on their own offspring. The Maryland court complained of being overwhelmed with such cases. To arbitrate the issue, the 1681 amendment stated that “diverse freeborn English or White women sometimes by the instigation, procurement, and connivance of their masters . . . and always to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires . . . do intermarry with Negroes and other slaves, be it enacted” that if the marriage is the contrivance of the master, she is to be free at once, and the master will be fined.55 To address the laws that were passed to regulate intermarriage with Negroes, Indians, or Mulattos, etc., early Virginian law suggested that the

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white man or woman could not marry these individuals whether they were bond or free. This would suggest that there had to be a Negro, Indian, and Mulatto population in Virginia who were both enslaved and free. When Zinn suggests that it was impossible to use the Indian, he does not consider the Spanish and Portuguese slaving practices in the Americas. Nor does he factor in the nearly 70 years of slave raids between Indigenous nations to supply captives to the British, Spanish, and French. Also, as explained by Jack D. Forbes in his text, Africans and Native Americans, he does not seem to consider the many wars in North America which would produce a large number of prisoners of war who would become the property of their captives. Forbes writes, After the Pequot-English War in New England many American prisoners were enslaved and sold. In 1638 Pequots were sold in the West Indies, many reaching Providence Island off Central America. Between 1676 and 1683 many other New England Native American were “condemned to be sold into foreign slavery” after the so-called “King Philip’s War.” Thus, during the war and or some time afterward, Indians believed to be hostile or dangerous were shipped away to the slave markets of the West Indies, Spain, and the Mediterranean coasts. . . . Both Jamaica and Barbados legislated against their admittance. John Eliot knew of a case in which a vessel filled with Indian prisoners tried in vain to unload its human cargo at one market after another. She finally managed to get rid of them at Tangiers in North Africa, where they were still living in 1683. Probably many a black man today in North Africa and the Islands of the West Indies carries some traces of blood which once surged through the veins of Philip’s [Metacomet’s] defeated warriors.56

We see not only the mass enslavement of IAFW people in North America by the British, we also see that many of them had been transported and sold all over the planet, including Africa. We also see that in the New England territory, the population is not being killed off. It is being withered via transportation out of their homelands. Also left out about the narratives that so-called Black slaves were treated or punished differently from white indentured servants is one of the most pertinent facts about the John Punch case as mentioned above. What would happen in the academic narrative of colonial America if the narratives were to explain that Virginia colonial law upheld the claim of an imported African in the colony? The concepts of race and race relations in early American colonial society often suggested as being based on a natural contempt of race would not fit into a more honest narrative. It is far too ironic that the historical narrative of America consistently leaves out any cultural carryovers from Europe to the Americas, especially the fact that Europe was in the midst of horrific crimes against humanity via

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the inquisition under the auspices of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. Leaving out information about cultural exchange allows individuals within this culture to imagine that there is or was something “special” and new about the development of US society. Far more concerning is the racial hierarchy narrative wherein NBCAA people would be permanently relegated to an inferior caste. This is done predominately via narrative. Briefly, let’s remember that phase one of articulation of the American narrative is the removal of the Moors from Spain. Phases two and three are the discovery, conquest, and subjugation of the Americas, land and people. Phase four of the narrative is the replacement of the Indigenous people with the African to till the land and build America. Each phase is part of a singular narrative that describes white subjugation of all they came in contact with. And the end result is the institutionalizing, via narrative, of the modern-day social, political, and legal structure of the US. Zinn not only suggests that the African had been subdued to the point of control, he even takes the liberty to rename the “Negro” or “Black” in one broad stroke of the pen. He writes, From the beginning, the imported black men and women resisted their enslavement. Ultimately their resistance was controlled, and slavery was established for 3 million blacks in the South. Still, under the most difficult conditions, under pain of mutilation and death, throughout their two hundred years of enslavement in North America, these Afro-Americans continued to rebel.57

Even after Zinn explains the commonalities of Negro, Indian, and white servants in America, he again affirms that Blacks were easier to enslave. It must be affirmed that in early colonial society, black was not a term used to identify the Negro in law. And as stated above, Eddis reported that the mass population of Negroes who were enslaved in North America were Indigenous to the continent. However, none of that is taken into consideration by Zinn because in the same paragraph, he is able to rename and redefine those enslaved Negroes or Blacks. The Blacks, who were easily enslaved, were now Afro-Americans. The problem with this broad stroke of branding is that Zinn acknowledges that in early colonial America there were both free and bond Negroes. What then would be the trajectory of those free Negroes in colonial America? What happened to them? Are we supposed to think or believe that all of them died off or became enslaved themselves? Based on the narrative, students are taught that these Negroes or Blacks procreated, but they did so only under the aegis of slave masters and breeding farms. It is evident that they procreated with both the Indigenous and the white populations in the society. However, this population of people is not accounted for in the making of America.

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We are not privy, as students of history, to find the full records or whole narratives of the IAFW people who were not enslaved but were identified in laws, newspapers, literature etc., etc., etcetera, as Sundry Moors, Free Negroes, and People of Color. We do not have elongated narratives of how they might have been or could be intrinsic to the development of colonial America and the eventual United States of America. In most narratives, we are not taught whether or not they fought in any wars for the development of the burgeoning nation or if they served in government capacity prior to 1867. As recorded by Joel Augustus Rogers, in his text Africa’s Gift to America, by 1830 there were more than 4,500 “Negro slave-holders” in the United States.58 And, as we know, the term Negro did not designate solely African people transported to the Americas in chains. So, what happened to those Negro slaveholders? Questions like that are significant because the historical narratives that shape US history force the inclusion of all NBCAA individuals in US society to identify as the progeny of enslaved Africans. IAFW people are not gifted with agency so as to have had any control over their lives, especially since a major part of their historical narrative begins with “when they brought us here.” The Indigenous people of America did not impose the nomenclature Negro on themselves and neither did their cousins who were stolen from their lands and homes in Africa. Zinn helps us see how, via a narrative, people’s historical identity can be strained into a singularity. But what happens when that codification of identity is adopted by those same people? PART II OF CHAPTER II—MIMESIS WITH A CAVEAT Via the Civil Rights Movement, American society during the 1960s was reeling from a nearly twenty-year campaign of many (not all) NBCAA people asserting their desires for full inclusion into the American mainstream after WWII. There are a multitude of factors that would lead to the development of what would be fertile ground which would allow for African Americans to become the desired nomenclature of IAFW people in the United States by 1988. To suggest that there is this one singularity which would contribute most would be similar to suggesting that it was Columbus who found the so-called New World. It must be noted from the outset that, in no way, does this conversation suggest that the adoption of African American or Afro-American has anything to do with the aforementioned assertions of inferiority proposed in Zinn’s explanation of why the black African would be associated with slave and whiteness master. And this does not suggest that the adoption itself suggests the notion that there is anything in IAFW or NBCAA people which would render them

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inferior to whiteness. It does, however, suggest that the adoption of the US colonial narratives (four phases of articulation), as explained above, does affect how IAFW people see themselves in contradistinction to whiteness as it has been authored in the narratives. Those narratives have also become agent provocateurs within NBCAA institutions and much of their individual self-concepts. There are many books that explain the African world pre-enslavement as more than a monolithic “civilization of 100 million people, using iron implements, being skilled in farming, with large urban centers and remarkable achievements in weaving, ceramics, and sculpture.”59 The primitivizing of African people via those narratives is not the bedrock, for the most part, of most NBCAA institutions. However, there are some texts that still follow the narrative of identity that relegates NBCAA and Indigenous, Autochthonous, First World (IAFW) people in America as the progeny of the enslavement period. Ama Mazama and Molefi K. Asante, in their text Encyclopedia of Black Studies, suggest that, Those who sought to create Black Studies were concerned with the obstacles that would be advanced to prevent the self-definition, self-determination, and intellectual liberation of those of African descent living in the Americas. This was a substantive issue because the history of American education had been against the extension of certain intellectual freedoms for Africans. Furthermore, before 1865 people of African descent living in the United States were not citizens and consequently were not African Americans but Africans. Since the 1990s, many people of African descent have used African to designate their cultural origin. This use of the term is not a reference to citizenship. The term African is being used here in a special sense to mean those who were enslaved and their descendants.60

When the conversation of identity universalizes African people wherein all NBCAA or IAFW people in American society today are the progeny of enslaved Africans from 1619 to 1865, it supports the colonial narrative and perpetuates the idea that the African was enslaved because of their inferior status as explained above. Oh, and what about those Sundry Moors, Free Negroes, Indians, and Free People of Color: were they not African or of African heritage? Introduction to Black Studies and the Encyclopedia of Black Studies are wonderful texts to use as structured narratives that, in a way, can be used to compare Zinn’s A People’s History to. The Introduction to Black Studies is an excellent chronological narrative of African people from the Nile Valley civilizations to the contemplation of the future of African people throughout the diaspora, and the Encyclopedia of Black Studies is its philosophical auxiliary. Also, Drs. Asante and Karenga follow up their development of these

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texts with their Handbook of Black Studies in 2006. The text From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans is also ancillary to these texts. Each text reconstructs, in part, the phases of articulation constructed in the US colonial narratives. In the first phase of articulation in the development of the African in America regarding the Moor’s history in Europe, Dr. Karenga develops a far more comprehensive explanation of the Moorish contribution to the development of European culture. Introduction to Black Studies also explains how and why the identity and culture of the Moor would be challenged in the western mind. It states, The Moorish empire in Spain represents not only a golden age in Islamic civilization, but also a golden age of civilization for Africa, Europe and ultimately the world. . . . [B]ut there is still strong reluctance to recognize and discuss the African component in this multicultural people and civilization of Africans, Arabs and Berbers. Once called “Black-a-Moors” by Europeans to indicate their dark color and African origins in the process of revisionist history, they became more and more simply Muslims and less and less Africans. This falsification of history is challenged by African scholars who have continued to remind the world of African presence in and contribution to Moorish civilization. And they have also reminded us of the Moorish civilization’s contribution to Europe in numerous and highly significant ways.61

It must be noted that the term multicultural is not sufficient enough to address the ethnic and racial makeup of the Moors from the 711 (CE) incursion into the Iberian Peninsula through their seven-hundred-year reign in Europe. Dr. Karenga explained that “Isabella and Ferdinand had used their wealth from Granada to finance Columbus’ voyage to America when he found Blacks had already preceded him.” And at the expulsion of the Moors from Iberia, he explains that the terms of surrender had been violated, and this was the point which “established a ‘precedent . . . and tradition of treachery and racism that was adopted by all European colonizers . . . (which) would endure throughout the Columbian era.’”62 The problem is that the treachery of racism has also endured until this present-day construct of the United States of America. There seems to be no place in this cultural matrix wherein all of the freedoms developed under Moorish rule in the Iberian Peninsula have not been, in some way, subdued. But just as almost every other narrative of the development of the western world, the expulsion of the Moors out of Europe would precipitate the expansion and eventual domination of the HRE. However, even though the narrative explains that Columbus would eventually come to the Americas using Moorish and other Muslim navigational experience, and knowing that Blacks

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had preceded him, there is still no reference to the free Moorish, Muslim, and Black presence and experiences in the Americas during the colonial era. This is extremely important because Budgett Meakin, in The Moorish Empire: A Historical Epitome (1899), and Sheik Elihu N. Pleasant-Bey in Exhuming of a Nation (2006), explain the expanse of the Moorish empire and its contributions to the Americas. We will delve into those texts soon. However, when it is mentioned that there were Blacks who preceded Columbus, the chapter is dedicated to the Pre-Columbian African presence in America, particularly the Olmec civilization. Yet, as we questioned the narrative of the other Indigenous populations in the Americas, do we only find the Olmec Empire relegated to Middle America, specifically from Mexico to the Yucatan. Shouldn’t we imagine a major Olmec influence on the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and South America? What is often missing from the narratives of the US colonial enterprise regarding the possibility of IAFW/NBCAA people being in the Americas is whether or not there is any evidence of these people in pre-Columbian North American populations. Also, after navigating the narratives of the possibility that Blacks may have preceded Columbus to the Americas, there is no explanation as to what happened to these people. Were they all “killed off” during the expansion of the HRE’s inquisitors and the development of the British, Spanish, French, etc., etc., etcetera, intervention into the North American continent? At this point, that question is rhetorical since the number of Blacks who preceded Columbus can only be conjectured. The Introduction to Black Studies does not construct, as a phase of articulation, the European exploration of the Americas. Yet, in a way, it actually challenges the Zinn narrative of the peopling of the Americas. However, the pre-Columbian African presence in America is slightly subverted when the text explains the “Afro-Mexican Alliance and Struggle” and “Afro-Native American Alliance and Struggle.” Subsequently, the narrative sort of blurs the racial and cultural makeup of the “Mexican” and “Native American” who would be part and partial to the struggles of the African during the enslavement period. These disparate groups would be allies against slavery, but they do not seem to have a shared heritage according to Introduction. The narrative explains that there was a considerable African presence in the Americas that dated nearly one thousand years before the expulsion of the Moors from Europe. It states that “there is significant evidence that Africans did not come to America first on enslavement ships or as crew members and pilots on European ships, but on their own ships perhaps as early as 1200 BCE followed by voyages between 800–700 BCE and again in 1311 and 1312 CE”63 Yet, the “Mexican” and “Native American” populations who assist the enslaved African seem to be separate and distinct from those early African migrations and developers of early America. One can only ask, when

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did the Early African migrants cease to be African and become Mexican or Native American? If Drs. Asante and Mazama’s explication of “African” is accepted, then only those who were enslaved in the Americas post 1619 can be classified as such. Of those migrations and cultural developments, Introduction to Black Studies explains the relationship between the Olmec and Africa via Dr. Van Sertima. However, these Olmec exist only spatially in time. They do not move outside of the signifier Olmec, nor are we led to imagine that they contributed anything to the people and nations north and south of their station in central America. It says, The Olmec civilization . . . is the parent civilization of Mesoamerica informing the development of many subsequent ones. . . . It is also known for its hieroglyphic writing and calendar “which was used throughout early Mesoamerican history and represents an advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, including knowledge of zero . . . heads “portray men with characteristic Olmec features: thick, heavy lips, full cheeks, broad nostrils, almost swollen eyelids and a peculiar close-fitting headdress or helmet.” This helmet is not “peculiar” to Van Sertima. For he sees them as typical helmets used by Nubian soldiers of the 25th Dynasty of Egypt whom he argues came here and contributed to the building of the Olmec civilization. Moreover, nor are the bold features an unsolvable mystery, for they too show an unmistakable Africanoid character and origin.64

Especially significant is the cultural and linguistic connections between the peoples that Van Sertima would be able to identify in his research also. A fourth kind of proof, Van Sertima offers, is the similarities of plants in Africa and Mexico. Among those listed which appear to have been transplanted, he lists the banana, bottle gourd, cotton, Jack bean, yams, and tobacco. Fifthly, linguistic evidence is offered in the form of similarities in Egyptian and Mexican words respectively like Ra for sun in both, and kuphi and copal for sacred incense.65 Van Sertima’s work is truly a cornerstone for this conversation. I hope that I am able to celebrate his brilliance in a way that reinvigorates what he began teaching us not so long ago. However, it must be acknowledged that Van Sertima never asserts throughout his research in Golden Age of the Moors nor Early America Revisited that the mass population of the Americas was made up of African peoples. He asserts, on many occasions, that Africa and its people had a substantial influence on the Americas. He never suggests that the Americas were peopled, in total, from Africa. Even though current studies and research in mitochondria DNA suggests that all of humanity has its genesis in Africa and that the rest of the world was peopled via migrations out of Africa, that theory suggests the migrations

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were hundreds of thousands of years ago. The theories that emerge out of mitochondria research do not explain the cultural developments among people after those migrations. To assert an actual genesis of any group of people on any continent of this planet is extremely difficult. There are even arguments that suggest that there is evidence which suggest that people from the Americas peopled parts of Africa. Therefore, like Van Sertima, there is no intention to assert in any way that the Americas were peopled, in total, by Africans during the Nubian, West African, Moorish migrations over a nearly three-thousand-year history of African seafaring and militarily imperial rule. Rather, we can assert that these people who had been coming to the Americas for more than three thousand years are a part of and partial to the Indigenous populations of the Americas. They also made, outside of the institution of enslavement in the Americas, a substantial contribution to development of South, Middle, and North America. We may also venture to assert that the US colonial narratives which transform the enslaved African during the development of the United States into the modern American NBCAA negates, in total, the historical narrative of their global human experience. Essentially, the more than three-thousand-year presence of IAFW/NBCAA people in America before Columbus became obsolete. The eventual American Indian, Native American, or even Mexican becomes a completely different people in the narrative of the United States’ colonial enterprise. Introduction to Black Studies mentions that the academy contends much of Van Sertima’s research even though he presents a sufficient body of evidence which invites serious consideration. It states, “In a word,” Van Sertima “has demonstrated that Africans came first to America, not as enslaved persons, but as explorers, traders, visitors and built with the Native Americans a great civilization.”66 The issue of contention is the recognition that the African, as recognized by Dr. Karenga, was part and partial to the development of the Americas. These same Africans, as he states, did not begin their careers in the Americas as slaves. Yet, as stated above, Drs. Mazama and Asante suggest that the moniker African American is used “to mean those who were enslaved and their descendants.” Consequently, we do not have a narrative to explain what happened to those Africans of the pre-Columbian era. Neither the Encyclopedia of Black Studies nor Introduction to Black Studies develop a narrative of articulation that fully explains phases two or three. Introduction partially explains the reasons for the Columbus narrative of discovery and the invasions of the HRE into the Americas. It suggests that his major “focus will be placed more on modal experiences than on establishing neat chronological periods in which these experiences took place.” This modal construct of the narrative, while it celebrates Black survival, also

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assimilates the colonial narrative wherein it establishes the enslavement of African people as a monolithic experience. By modal experience, I mean major experiences which defined Black life with Blacks in the roles of both producers and products of history, those who make and are made by these historical experiences—stress will be placed on Blacks as historical actors rather than the object of historical action, struggling to define, defend and develop their interests rather than their being imposed on by others. . . . It will show them then, not simply surviving, but more importantly, self-consciously developing, a process which carries with it both the assumption and insurance of survival.67 Therefore, even though the same chapter, essentially, begins with evidence of the African in America prior to the HRE, that does not seem to be a major experience of Black people. The development of the Meso-American and early North American landscapes which were heavily influenced by African people was not defined as new and hostile. Therefore, the text leapfrogs the pre-Columbian experiences of Blacks in America to what is titled “The Holocaust of Enslavement.”68 The gaps and leaps from one idea to the next contribute to our understanding of who we are as a nation and what functions as the narrative for the continuance of our culture. There are allusions to the missing pages of history; however, we should only focus on those things which will beget a hero or a hero-complex within the culture and the people. The historical narratives will name the individuals who overcame obstacles and impacted the culture. It will name inventions that contributed to the transformation of society. It will name and define to us what is good about where we come from. But it does not tell us where we come from, except slavery. What happens when the majority of a people’s history, which make up the knowledge of their culture, suggests that they only exist because of slavery? In the making of the African in America, the fourth phase of articulation is, of course, the subsequent enslavement of the African in the Americas, especially the early colonies and the US. As stated above, the propagated narrative suggests that there came a need for labor, and the African or Negro was better fit than the Indigenous populations for a myriad of reasons. It does not seem to matter that the Indigenous population is made up of or constitutes a substantial portion of African people in the Americas that were present before 1619. The Black experience, or essentially Black people, in America will now constitute survivors of their Holocaust. Introduction explains, It is clear from all historical evidence that the massive European enslavement and its accompanying violence, destruction and commercial aspect was one of the most catastrophic events in the history of humankind. If one objectively calculates the costs to Africa and Africans in terms of the 50 to 100 million

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lives lost thru mass murder, war, the forcible transfer of populations, and the brutal rigors of the Middle Passage and of enslavement as well as the attendant dehumanization and cultural destruction, one cannot help but conclude that of all the holocausts of history, none surpasses this one.69

It will be the survivors of this dehumanization who would make up the NBCAA population, or the African American. There are only a few mechanisms of the dehumanizing process that need to be reviewed which allow Introduction to develop the narrative of the Black experience. It explains, The Holocaust of enslavement, then, is holocaust which expressed itself in three basic ways as: 1) a morally monstrous destruction of human life—millions of persons killed, whole peoples destroyed; 2) a morally monstrous destruction of human culture—cities, towns, villages, great works of art and literatures; 3) the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility—the destruction of life-chances and the grounds for human aspiration, freedom, dignity and human solidarity with others. It is, in a word, the transformation of people into things and thus engineering their social death.70

I contend that Dr. Karenga’s explication of the African Holocaust is not just a physical phenomenon. Much of the transformation of IAFW people was more narrative than actual. It was and is an intellectual transformation. It was and still is a political transformation. It was then and still is now a linguistic transformation. It must be repeated that in no way is this conversation suggesting that the physical atrocities of the enslavement period in the Americas did not happen. That era still affects all lives in the US. Yet, it could be suggested that one of the greatest atrocities executed against IAFW people was and is a pencil genocide which erased a vast amount of their history and humanity. They need not be, in total, killed off physically. They could be erased from the larger narrative of humanity. It is extremely important to note that Dr. Karenga does humanize, ironically, the African who is undergoing this dehumanizing process. While Zinn makes the African synonymous with the idea of slave and slavery as he uses terminology like “slaves recently from Africa,” Dr. Karenga suggests that using the “category ‘slave’ without a cultural, ethnic, or national qualifier is to suggest the person has no identity outside of being enslaved, that s/ he is a ‘slave’ by nature not by social imposition. But to use the designation enslaved African is to affirm cultural identity and indicate that the African was enslaved, not simply a slave by birth or being.”71 This will become extremely important because, as we find in Meakin’s work, it was a natural phenomenon for the European Christian to be taken as property among the Moors in Africa. He writes, “since the custom of

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enslaving enemies taken in war dates back to the earliest pages of history, and as beyond offering brotherly terms to such of their foes as should accept their prophet, the Mohammedans have made no exception to this practice, it may be inferred that the presence of European slaves in Morocco counts from the very first invasion of Spain. . . . Just before the victorious empire-maker, Yakub el Mansur returned to Morocco with no less than forty thousand Christian captives.”72 Therefore, if we were to use Dr. Karenga’s concepts, we would say that El Mansur was in possession of enslaved Europeans or Christians and not in possession of slaves. The slaving of white Christians by Moors took place in many parts of North Africa, the Caribbean, and North America proper. The slaving of white Christians became so normalized that there would develop a trade for the return of Christian slaves back to Spain, Portugal, France, England etc., etc., etcetera. However, as stated above, when the slaves refused to return to their native country, it was said that the slaves were going Mohammedan, turning Turk, taking the turban, etc.73 In the Caribbean, as reported by Richard Ligon in A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes [sic], 1673, Christian (white) slaves were treated with so much treachery by their Masters that “their sufferings being grown to a great height, and their daily complaining to one another . . . whose spirits were not able to endure slavery, resolved to break through it, or die in the act.”74 Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh reported in No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624–1690, that “Before 1650 . . . the greater victims of man’s inhumanity were the mass of white Christian (slaves) who suffered at the hands of callous, white Christian masters.”75 While we can go on ad infinitum with examples of “white” slavery, it is not the purpose of this conversation to focus so much of our attention on “white” violence exacted upon white Christians. Remember, the major focus of this dialog is to add more to the narrative of IAFW/NBCAA people. But, let’s review a little more on the subject of white slavery. Based on The Narrative of Robert Adams, compiled in the text, White Slaves African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives, many of the “white Christian” slaves would convert to Islam. The term was called “took the Turban.” Paul Baepler explains that, (Joseph) Dupuis’s remarks suggest a fear that the boundary of identity is closely linked to language and that language acquisition—particularly under the duress of captivity—comes perilously close to cultural assimilation. . . . Perhaps it was a real source of fear since as many as two-thirds of the Algerian corsair reis or captains in the seventeenth century were Christian renegades who had served in the professional armies of France, England, or the United Netherlands. We also know that many Christian slaves never returned home and likely “took the

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Turban,” but we know very little about them. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and James Levernier have noted that transculturated (sic) Indian captives often chose to remain silent because of their decision to disassociate themselves from their natal culture, and this may have been the case with returning renegades who chose not to write of their conversion. In addition, Western publishers were less likely to publish accounts of Barbary that went against the prevailing image of a sinister North Africa.76

As mentioned earlier, Powhatan refused to return the Christian or white property to the colonial governors or the colonists. Also, many slaves absconded from the colonial plantation and refused to return. Like Barbary and the idea that the Christian slave was turning Turk, in the Americas it would also be suggested that the run-away slaves or “white Christians” were “going savage.” This would subsequently lead to war between many of the Indigenous populations and those early colonies. The dehumanizing narratives that make the African synonymous with slave is the development of the notion that the African had lived in a state of slavery for most of their cultural development. Dr. Karenga, however, debunks this notion. He writes, “in terms of African involvement, it is true also that Africans enslaved others before the coming and demands of the European. But three other facts must be added to this statement to give a holistic picture. First, African enslavement was in no way like European enslavement.”77 We did this before, but let us do this one more time. If it is in no way like European enslavement, then we must develop another word, term, idea, name, or nomenclature to explain that phenomenon or way of life. It was not slavery. These points, and more, were addressed earlier. It is, however, interesting that Dr. Karenga would compare the brutality of enslavement among western nations to a justice system in Africa wherein captives in warfare, criminals, etc. would be penalized. Justice, as in Africa, does not remove the humanity of the individuals within its system. The slave comparison narrative is part and partial to the US colonial narratives’ ability to placate its atrocious record of brutality against IAFW people. It allows individuals to say, “Africans had slaves too, and they sold their slaves to America.” As we can now see, this notion is far more muddled after understanding that African nations had hundreds of thousands of European slaves and captives which they sold into many ports throughout the world. The constructs of justice via servitude are in no way equivalent to the concept of slavery as an identity. We should not use any language or concept that might attempt to make them seem similar. The last point that has to be addressed is the monopolizing of the global African experience and renaming the whole of a people in terms of a less than three-hundred-year period. To put it another way, IAFW people are not

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African American because of enslavement in the United States of America. We have to consider the fact that more Africans were forcibly removed from the continent of Africa and brought into South American and the Caribbean. Yet, the populations within those island nations or Middle and South American are not collectively referred to as African American. These people identify according to their nation state. When we navigate the narratives that attempt to explain the “why” African people have been rendered “slave” by condition, it’s almost a ubiquitous narrative.78 It is important to note that, for some reason, this narrative seems to primitivize the Native American and also suggest, as does the Zinn narrative, that the Europeans who were coming to the Americas were simply indentured.79 Dr. Karenga explains in his assessment, essentially, what this conversation is asserting. It would be the development of a narrative that would create this monolithic African American identity from the continent of Africa to the Americas as slaves. What is missing from many conversations regarding the narrative of enslavement and the development of NBCAA people as a distinctive race or culture is that much of the narrative was a nineteenth century development. The early encroachments into the West and the African continent by the HRE had nothing to do with the concepts of race as a phenomenon. Rather, the concept of race developed nearly four hundred years later. Essentially, the concept of race which contributes to explaining the Black experience is a phenomenon that would be developed as a narrative which relegates even the Pre-Columbus seafaring Africans in America as slaves. NOTES 1. Author. 2. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, xii–xiii. 3. Moorish Science Temple of America. 4. Ibid. 5. James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me. 6. Joseph McCabe, The New Science and the Story of Evolution, 298. 7. Ibid. 8. Flora L. Shaw, A Tropical Dependency, 42. 9. Joseph McCabe, The Golden Ages of History, 163. 10. Stanley Lane-Poole, The Story of the Moors in Spain, 267. 11. Ibid. 12. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 2. 13. Ibid., 3. 14. Ibid., 7. 15. Ibid., 10.

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16. Ibid., 12. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. “Scotch Indians in Scotland,” 236. 21. Emily C. Bartels, “Too Many Blackamoors,” 305. 22. Ibid., 309. 23. Zinn, 24. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 13, 14. 26. Ibid., 16. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 19. 29. Ibid. 30. William Bartran, Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, 25–6. 31. Zinn, 19. 32. Ibid., 17. 33. Ibid. 34. J. Saunders Redding, They Came in Chains. 35. Zinn, 23. 36. Ibid., 24. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 25–26. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 26. 43. Ibid. 44. Leo Frobenius, Histoire de la Civilisation Africaine, 4. 45. Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo the Mysterious, 10. 46. Edward Said, xii–xiii. 47. Zinn, 27. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., 30–31. 50. Ibid., 30. 51. Ibid. 52. William Eddis, Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive, 64. 53. Ibid., 66. 54. Ibid., 31. 55. J. A. Rogers, 100 Amazing Facts about the Negro with Complete Proof, 36. 56. Jack D. Forbes, African and Native Americans, 55–6. 57. Ibid., 32. 58. J. A. Rogers, 149. 59. Zinn, 26.

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60. Ibid., xix. 61. Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies, 110. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 130. 64. Ibid., 131–32. 65. Ibid., 133. 66. Ibid., 134. 67. Ibid., 131. 68. Ibid., 136. 69. Ibid., 134. 70. Ibid., 135. 71. Ibid. 72. Budgett Meakin, The Moorish Empire: A Historical Epitome, 277–78. 73. Ibid., 283–84. 74. Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, 46. 75. Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the Line, 120. 76. Paul Baepler, White Slaves, African Masters, 42–43. 77. Karenga, 136. 78. Ibid., 137. 79. Ibid., 138.

Chapter Three

So Much Moor, and More Than a Slave

I almost can’t remember what it was like to be free. I do not have a memory of when I could live freely me. My memory doesn’t tell me about my life before the Inter Caetera of the HRE. I only remember what I’ve been told since they came to enslave me. They came with their god to emancipate me from my own. They came with their guns to emancipate me from my home. And they came with their words to emancipate me from my soul. It is now time to Return. Freedom is certain and the twin self of liberty. Libertas Certa . . . Vos fortes Mauri . . .1

In her text, Exorcising Blackness, Trudier Harris states, I have defined ritual initially as a ceremony, one which by countless repetitions has made it traditional among a given group of people or within a given community. Such repetitions are homage to certain beliefs that are vital to the community. . . . To violate the inviolable, as any Black would who touched a white woman . . . is taboo. It upsets the white world view or conception of the universe. Therefore, in order to exorcise the evil and restore the topsy-turvy world to its rightful position, the violator must be symbolically punished.2

Harris’ symbolic punishment is very real and it permeates nearly every aspect of IAFW/NBCAA people’s lives. In many cases, this is in the form of narrative. Narratives inform the social constructs of the society. There had to 79

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be narratives developed to explicate to the burgeoning western world of the sixteenth through seventeenth centuries its sordid hatred for everything and everyone non-Christian (Heathens), which would be supplanted by Blackness in the eighteenth century. Before it was Blackness, however, it was Islam wherein the HRE went into endless wars to curtail Islam’s rise and perpetuation. Before Islam from the eighth century to present, it was necessary for the HRE, from the second through fifth centuries, to systematically eradicate the many fringe religions throughout the Mediterranean world. At each impasse, there was a narrative developed to necessitate the punishment vetted out against the enemies of the HRE. Every appendage of the HRE (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc.) has a cultural narrative which saturates its people with a knowledge and understanding of who needs to be othered. The society must be saturated with tales of boogeymen so that the mere presence of the other is seen as a threat against the sanctity of Christianity and the survival of the populace. These examples will permeate every area of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war)3 within the socializing institutions of the societies. The acculturation process is most thoroughly actualized via narrative, and narrative becomes more efficacious through ritualized performance. Our modern cinema is imbrued with images of Blackness functioning as the other wherein it is juxtaposed with whiteness as the central figure. Blackness must be made into an honorary white via conversion to Christianity, saving white life, or turning completely against Blackness in order to be redeemed. This is so even when Blackness is supposed to be centered within the narrative. Whiteness still functions as the luminary for which Blackness must ascribe itself. We will not spend too much time on this example, but the 2018 film Black Panther immediately comes to mind. The film, produced by Marvel Studios and directed by Ryan Coogler, was heralded during its run in theatres for the portrayal of African people with an agency that had been unimaginable, outside of fantasy, since the Inter Caetera asserted by Pope Alexander VI in 1493. Yet, the film is a prime example of how whiteness functions, even in presumed Black spaces. The film’s champion is not the Black Panther for whom the film is titled or, for the most part, any of the people of African descent in the film. They are too busy committing fratricide and warring against one another. It is the aptly named “colonizer,” agent of the US CIA, who is raised from the dead like a Christ figure who saves the rest of humanity from the warmongering and technologically advanced Africans. The notion that Blackness has been set up only as a representational other for the specter of whiteness to fulfill itself is not new to the ritualization of whiteness’s authority over darkness. The precursor of this takes us back to the expulsion of the Moors

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from Andalusia. And we will see a codification of these ideas in seventeenth century England once they’d imposed themselves on the world stage. William Shakespeare’s portrayals of Moors within his plays, Othello, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, etc., etc., etcetera, although functioning within a Protestant and anti-Catholic (HRE) England, are wonderful examples of how non-Christians function as the blackguard of western society. We know that every society needs an ideal to pit itself against. What is to be considered desirable can only be juxtaposed with the wretched. And Shakespeare’s plays helped to institutionalize antagonism against the non-Protestant Christian elements of English society. His narratives and its saturation into the culture of the English and the eventual British Empire is so ubiquitous that its othering of Blackness permeates our modern society. He would present, via the theater, England’s understanding of why the Moors (non-Christian/Blackamoors) and Blackness itself has to be othered. In a way, it also provided a blueprint for ritualizing the otherness of Islam and the Moors in Christian Europe for Protestants and Catholics alike. In each of the plays, the Moor is more than othered. They are often found to be antithetical to the idealized “whiteness” and Christian-ness of western society. It is extremely reflective of NBCAA people in the US. This otherness has been manufactured and thoroughly refined for mass consumption. It is so prevalent that we often do not see the remnants of the plays’ effects on our cultural constructs. It was just a play, a movie, a song, a poem. We do not often see how those productions within US culture dictate social intercourse or policy. Yet, the culture has been traded all over the planet wherever the British and eventual US colonial enterprises moved their goods. As we have discussed up until this point, its genesis is in the re-affirmation of the HRE in the thirteenth century, the expulsion of the Moors in the fifteenth century, and the development of racial identities with its subsequent hierarchies in the seventeenth century. Race will eventually become synonymous with class and, in some ways, religion. For example, in Shakespeare’s Othello, the title character is a Moorish general employed by the Venetian state. He and Desdemona, a Venetian/ European woman, married in secrecy. Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, is a senator and he subsequently disowns his daughter because of her elopement with Othello. It is not just the secret betrothal that moves Brabantio to repudiate the marriage; it is Desdemona’s union with a Moor, the other, Blackness. That play and all of its nuances would, subsequently, help to shape how Blackness should be othered. James Andreas suggests that the presence of Blackness on a London stage in the seventeenth century helped to foster a contemptuous relationship between whiteness and Blackness. A single quotation from Coleridge indicates what the problem was by the time of the romantics:

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Can we suppose [Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal birth? . . . [N]egroes [were] then known but as slaves. . . . No doubt Desdemona saw Othello’s visage in his [Othello’s] mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as an English audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a disproportionateness [sic], a want of balance in Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least contemplated.4

And so unfurls the sordid plot of this tragedy as found in Othello. This is Trudier Harris’ symbolic punishment made manifest. The Moor is wicked, and if not wicked, it is beneath whiteness and does not compare in value. Moor is, at this time in western history, no longer the instruments of western Enlightenment. They have been exiled, renamed Negro, and assigned the status of a slave in English minds. They are Negro and therefore supposed to be slave. Othello still has deleterious effects on NBCAA people’s psyche. Andreas says that “the play has traumatized African American literature, and indeed Western culture at large, for most of its existence. The racist’s nightmare of biracial sexual relationships between white women and black males—is the paradigm for three great revisions—of the myth: Native Son by Richard Wright, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka.”5 Mr. Andreas missed one, and that’s the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The film stars Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton. Poitier plays a thirty-seven-year-old medical doctor who falls in love with a twenty-threeyear-old European woman who is in her senior year of college. The ultimate plot of the film is that Poitier is of NBCAA descent, and this young woman decides to bring him home to meet her parents and inform them about their recent engagement and soon-to-be marriage. The young woman’s parents, along with Poitier’s, must navigate their own racial and social biases when they are confronted with the news. The film is a nicely developed narrative of the possibilities of the meeting of these two divergent social/ethnic groups because of the taboo relationship of Poitier and Houghton’s characters. It is the American cinema’s homage to Shakespeare’s Othello without ending in a murderous bedroom (bedding) scene. The status of the two men, Othello and Prentice (General and Doctor respectively), is paired with not only younger women but less accomplished women. Even more, it is the Blackness of both men that renders them on par, if not beneath the socially perceived worth of their European counterparts. Neither of these two women is accomplished, and they are both wooed by the tragedies and successes of their male counterparts.

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John Wade Prentice, Poitier’s character like Othello, is about to be sent off to Geneva which, his young wife Joanna, Houghton’s character, joins him like Desdemona does Othello. Matilda (Tillie) Binks, Joanna’s maid, a woman of NBCAA descent, acts in concert with Emilia, Desdemona’s aggressively overprotective maid. She tells Joanna that she would not want a person of her own race to get above himself. This means that Dr. Prentice should not see himself worthy of marrying into a European family. Even though he is a doctor, he is still not qualified, according to Matilda, to marry into that family. It is Othello’s Blackness which disqualifies him from being worthy of Desdemona’s hand in marriage according to her chamber maid Emilia. The similarities between the play and the movie are remarkable. However, before returning to the two works or their implications, we should go back and recover what it means to be or who is a Moor. According to Dr. Jose V. Pimienta-Bey, author of Othello’s Children in the “New World,” Upon reviewing the history of the near-Asian lands, one finds that such places as Canaan and Moab were once extensions of what we now called the African continent. In fact, many historical, theological, and linguistic studies show ethnic connections between Moors and the ancient people of Canaan, Moab, Kush, Judea, and Kemet.6

There are, of course, divergent narratives that attempt to explain the religious and outward (physical) appearance of the Moors. Some authors have claimed that the terms Berber and Moor signify a swarthy European of North Africa and Arab admixture or a Semitic people of Asian and Arian derivation. However, Dr. Pimienta-Bey points out that Moors are a people of black African origin. He writes, “the Berber language is Hamitic and is related to the ancient Egyptian—Webster’s New World Dictionary (3rd ed/1988) refers to Hamitic as referring to the Afroasiatic (sic) language family, including the Berber, Cushitic, and Egyptian languages.”7 He also explains that the “4th century chronicler Claudian indicated that Moors were directly related to the early Nigritians and Ethiopians.”8 Let’s unpack these terms further. According to John G. Jackson, author of “The Empire of the Moors,” The Moors were people who lived in Morocco. That’s the reason they called it that. The word Moor meant Black. It meant Black people. In ancient times all Africans were called Ethiopians or Kushites. And in the Middle Ages the Africans were called Moors. The word Moor literally means Black, so the Moorish people were the Black people. In medieval times the name Moor was not restricted to the inhabitants of Morocco, but it was customary to refer to all Africans as Moors. The highly ambiguous word Negro had not yet been invented. This word Negro came up when the slave-trade came in. In other

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words, you have a lot of little fish floating around in the ocean. They’re little fish and they have various names. But if you put them in cans they all become sardines. 9

Jackson explains that the nineteenth century Oxford English Dictionary suggested that, during the Middle Ages and as late as the seventeenth century, anyone considered to be of very dark complexion or very swarthy were called Moors. The word Moor would be supplanted by the word Negro, and eventually all of the monikers that would shape the identities of NBCAA people would be also. But before we move on, we should address some of the controversies regarding the ethnic, racial, and cultural origins of Moors. Texts written in the Arabic language very rarely used the word Moor to identify particular ethnic groups. For some Arabic chroniclers, distinctions would be made between the non-Arabic speaking people of North Africa. It was, at one point, believed that the term Berber was a pejorative used for many groups of northwestern Africans; however, Berbers could also be referred to as Moors. Along with Berbers being grouped in as Moors, there would also be cultural distinctions like clan names used to identify the people. “In addition, early Christian sources often applied the term Saracen indiscriminately to Muslim populations in general, including the Moors.”10 James Brunson and Runoko Rashidi, in their article “The Moors of Antiquity,” use the Oxford English Dictionary along with Greek, Roman, and Arabic accounts of the terms and people to identify who Moors are. They write, “although scholars generally agree that the word Moor is derived from Mauri, there are profound disagreements on what the word originally meant and how it was applied.” However, “the Romans called Western Africa Mauretania and its inhabitants Mauri (presumably of Phoenician origin meaning ‘western’), whence [the] Spanish Moro, [and the] English Moor. The Berbers, therefore, were the Moors proper, but the term was conventionally applied to all Moslems of Spain and north-western Africa.”11 We are still unpacking the people; therefore, we should also cover the people called Phoenicians and Saracens. According to Drusilla Dunjee Houston, author of Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Cushite colonies were all along the southern shores of Asia and Africa and by the archeological remains, along the southern and eastern coasts of Arabia. The name Cush was given to four great areas, Media, Persia, Susiana, and Aria, to the whole territory between the Indus and Tigris in prehistoric times. In Africa the Ethiopians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Canaanites and Phoenicians were all descendants of Ham—They were emphatically the monument builders on the plains of Shinar and the valley of the Nile from Meroe to Memphis. In southern Arabia they erected wonderful edifices. They were responsible for the

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monuments that dot southern Siberia and in America along the valley of the Mississippi down to Mexico and in Peru their images and monuments stand a “voiceless witness.” This was the ancient Cushite Empire of Ethiopians that covered three worlds.12

Houston traces these people from Asia, to Africa, to America (North, Middle, and South). As for the Saracen nomenclature, Brunson and Rashidi state that “while many scholars generally agree that the word Saracen is of Afro-Asiatic origin, it is ‘far from certain’ that it means ‘Easterner.’” The general belief is that “the Saracens were originally nomadic tribes of the Arabian and Syrian deserts, early known as peoples who attacked the borders of the Roman Empire.” They also point out that “representations of Black Saracen giants in medieval literature begin with Vernagu—found in the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle of Charlemagne. Dated to the early fourteenth century, the Rouland and Vernagu describes a duel between the ‘black as pitch’ Saracen—Vernagu, and the Christian knight Roland.”13 Again, the Arab world often referred to Moors as Berber, some Christians often called them Saracens, and others might call them Blackamoores. It is similar to Queen Elizabeth’s edicts to export the Negars and Blackamoores. Bartels suggested that these were two different people groups wherein the Negars were from West Africa and the Blackamoores were from North Africa. However, as will be demonstrated, it would be similar to trying to determine the difference between a “black person” and an African American. The individual may look “Black,” but if they are from the Caribbean they may not consider themselves African American. The problem is that the nomenclature, no matter the individual preference, would be applied and that nomem would be accompanied by a particular cultural narrative. Many narratives of Moors appear to be replete with the fantastical, as found in medieval literature. This means that some of the narratives have turned the people into, more often than not, boogie men in the western psyche. They have been written as black-as-night and other-worldly. This also contributes to the opprobrium or disdain of Blackness. Their skin is black, and therefore so too their souls. So, we see this Blackness and otherness in the very dark complexion of Sidney Poitier brilliantly juxtaposed with the paleness of Houghton. This could have been the same physical characteristics that would have created the racial undertones of Shakespeare’s Othello. Since indeed, the Moors of his day would have been as dark or swarthy in complexion as Poitier. It is not just in their Blackness (skin complexion), but their character also served as the antithesis of whiteness. And because of this, the English audience would have considered Othello subhuman.

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Alden Vaughan, author of “Before Othello,” says that “representations of sub-Saharan Africans circulating in Elizabethan England generally focused on difference, implying their natural inferiority and non-assimilability into English notions of civility and proper appearance. The sub-Saharan Africans’ ‘black’ skin and drastically unfamiliar customs and convictions, the evidence suggests, set them apart in English eyes and imaginations as a special category of humankind.”14 While Vaughan’s ideas are fitting in explaining Elizabethan England’s derision of Blackness, it is not exacting. The disdain was also because of the many wars between Andalusia and England, a rejection of Catholicism and the Pope of Rome, the appellation of infidel imposed on all non-Protestant Christians, especially Blackamoors, etc., etc., etcetera. The discrimination, while at the outset based on individuals who were neither English or Protestant, evolved into a scorn or othering of Blackness itself. Blackness would become associated with non-Christian infidel and unassimilable. The Manichean psychosis that would develop in its wake demonstrates itself in the concept that light must vanquish, defeat, subjugate, master, control, and even govern all things dark. It is a very complicated, yet simple, conceptualization. The way the narratives of a people are developed and written into the society determines the overall perceptions of the people. If, as the narrative of the US is told, the Negro was a slave to a white master, then the structure of the society must manifest itself via that narrative. Therefore, we see in our twenty-first century reality whiteness functioning, whether actually or figuratively, as dominant and all other “people of color” as subordinate. Just as the Moors were exiled from Europe and eventually ritualized as enemies of the people, this would be made equally true in North America. The United States of America would also diligently erase the narratives of Moors from the culture. The destruction of the Moorish libraries was particularly vicious because it was not only inspired by religious narrowness and bigotry. Hatred of the dark invaders kindled the bonfires. The Church at that time too saw most of this foreign learning as something evil, even demonic. The number system that we use today, for example, brought in by the Moors from India, was seen as late as the seventeenth century in some parts of Europe as signs of the devil. It became a religious mission for men like (Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros) Ximenes and his successors to erase from history all memory of the Moors. Ximenes even induced the Spanish sovereigns to outlaw the public baths, making cleanliness antithetical to godliness. Fortunately for the scientific renaissance, key Moorish works had already been translated and circulated, even smuggled secretly into the academies, significant seminal inventions introduced and established before these barbaric attempts at an intellectual holocaust.15

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The marginalization of Moors in the West is an outgrowth of the Catholic Church’s expulsion of Moors from Andalusia, the mass migration of Jews and Moors into England, France, Germany, etc., and so much more. And as stated above, just as the historical narrative of the West began with their ouster, so too did the eraser of their contributions to all humanity. For more on the thought or culture of medieval Europe as a haven for contempt of all things Moorish, Brunson and Rashidi point out that, (D)uring the Middle Ages, because of his dark complexion and Islamic faith, the Moor became in Europe a symbol of guile, evil and hate. In medieval literature, demonic figures were commonly depicted with black faces. Among Satan’s titles in medieval folklore were: “Black Knight,” “Black Man,” “Black Ethiopian,” and “Big Negro.” In the Cantiga 185 of King Alfonso the Wise of Spain (1254–86), three Moors attacking the Castle of Chincoya are described as “black as Satan.”16

It is not ironic that the term “heathen,” used by the Christian church during the Inquisition and Reconquista, was directed against the practice of Islam by Moors and their many converts. In his Golden Age of the Moors, Van Sertima points out that there was a systematic theft and translation of Moorish treaties, texts, poetry, sciences, philosophies, and literatures by Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, and German scholars, with no tribute to the Moorish source of the information. Somewhere, deep down inside, all of us who come out of the traditions and culture which forms African American identity know that something has been stripped from us. We know that there is something about our history that is missing. And many of us have a penetrating desire to piece back together or remember our historical narratives. IAFW/NBCAA people ritualistic reconstruct our history in fragments. We begin in, often, the Nile Valley. We cross the Sahara to visit the West African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. And we began our American leg of the journey of our history with the Moors being driven from Spain and slavery. The expurgation of Moorish history from our larger narrative is phenomenological and ontological. We are living and experiencing life the way the narrative has been told to us. And a great portion of our reality has been purged. We can understand why the western world makes caricatures of the military general Othello and the extremely successful Dr. Prentice. They are both displaced. Othello is in Venice as a general, helping them to fight against the Turks, his own kinsmen. And Dr. Prentice is about to leave for Geneva, Switzerland to work for the World Health Organization. He will be displaced from his home in Florida and his Bahamian roots. Dr. Prentice and Othello are displaced outsiders, others within a Manichean narrative.

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Narratives like Othello and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (edutainment) must fulfill the disdain for Moors among a western audience. The western world had overthrown the barbarous Moors. The Moor, as Othello, who is capable of murdering the apotheosis of white innocence in their own bed, has to be seen as an antithesis of their goodness or godliness. Only a mind as black as the devil could conceive such an act. And Dr. Prentice cannot be worthy of the unavailing whiteness of Joanna no matter his accomplishments in life. It is not the western world’s responsibility to teach, show, or explicate the fullness of Moorish history, the Moors, or IAFW people in general. It is IAFW people’s responsibility to remember themselves. Moorish history must be reasserted into the larger narrative of what it means to be Indian, Black, African American, etc., etc., etcetera. PART II OF CHAPTER III—MOORS IN AMERICA An Encomium for the MSTA Because of the narratives within western culture that denigrate IAFW/NBCAA people in world history, we either know very little about or we often shun the more than seven-hundred-year period when the Moors were in Europe effectuating their transition from dark aged Europe to Renaissance. However, in 1913, Prophet Noble Drew Ali developed the MSTA to engage the legacy of Moorish history, reimagine IAFW people of the twentieth century, and assert that there is no such thing as a Negro or Colored person. Ali, as we will converse about briefly, would re-introduce a narrative of IAFW (Moorish) history and culture that has infected nearly every part of Black life in the US. And ironically, many IAFW/NBCAA people have no idea how his ideas permeate so much of modern African American culture. Noble Drew Ali, while essentially the founder of the MSTA, is also the catalyst for the major shift from IAFW/NBCAA people converting from the religious faith of Christianity in North America to Islam.17 His life, or the narrative about his life, is intriguing. Neither Ali, nor any of the members of the MSTA, actually wrote a full biography of the Prophet. Consequently, the life of Ali and the modern or present-day philosophies of many of the Ministers, Sheiks, and teachers of Moorish Science are as controversial or confusing as the last days of Ali’s life, and much of it is filled with mystery and mystification. Ali himself was mystical. Yet he was a real and tangible individual. The only thing that seems to be resolved among members of the MSTA is the date of Ali’s birth. Ali was born Timothy Drew on January 8, 1886, in North Carolina. In his text, What Your History Books Failed To Tell

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You, Azeem Hopkins-Bey writes that he was born in “Samsonville, North Carolina.”18 According to Noble Timothy Myers-EL, Ali was born or “manifested in Simpson, North Carolina, the city was Greenville—the county of Pitt.”19 Myers-EL goes on to write, Drew was born near a mysterious triangle of Moorish sounding locations, to the northeast of Greenville therein lies Mooresville, North Carolina to the northwest lies (sic) Morristown, Tennessee, and Morganton, N.C. This area is not where Drew was raised (western N.C.) which is the mountainous terrain that many so-called renegade Cherokees escaped during the “Trail of Tears.”20

The 1839 Indian Removal Act that was signed by then President Andrew Jackson will become important to this conversation later, but let’s continue a little more with the Prophet. It has been suggested by members of the MSTA that Ali’s father was a Moroccan or a formerly enslaved African and his mother was a Cherokee Indian, formerly enslaved African, or a Canaanite descendant from the biblical land of Canaan. His mother is said to have died when Ali was “very young and he was raised by an aunt.”21 Myers-EL states that at the age of seven, Ali “escaped a fire that claimed his abusive aunt’s life” and shortly after being “adopted by Cherokee Indians in the mountainous region of western North Carolina; Drew Ali had a revelation that God was with him. In 1902 at the age of sixteen Ali became a merchant sea mariner and traveled to Egypt and other overseas nations.”22 While there is more in the life of Prophet Ali that is extremely interesting, Susan Nance recorded one of the most profound and fascinating examples in her article “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple.” She mentions that many Moorish Americans “retained the eclectic Western esoteric spirit of (Ali’s) religious ideas in the stories surrounding the prophet’s mysterious early life.”23 Quoting from Peter Wilson’s Sacred Drift, Nance says that much of Ali’s lore “was perhaps initiated by Ali himself.” She continues, Drew’s father was said to have been of Moorish extraction, his mother of Cherokee ancestry. By the early 1880’s . . . the Drew family had settled in Newark, New Jersey, where they are said to have met and studied with “Master Adept” Jamal al-Din al Afghani, who visited the US in the winter of 1882–83. . . . According to most authors, Drew knew nothing of any deeper mysteries until his visit to the orient, sometime before 1912. Aged sixteen he shipped out as a merchant seaman—some say he took a job as a magician in a traveling circus (he is also said to have worked as a railway expressman(sic))—and somehow ended up in Egypt. There he met the last priest of an ancient cult of High Magic who took him to the Pyramid of Cheops, led him in blindfolded, and abandoned him. When Drew found his way out unaided the magus recognized him as a

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potential adept and offered him initiation. . . . In Egypt his prophecy manifested as a book, the “Circle Seven Koran,” or it might have been in Mecca, where he was somehow empowered by Sultan Abdul Aziz al Sa’ud, ruler of the city and later the whole country.24

Either way, Ali went to Egypt as Timothy Drew and returned to America as Noble Drew Ali. In 1913, Ali founded the Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey. This, however, would not last long. There would be a flowering of many more temples with many different names. In 1915–16, Ali “and part of his (Canaanite Temple) movement made a break and created the Holy Moabite Temple of Science of the World.” Also, in 1916 Ali “founded the Moorish Divine and National Movement of North America.”25 In each of the temples, Ali taught “a return to Islam was necessary for Black Americans to truly ‘know themselves.’ (He also) taught the ‘Five Divine Holy Principles’ of Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, and Justice.”26 Susan Nance writes that “All along, Ali had espoused a law-and-order patriotism upon which the respectable exoticization (sic) of his religion was contingent.”27 The most important contribution to the MSTA Ali made was his Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple. It seems that Ali became acquainted with the history and system of enslavement in the US while traveling in Egypt and Mecca as there is no record of him having received a traditional US school education. Ali would eventually move to Chicago in either the latter part of the nineteen-teens or the early twenties. However, there are no exact dates for the actual founding of the Moorish Science Temple in Chicago. Because of the fledgling, then burgeoning Chicago Defender newspaper, Ali’s movement would grow across several states, with Moorish scientists opening temples across America. In the beginning, the Defender published flattering articles about Ali and his movement, several times referring to Ali as a prophet. It also advertised many of the products that were developed by Ali himself, (i.e., a Moorish Bath Compound, herbal teas, Mineral and Healing oil, “Moorish Body Builder and Blood Purifier.”)28 Ali’s “circus” history may have lots to do with his knowledge of tonics and herbal remedies since, during the later portion of the nineteenth and earlier portion of the twentieth century, traveling circuses were well known for their “Gypsy” tonics and cure-alls. During his time in Chicago, Ali would foster the building of many small businesses within the Black community. Myers-EL writes that Ali “provided a platform that encouraged establishment of collectively owned small businesses, and other ventures strengthening the economic wherewithal of the Moors. This manifested in grocery stores, coffee shops, laundromats, restaurants, variety stores, and shoe repair shops.”29 Nance reports that Ali would

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become prominent in Chicago area politics also. She says that “Ali’s visit to Chicago’s Republican postmaster implied a desire to make a place for himself in (the) network of political favors, perhaps in hope of becoming a broker—himself.”30 By 1928 Ali and his Moorish Science Temple members were a major part of the Chicago landscape and community. Ali could apply for parade permits and be escorted by a squad of European police. Nance states that “an escort of white police, so despised and feared by many Black Chicagoans, nonetheless signaled the acceptance of the Moors within Daniel Jackson’s Second Ward Political machine.”31 Also in that year, Ali would establish the Moorish Guide Newspaper. The four primary goals of the Moorish paper were to “dispense charity and provide for the mutual assistance of its members in times of distress.” (The newspaper) “would aid in the improvement of health and encourage the ownership of better homes.” It would also “find employment for members, and to teach those fundamental principles desired for (a Moorish American) civilization.”32 The next year, Ali would be mired in the controversial death of a Sheik that he appointed to oversee another temple. Three weeks after he was seized by authorities, Ali was released from prison. The Chicago Defender, after publishing so many glaring reports on the prophet’s travels and business dealings, began to scorn the profit as a common southern migrant and a fraud. Shortly thereafter, Ali died in his apartment. Rumors circulated that Ali’s death, following his release from prison, was due to the beating that he’d received while in police custody. Members close to Ali say that after his return, he simply lay down on the lap of a fellow Moor and passed out. It became part of the lore of Ali. He had been sent by Allah to do a job. Once that job was done, he was free to move on. The Circle 7 Holy Koran (Koran) that Ali compiled was garnered from information that he received while he was in ancient Egypt (KMT) and Mecca. It is less than 120 pages in length, making it as easy to read as any of the other major religious texts (i.e., The Holy Bible, The Qur’an, the Kabala, etc.). It is constructed in three parts: the creation of man, the life and message of Jesus the Christ, (or the missing eighteen years of Jesus’ life), and Ali’s wisdom teachings to members of the MSTA. The foundation of Ali’s philosophy is his contention that there is no such person as a Negro, Black, or Colored. Ali writes, “according to all true and divine records of the human race there is no negro(sic), black, or colored race attached to the human family, because all the inhabitants of Africa were and are of the human race, descendants of the ancient Canaanite nation from the holy land of Canaan.”33 He suggests that “the nationality of the Moors was taken away in 1774 and the word negro, black and colored, was given to the Asiatics (sic) of America who were of Moorish descent, because they

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honored not the principles of their mother and father and strayed after the gods of Europe of whom they knew nothing.”34 What actually took place in 1774 which constitutes the removal of Moorish nationality is not explained in detail in The Circle 7 Holy Koran. We do know that 1774 is the year in which the thirteen colonies officially established their Articles of Association in rejection of British parliament’s “Coercive Acts” and more. At the same time Britain is in mutual and military support of the Sultanate of Morocco in its ongoing wars against Spain. France and Spain are at war against continental African nations and they are recruiting African/ Moorish mercenaries and transporting them across the Atlantic into the Americas to bolster their troops against the expansion of the thirteen colonies southward into Florida and westward across the Mississippi. Spain is actively fighting wars in the Asian Pacific against Moros and transporting captives into Mexico and other parts of the Americas. All of this is of extreme import in broadening the scope of IAFW/NBCAA identity, not only in the Americas but everywhere these nations have been in either conflict or accord. Each of these nation states were vying for trade resources, territories, and even the citizenship of inhabitants of the Americas. They were also adding to the populations of the Americas, bringing in peoples who would fall under the Asiatic descriptor within Ali’s Koran. Essentially, from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, many, many, many Moors, or people who were referred to as Moorish/Moro, were coming into the Americas. And this would, possibly, necessitate classifications of nationality. In international law, nationality is a legal identification of an individual; however, this would not be codified until 1948 in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Prior to our modern codification of nationality, identifying the difference between a nation and state remained the subject of dispute within the US from its founding in the eighteenth century. One such case was the Cherokee Nation verses the State of Georgia in 1831. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing in dissent, suggested that, The terms “state” and “nation” are used in the law of nations, as well as in common parlance, as importing the same thing; and to imply a body of men united together to procure their mutual safety and advantage by means of this union. Such a society has its affairs and interests to manage; it deliberates, and takes resolutions in common, and thus becomes a moral person, having an understanding and a will particular to itself, and is susceptible of obligations and laws.35 (emphasis added)

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The case did not bode well for the Cherokee as it determined that they did not constitute a free and sovereign nation, rather a “dominated domestic, dependent nation.” Nationality is supposed to determine the sovereign state’s jurisdiction over individuals within the state and, via international law, secures the protections of the individual within the state and the state against being infringed upon from other states. Obviously, the Cherokee had little to no international support to secure its claims as a free and sovereign nation. What then would be the functional status of a subjected people, via warfare and enslavement, who had not been rendered a plebiscite to determine their status within state and international law? Establishing nationality is done by birth within the particular state’s territory (jus soli), by descent via mother or father who was a national of the particular state (jus sanguinis), or by naturalization, willful acceptance of becoming a subject of the state. There is a rule within customary law that indicates the individual must not only be born within the state, but they must also be subject to the jurisdiction of the state via birth certification. Individuals can be born into a territorial jurisdiction of a particular state but not be subject to the laws of the state. Also attached to Ali’s assertion of nationality is a non-written adhesion clause wherein the law suggests that an individual has a nationality as an inheritance from one of or both parents, even in the event that the individual is born in a foreign state and they become unwittingly subject to the laws of said state. The Moorish Science Temple of America asserts this birthright nationality as the foundation of jus sanguinis law. But wherein did the Moors, en-masse, reject the principles of their mothers and fathers, whether it be religious conversion or willingly becoming the subject of another crown, nation, or sovereign state? According to Noble Drew Ali, the history of the Moors in the United States had been removed, and the narrative of IAFW people had been changed. The subsequent consequence is forgoing a fuller historical narrative of IAFW (African) people in the Americas prior to 1492. This narrative must encompass the mass movement of Moors and “other people of color” into the Americas unencumbered by whips and chains, and, of course, the millions who were enslaved during the MAAFA. As pointed out above, the nomenclature African American is essentially synonymous with enslaved Africans in the United States. It does not, however, apply in Canada, the Caribbean, Middle America, or South America, even for those who are descendants of enslaved continental Africans or the Indigenous people of America. But what did all those other Africans’ (IAFW people who were coming to the Americas unbound) narratives of existence become relegated to? Even though IAFW/NBCAA people outside of the US do not adhere to the

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African American appellation, somehow their narratives also coalesce into a singularity. It has essentially developed into a recital that relegated all Black bodies the progeny of “slaves,” no matter where they have been found in the Americas or elsewhere. We are bombarded with the statement, when IAFW (Africans) are found outside of the continent of Africa, that “they must have been slaves.” Have all of these people been relegated in international law as dominated subjects or have they regained their rights to claim sovereignty under the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? A fuller address of this must be handled in another book. Noble Drew Ali, within the Moorish Science Temple of America, is a prophet and it is believed that he was the recipient of a special inspiration or revelation. According to Dr. Jose V. Pimienta-Bey, The “elders” and “holy men/women” of many indigenous societies are traditionally charged with helping present generations better chart their future course as a people. They have sought to do so by making certain that their respective peoples did not stray from the harmony-inducing spiritual traditions which had sustained them. These elders and holy men often postulate that all things were interdependent and inter-connected, especially when it came to Humanity and the living earth. If people forgot this essential tenet they were customarily warned that they were courting disaster.36

Drew Ali also believed he was divining hidden knowledge of African Civilizations to African people in America who had lost contact with their historical selves and historical narratives. Within his Koran, he explicated this new history of African people. He suggested that along his travels around the world he’d never come in contact with people called Negro, Black, or Colored among the human family. And his “Koran contains ancient truths held secret by the Muslims of India, Egypt, and Palestine but now revealed to African Americas.”37 Ali writes, “Time never was when man was not.” If life of man at any time began, a time would come when it would end. “The thoughts of Allah cannot be circumscribed. No finite mind can comprehend things infinite. All finite things are subject to change. All finite things will cease to be because there was a time when they were not.”—“But man himself is not the body, nor the soul; he is the spirit and a part of Allah.” Creative Fate gave to man, to spirit-man, a soul that he might function on the plane of soul; gave him a body of the flesh, that he might function on the plane of things made manifest. Why did creative Fate give to spirit-man a soul that he might function on the plane of soul? Why did creative Fate give to soul a body of the flesh that he might function on the plane of things that are made manifest?38

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Ali describes man as a divine being. Nance suggests that the whole of the text “enable(s) one’s higher self to conquer the carnal or lower self in order to experience peace and abundance in life,”39 but there is so much more than man’s ability to raise him/herself toward a higher self, written into The Circle 7 Holy Koran. In the above passage alone, Drew Ali brilliantly challenges the theory of evolution and creationism both. By suggesting that time never was when man was not, Drew Ali proposes an alternate beingness of humanity. Man did not evolve from a lower state, as that would suggest a time when man did not exist. And subsequently, because there was never a time when man was not, there can never be a time when man is not. Ultimately, there is no ending to the existence of man. Man is neither body nor soul but existence within Allah. The intent of this conversation is not to adjudicate evolution, creationism, or any other narrative that attempts to explain reality. Rather, we can see that Drew Ali had come upon a specific form of knowledge and information that was not cultivated in the Americas among the majority of IAFW/NBCAA people. As such, there has been, and still is, contention over the validity of Noble Drew Ali’s Koran since, it is argued, much of the text is taken from The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, first published in 1907.40 According to Noble Timothy Myers-EL, “Noble Drew Ali was accused of plagiarizing his Holy Koran Circle (7)—Drew’s Holy Koran has also been traced to ‘Unto Thee I Grant’ (1925)—Published by the Supreme Lodge of Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rose Crucis (Amoroc) (Rosicrucians). Its title was previously ‘Infinite Wisdom’ published in 1923. Its translator Sri Ramatherio (aka Harvey Spencer Lewis) claims the book was written in 1760 and called the ‘Economy of Life’ by Tibetan monks (The Tibetan copy was translated in 1749).”41 Dr. Pimienta-Bey and others have explained how the ancient world was permeated with so-called secret societies and the wisdoms that Drew Ali brought together in his Koran. According to Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena, “like the 16th century Hermeticists and Free Masons, Rosicrucians, or those who claimed to speak for them, advocated the direction of society by an elite of enlightened men in possession of true magical and scientific knowledge”42 from the KMTic priesthood. Dr. Pimienta-Bey says that An official publication of the Rosicrucian Society in the Americas (AMORC) traces Rosicrucian origins back to Akhenaton, who is called the “traditional Grand Master of The Ancient Egyptian Brotherhood of 1350 BC”—The pamphlet states that such knowledge was then passed on to other “great masters and teachers,” among whom was the illustrious King Solomon. Amazingly,

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a primary motif of the Rosicrucians is the “Seal of Solomon,” which is also reflected in the Moroccan flag.43

The nation of Morocco is significant to Ali’s philosophies because Ali asserts that the empire of Morocco (not the protectorate founded under French rule in 1912, rather the empire that dates back to the eighth century CE) governed the cultural and political organization of IAFW (Moorish) people in pre-Columbian America. Dr. Pimienta-Bey explains that Cush is now present-day Ethiopia, and many secret societies such as the Masons attest to the historical legacy of the people of Cush and their migrations out and throughout all of Africa. He writes, “in ‘The Constitutions of The Free-Masons’ (London, 1734), the old English text recounts some significant dates, persons, and events which are relevant to Masonic history. The text refers to ‘Cush,’ ‘Ham’s eldest’ as well as ‘Phut, or Phuts (now called Fez)’ which specifically states it is in ‘West Africa.’”44 Also central to Ali’s prophecy is the narrative of the Hamitic people and a spiritual leader of those people named Jesus. By chronicling the missing eighteen years of Jesus’ life, Ali attempts to demonstrate two things. One is that Jesus was an African and he studied among other Africans in ancient Egypt. And the other is that each and every NBCAA could become as spiritually adept as Jesus himself. He also, according to pamphlets and fliers sent out by the MST, attempted to demonstrate that spirituality by performing miracles such as healing the sick and escaping from bondage by ropes. Noble Drew Ali would actually perform for audiences to demonstrate that he was indeed a spiritual adept. The later portion of his Koran deals primarily with what he titles, “Holy Instructions.” Consequently, his instructions appear to be similar to the Medu Netcher (MDU NTR - Divine Speech). Each chapter appears to be similar to ancient texts written by or attributed to Egyptian sages such as Ptah-Hotep, Kagemni, Kheti, Amenomope, etc., etc., etcetera. The wisdom teachings in his text are reminiscent of the wisdom teachings found in the Husia and Kemet and the African World View by Drs. Karenga and Carruthers.45 What is truly remarkable about Noble Drew Ali’s translations or compilations of these wisdom texts is that he was translating or presenting the ancient wisdoms during the early parts of the twentieth century when there were only a handful of Egyptologists, (i.e., Budge and Maspero of the nineteenth century). Ali’s Koran ends with a declaration for all members of the Moorish Science Temple. He writes, 1.  That the world may hear and know the truth, that among the descendants of Africa there is still much wisdom to be learned in these days for

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the redemption of the sons of men under Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, and Justice. 2.  We, as a clean and pure nation descended from the inhabitants of Africa, do not desire to amalgamate or marry into the families of the pale skin nations of Europe. Neither serve the gods of their religion, because our forefathers are the true and divine founders of the first religious creed, for the redemption and salvation of mankind on earth. 3.  Therefore, we are returning the Church and Christianity back to the European Nations, as it was prepared by their forefathers for their earthly salvation. 4.  While we, the Moorish Americans are returning to Islam, which was founded by our forefathers for our earthly and divine salvation.46 His declaration is a charge against the HRE and the many wars of conquest it has waged against Islam since the sixth century. Also, very important in Noble Drew Ali’s declaration is that he recognizes that the Moors in America are of African descent. His movement, his text, and the MSTA still permeates so much of Black life and African American culture. It is important to note that there is a claim within the current MSTA that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam (NOI), was an early member of the MST under Drew Ali. And it is the claim of the NOI that Islam is the natural religion of the Asiatic Black Man in North America. Some of Noble Drew Ali’s assertions are vague in that he doesn’t fully qualify the claims of the people of African descent being Asiatic except to assert that the whole of earth was named Asia at the dawn of civilization; therefore, the first peoples should be identified as Asiatic. However, when Martin Bernal, in Black Athena, and other western scholars use the term Asiatic, they are referring to a Semitic (mixed) branch of the human family and not solely an African stock. However, many of Drew Ali’s claims of a pure Cushitic or Ethiopian lineage is supported by other intellectuals such as Dr. Asa Hilliard,47 J. A. Rogers,48 Drusilla Dunjee Houston,49 George G. M. James,50 Molefi Kete Asante,51 Cheikh Anta Diop,52 Dr. John Henrick Clarke,53 Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-jochannan,54 and Dr. Ivan Van Sertima.55 None of these individuals seem to have done so to substantiate the claims made by Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple of America. However, like Houston, these individuals assert that IAFW/NBCAA people have a history that pre-dates their enslavement. Therefore, the juxtaposition of the nomen African America with descendant of slaves belies a fuller narrative and concomitantly a fuller humanity.

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PART III OF CHAPTER III—HOW SHOULD I SEE MYSELF, AND WHAT SHOULD I CALL MYSELF Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in his text A Conflict of Visions, explicates the difference between a vision (ideal of thought individuals or groups perceive to be true) and a paradigm (the archetype or standard for which people govern their lives). He reasons that “a vision is an almost instinctive sense of what things are and how they work.”56 For Sowell, visions are not laws, and there are no theories to institute visions; therefore, they are not paradigms. However, a vision could become a paradigm with the proper application. He explains: (V)isions may lead to paradigms, whether in science or in politics, economics, law, or other fields, but visions and paradigms are different stages in the intellectual process. Whether in science or in social thought, visions or inspirations come first, and are subsequently systematized into paradigms, which embrace specific theories, and their narrowly focused hypotheses, which can be tested against evidence.57

The shift which will allow IAFW people to go from envisioning a fuller narrative of what it means to be African American to the paradigm wherein they function politically, socially, economically, etc. as more than the outgrowth or slavery is extremely necessary. The shift allows IAFW people to reclaim the historical narrative of existence before the Columbian error (era). The shift associates IAFW people with the Americas not as slave imports but as Indigenous stakeholders in the historical development of this part of the globe. The shift repositions the authoritative structure of the societies in which IAFW people reside. And, most importantly, the paradigm shift gives them back their full humanity. So far, we have conversed about the US cultural narrative that suggests that to be African American means being the progeny of enslaved Africans (from Africa specifically) during the sixteenth–nineteenth centuries. We have conversed about the multiple migrations of African people into the Americas prior to the enslavement period. And we have covered the alternative narrative of the Black experience in the west as covered by the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and Prophet Noble Drew Ali. We are not done with adding to the narrative of IAFW/NBCAA people’s historical narratives in America, but we should stop to think whether or not what we have discussed so far can take the visions of us knowing and if knowing can manifest itself into a paradigm change. One of the most important twentieth-century activist authors, scholars, and teachers, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, explains in Christopher Columbus and the

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Afrikan Holocaust that the paradigm which much of the known world lives under today was done so by mental conquest. “The greatest achievement” he says, “of the Europeans was the conquest of the mind of their victims through a series of myths.”58 These myths, he goes on to point out, are “the myth of a people waiting in darkness for another people to bring them the light, the myth of a people without a legitimate God, the myth of the primitive and the aborigine, (and) the myth of the invader and conqueror as a civilizer.”59 The myths that vitiate so much of the human family with narratives that suggest that it was only after the expulsion of the Moors from Europe that humanity would be able to explore the Americas (new world) is, essentially, perverted. It subverts IAFW people’s ability to see themselves as viable, contributing members in society. And, the irony is that it was done so to a people who had developed vast social, political, economic institutions, and confederated nation states at a time before European nations “had names, (produced) durable shoes or houses with windows.”60 How is it that Dr. Clarke is able to make such claims? Not only are his claims and assertions important, they are essential to questioning the narratives that have taught us who we are in the Americas. It is important to note that nowhere in mainstream United States is it taught that there were ever African or American nations or people more civil or advanced than a European nation. The narratives always suggest that western nations brought civilization to the heathen or savage groups of people they invaded. Those narratives suggest that there was a culture in those places, but they do not equal or surpass European culture in any way. Remember, we mentioned the work of Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire: Book 1, Nations of the Cushite Empire. Marvelous Facts from Authentic Records because she asserted that Ethiopians or Cushites navigated nearly the whole of the ancient world. The people were part and partial to the populations of three continents. And they were here in the Americas when the Moorish exile allowed Spain and Portugal to journey west across the Atlantic Ocean to encounter the “savage” nations that they would bring civility to. In Peru, the Iberian “civilizers” recorded their encounters with the IAFW people they encountered. Francisco Pizarro is accredited for the conquest of the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca. One of Pizarro’s companions writes of the occasion: For when, either in ancient or modern times, have such great exploits been achieved by so few against so many, over so many climes, across so many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and unknown? Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Our Spaniards, being few in number, never having more than 200 or 300 hundred men together, and sometimes only

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100 and even fewer, have, in our times, conquered more territory than has ever been known before, or than all the faithful and infidel princes possess.61

The Spanish conquistador knew that they had been given the authority of the HRE to reduce all infidels (Indigenous, Muslims, Jews, Moors) to servitude. They knew they were in the Americas to conquer and bring back to Europe all the spoils of their conquest, especially the wealth in gold and trade goods that the Moorish empire controlled. The eyewitnesses recorded their impression of Emperor Atahualpa. “On the next morning a messenger from Atahualpa arrived, and the Governor said to him, ‘Tell your lord to come when and how he pleases, and that, in what way soever [sic] he may come, I will receive him as a friend and brother. I pray that he may come quickly, for I desire to see him. No harm or insult will befall him.’” The Emperor of the Peruvian highlands came in full grandiosity and revelry to meet this “governor” of the HRE. In order to have a full picture of the narrative, an account of Atahualpa’s pageantry should be given. The participant in the conquest continues: First came a squadron of Indians dressed in cloths of different colors, like a chessboard. They advanced, removing the straws from the ground and sweeping the road. Next came three squadrons in different dresses, dancing and singing. Then came a number of men in armor, large metal plates, and crowns of gold and silver. So great was the amount of furniture of gold and silver which they bore, that it was a marvel to observe how the sun glinted upon it. Among them came the figure of Atahuallpa in a very fine litter with the ends of its timbers covered in silver. Eighty lords carried him on their shoulders, all wearing very rich blue livery. Atahuallpa himself was very richly dressed, with his crown on his head and a collar of large emeralds around his neck. He sat on a small stool with a rich saddle cushion resting on his litter.62 The litter was lined with parrot feathers of many colors and decorated with plates of gold and silver.63

Atahualpa was not coming for war, rather, to receive a “friend and brother.” If we were to traverse this conversation slowly, the first thing we should focus on is that the IAFW people were not naked without culture or refinement. The brilliance with which they presented themselves far outpaced anything recorded within the HRE at that time in human history. One of the only narratives of such pomp was recorded for Khan Khan Mansa Musa, an individual noted for single handedly controlling the price of gold in the Mediterranean in the fourteenth century. Mansa Musa, with the wealth of West Africa on full display, shaped the economy of the Mediterranean world. This, undoubtedly, propelled the HRE and Christendom to covet that wealth. It would, however, take another one-hundred and forty-five years before the HRE would consolidate its militaries under the Catholic Monarchs (Isabella

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of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon). We have already conversed about what would happen twenty-three years later. Forty years after the exportation of Moors, the HRE seemed to have developed a singular reason for existing, conquest. Friar Vicente de Valverde could not entreat Atahualpa to surrender the title as Son of the Sun. And convincing IAFW people to renounce their spiritual traditions, accept Christianly and the prospects of paying tribute to the HRE, was not economical. So IAFW people, under the auspices of the HRE and the ordination of de Valverde’s, had to be rendered, via edict, non-human because they had no souls. The HRE could conquer with impunity. The tale of the conquest is unremarkable. It is not a tale of valiant warriors pinned down under the merciless rule of a tyrant monarch. It does not read like the words of Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, “On-ward, Christian soldiers.” It reads like the second-hand anecdote of a cowardly soldier. The conquistadors were given orders to remain hidden until Atahualpa’s caravan had entered the city square. “The governor then gave the signal to Candia, who began to fire off the guns. At the same time the trumpets were sounded, and the armored Spanish troops, both cavalry and infantry, sallied forth out of their hiding places straight into the mass of unarmed Indians—Since they were unarmed, they were attacked without danger to any Christian.”64 Those Christian soldiers did not go into battle, as there were no armed foes for them to meet them in the fray. It was a slaughter of non-combative people. It was and is a crime against humanity. It is a war crime. The criminal participant stated that “all of the other Indian soldiers whom Atahuallpa had brought were a mile from Cajamarca ready for battle, but not one made a move, and during all this not one Indian raised a weapon against a Spaniard—All those Indians who bore Atahuallpa’s litter appeared to be high chiefs and councilors [sic].”65 IAFW people, under the Emperorship of Atahualpa, did not go to meet Pizarro as an enemy. He brought with him counselors to negotiate with a foreign people. They came to meet those who would be replacing the Moorish Empire as masters of trade on the Atlantic Ocean. The gayety of Atahualpa’s procession to meet Pizarro should suggest something about the people, especially their use of color and adornment of fine jewels. However, there are narratives that attribute the slaughter of IAFW people in the Peruvian highlands to the Incan’s illiteracy. It is unlikely for them to be illiterate because the culture is full of craftsmen and women who produce fine linens, furniture, and they were practicing iron and gold smelting. There could also be no example of illiteracy because, just as in Middle and North America, there are pyramids throughout Peru. These pyramids, like those found in Ancient KMT, demonstrate a highly literate and advanced civilization. Dr. Ivan Van Sertima answered the narrative of illiteracy in African Presence in Early America. He writes that “there

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were three systematic and deliberate destruction of documents—Bishop de Landa in the Yucatan (of the Quiche and Olmec societies) said, ‘Burn them all. They are works of the Devil.’”66 As stated above, in Golden Age of the Moors Van Sertima points out that there was a systematic theft and translation of Moorish treaties, texts, poetry, sciences, philosophies, and literatures by Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, and German scholars, with no tribute to the Moorish source of the information. Asante and Mazama explain that the Olmec society had a written language and it was brought to the Americas by the “Manding speaking people,” of the Malian Empire.67 It is the same Manding people who produced Khan Khan Mansa Musa. This language was not only found in Middle America among the Olmec, but also in North America. According to Noble Timothy Myers-EL, author of The Unknown Lore of Amexem’s Indigenous People, “one 18th century recording of the Nanticoke vocabulary was found to be of the Mandinka.”68 He goes on to say that these Nanticoke people settled “on the Atlantic coast (in) Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey etc. Oddly enough, where other groups had chiefs the Nanticoke had a head chief who claimed several districts.” This chief was considered an “Emperor” by the English.69 There has been wholesale destruction or alteration of the literate history of IAFW people. They have an interconnected narrative that at times had them written down in history as Moors, African, Cushite, Ethiopian, Kemite, Asiatic, Indian etc., etc., etcetera. Dr. Pimienta-Bey points out that the word Indian was also synonymous with African. He writes, A most revealing book published in 1822, actually shows that Europeans, English-speakers in particular, recognized & accepted that “Africans” could be referred to as “Indians.” The book: The Negro: A Sketch of The Birth and Education of an African Indian, is an account of a young African man from Gambia. The “African Indian” dictated his life story to another young man in England. The book continually uses the terms “Indian” and “African” Interchangeably—It is therefore evident that the term “Indian” could be inclusive of an African people such as Moors!70

There is so much information available to us for the reclamation of any identity for IAFW people whether African, Cushite, or even Moorish. However, there is so much that has to be done in order to extirpate the paradigm erected via the HRE’s vision of its empire. IAFW people’s transition from vision to paradigm is in our ability to remember and exercise the fullness of our humanity. We become acquainted with our humanity via our historical narratives. As stated above, the

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Visions—lead to paradigms, whether in science or in politics, economics, law, or other fields—Whether in science or in social thought, visions or inspirations come first, and are subsequently systematized into paradigms, which embrace specific theories, and their narrowly focused hypotheses, which can be tested against evidence.71 (emphasis added)

There are myriad individuals who have painstakingly researched, recorded, and engaged us in conversations about who we (IAFW people) are and where we’ve been. We have been told, often, the history of what “happened” to Africa, America, etc., and the people. Often, those narratives are about IAFW people being acted upon by others. They rarely demonstrate IAFW people’s agency. The Inca of the Peruvian highlands pomp and splendor are accidents of nature. The agency to produce such large plates of gold and silver wherein it was a marvel to observe how the “sun glinted upon them” is inconsequential. We are not led to consider the industries that must have been in place to produce such splendor. Nor do we consider the historicity of the Incan empire for Atahualpa to acquire the title “The Son of the Sun” and refuse to part with it for a title conferred to him under the auspices of the HRE. It is the conquistadors who have the agency in the narrative. They do not have agency simply because it is their account of the encounter. In colonized societies, we have applied agency to conquerors, not because of the conquest, but because of their vision of conquest. Conquerors are informed by their visions that their conquest is ordained. In fact, it is often their belief that their god ordained their conquests. IAFW people are taught narratives about how colonizers act against them based on the colonizer’s visions of their own humanity and the lack of humanity of those people they oppress. IAFW people are in nature, and nature is acted upon and subdued by men and women of agency and those with a vision. Their visions of conquest have systematically and scientifically shaped the paradigm we find ourselves in today. So, what visions do IAFW people have of themselves? Are we too busy attempting to reassert our humanity while being bombarded with other people’s visions of who we are? Are we too busy attempting to function within someone else’s world view? Can we envision ourselves as more than the machinations of a post 1492 world view and narrative? Do we only know ourselves based on that narrative? Have we become content with saying that “this is the first Black/African American” to accomplish something in someone else’s cultural milieu? If this is our vision of our humanity then we are suggesting that we are functioning in someone else’s reality. Thus far, we have conversed about a reassessment of our NBCAA/IAFW historical and cultural narratives. And we know that those who are at the helm of the dispensation of information know that in order to control the people

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and the land, they must control the narratives of the people and the land. There is a little more that we must add to this conversation before we begin to test it to see if what we have been envisioning, so far, as a greater narrative, can become the shift we need toward change. Let’s see if a vision of our own humanity can lead us into a new paradigm. NOTES 1. Author. 2. Trudier Harris, Exorcising Blackness, 11–12. 3. See Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors and Neely Fuller Jr., The United Compensatory Code/System/Concept: A Compensatory Counter-Racist Code. 4. James R. Andreas, “Othello’s African American Progeny,” 40. 5. Ibid., 39. 6. Jose V. Pimienta-Bey, Othello’s Children in the “New World,” 19–20. 7. Ibid., 21. 8. Ibid., 27. 9. John G. Jackson, “The Empire of the Moors,” 85. 10. James E. Brunson and Runoko Rashidi, “The Moors in Antiquity,” 27. 11. Ibid., 27. 12. Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, 26. 13. Brunson and Rashidi, 42–43. 14. Alden T. Vaughan, “Before Othello,” 21. 15. Ibid., 13. 16. Brunson and Rashidi, 43. 17. Noble Drew Ali is the precursor to Elijah Poole and the eventual development of the Nation of Islam. 18. Azeem Hopkins-Bey, What Your History Books Failed To Tell You, 44. 19. Timothy Myers-EL, The Huevolution of Sacred Muur Science Past and Present, 62. 20. Ibid., 62. 21. Drew Ali, The Foundations Of A Nation Volume One The Circle 7 Holy Koran, 10. 22. Myers-EL, The Huevolution of Sacred Muur, 65–66. 23. Susan Nance, “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple: Southern Blacks and American Alternative Spirituality in the 1920s Chicago,” 145. 24. Ibid., 145. 25. Myers-EL, The Huevolution of Sacred Muur, 67. 26. Ali, 11. 27. Susan Nance, “Respectability and Representation,” 624.

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28. Nance, “Respectability and Representation,” 629. 29. Myers-EL, The Huevolution of Sacred Muur, 64. 30. Nance, “Respectability and Representation,” 639. 31. Ibid., 643. 32. Myers-EL, The Huevolution of Sacred Muur, 64. 33. Ali, 130. 34. Ibid., 131. 35. Imari Obadele, 7. 36. Jose V. Pimienta-Bey, Othello’s Children 15. 37. Ibid., 127. 38. Ibid., 17. 39. Nance, “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple,” 129. 40. Levi Dowling, Aquarian Gospel: The Philosophic and Practical Basis of the Religion of the Aquarian Age of the World. 41. Timothy Myers-EL, The Unknown Lore of Amexem’s Indigenous People, 65. 42. Martin Bernal, Black Athena, 165. 43. Pimienta-Bey, 176–77. 44. Ibid., 177. 45. Jacob Carruthers and Maulana Karenga, Kemet and the African World View. 46. Ali, 132. 47. Asa G. Hilliard III, SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind. 48. J. A. Rogers, World’s Great Men of Color: Volume I. 49. Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire. 50. George G. M. James, Stolen Legacy. 51. Molefi K. Asante, The History of Africa. 52. Cheikh Anta Diop, Precolonial Black Africa. 53. John Henrik Clarke, Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust. 54. Yosef A. A ben-jochannan, Africa: Mother of Western Civilization. 55. Ivan Van Sertima, Golden Age of the Moor. 56. Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions, 230. 57. Ibid., 230–31. 58. John Henrik Clarke, Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust, 34. 59. Ibid., 34–5. 60. Ibid., 35. 61. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 69. 62. The Emperors of Ghana, in particular, passed on a stool as the seat of Kingship. 63. Ibid., 71. 64. Ibid., 72. 65. Ibid., 73. 66. Ivan Van Sertima ed., African Presence in Early America, 32. 67. Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, Egypt VS. Greece, 145. 68. Myers-EL, The Unknown Lore of Amexem’s Indigenous People, 90. 69. Ibid., 90. 70. Pimienta-Bey, 70. 71. Ibid., 230–31.

Chapter Four

More Than One Narrative

I was among many who spent woeful nights listening to the words of the non-knowing. They were being applauded for, not their knowing, rather their interpretations of those who know. But those who know, were hushed. The non-knowers were extolled for their not knowing, and their guessing, and their suggesting, and their fondling of our truths. And they were lauded for the possibilities of their own imbecility. And I sat, wondering why we care to listen to people who are half way between their own undoing.1

When I was a child, just before I would turn four years old, my father uprooted our family (my mother, two sisters and me), from Hackensack, New Jersey, to live in his hometown of Beaufort on the coast of South Carolina. Even though I was very young at the time, there are so many things that I remember about the land, the people, and our way of life in the late seventies and early eighties growing up on that farm. I can remember our long walks to the candy lady (our auntie) for candy bars that cost no more than a nickel. I remember sitting on the porch chewing away at fresh cut sugar cane. I remember deer being strung up on a line and the eventual smell of venison coming from the kitchen. I remember my father’s rifle hanging from the wall of my parents’ room, and the many stories he told me about when he first had to learn to hunt. As he said, I will learn at around nine or ten years old, as soon as I can hold that rifle in my arms and not shake. More than anything, I remember the smell of the water that we would draw from our well in the front yard along with the long handle of the tin pot that would be lowered into the well to draw out the coldest water I ever 107

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drank without ice. We moved back north to New Jersey when my mother’s father made his transition. And we, as a family, became cityfied. Over the years, I have come across many people who have been studying my family (those still living in South Carolina and the Sea Islands) as if they were fodder for museums.2 I’ve even taken courses to study my family and our traditions. I have been taught that rural South Carolinians were called Gullah or Geechee, and they had practices that were similar to the Yoruba of West Africa. However, even though the research on these Sea Island/Coastal Carolinians is extensive, it is often non-collaborative. As we’ve gone over frequently throughout this conversation, the traditional narrative suggests that these people are all the progeny of enslaved Africans, hence the modern cultural and linguistic similarities between continental Africans and those found in the Sea Islands, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Yet, there is so much more to the historical narrative of the people who inhabit(ed) the southeastern region of North America. They are an admixture of Pre-Columbian migrations that took place more than 50,000 years ago. They are subsequent migrations of people from the Caribbean, Middle and South America. They are centuries of trade and exploration of the Moorish Empire. And they are the intermingling of enslaved Africans who suffered the Maafa at the hands of the British and Spanish colonizers. We mentioned Leo Wiener and his work earlier in our conversation. But I must return to him because he reminds us that, Certain principal inhabitants of the island of Santiago came to see them and they say that to the south-west of the island of Huego, which is one of the Cape Verdes distant 12 leagues from this, may be seen an island, and that the King Don Juan was greatly inclined to send to make discoveries to the south-west, and that canoes had been found which start from the coast of Guinea and navigate to the west with merchandise.3

The above quote is absent from the traditional narratives of pre-Columbian IAFW people. The Portuguese, and subsequently the Spanish and the HRE, knew that African people had been coming to the Americas conducting trade. But why weren’t we taught this during our compulsory education? Information about African seafaring exploits is often discussed only among people who do research into that history, and so many people and what they know about our history have been maligned in our culture. We are recognizing, in total, that there is a need to oppose the conglomerate of western historiography which produces narratives that distort our whole truths. This sentiment is wonderfully articulated by Dr. Anderson Thompson in his article “Developing and African Historiography.” He suggests that

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“historiography is the core science or mother science of Western Civilization that carries out the rationalization for the myth of white supremacy and the false notion of the manifest destiny of the white race to rule over all others.”4 We have been socialized devoid of so many truths about IAFW/NBCAA people. IAFW/NBCAA people remain ideological and intellectual captives of western historiography and the narratives that have been produced which tell IAFW people when and where they entered the reality of the western world. For IAFW people, they begin to know of themselves via “the first Black” to accomplish anything. That Blackness exists only inside of whiteness. Dr. Thompson explains that the maintenance of Blackness functioning historically, or via narrative, inside the worldview of whiteness is the product of well-organized, western-financed institutions.5 Therefore, it is imperative that IAFW people redevelop a narrative that teaches them that the peopling of America encompasses more than fifty thousand years of their existence. However, at this moment, we have an inability to consider our narratives predating the six-thousand-year period that has been embedded in our culture via the HRE and its narrative of creation. We count time via the HRE. And we count the beginning of our existence according to when the HRE was able to come out of its Dark Age. Western historiography has long been in the habit of using terms such as “extinct,” “decimated,” or “removed from their lands” in order to argue that the original people who inhabited the Americas are no longer here. Or there is a notion presented that European settlers ventured out and came across uninhabited land that their god so mercifully blessed them with. We’ve been diligently taught these narratives in the Missionary Schools of the United States of America. They are not referred to as Missionary Schools today (compulsory education, grammar school through high school), but when does the foundation of an endeavor change its purpose? The purpose of the institution is to condition its adherents (voluntarily or forced). They are led to accept that the Americas were populated via a westward march. In that march, colonizers happened to decimate or kill off the majority of the Indians, and they confiscated a labor force from Africa to toil the new land.6 Other than the Native American “Indian” of the reservation, the original people of the Americas are long gone. The pilgrims came and they civilized the Red Man, and then some other Europeans came with their African savages and civilized them through slavery. That story is not worth repeating. However, it is the construct of the American education system. It is the cultural narrative of the United States. People function in this society according to how much they have embraced that narrative. We interact with one another in this society according to that narrative, even though that narrative is off base. This, in turn, causes even our most basic interpersonal relationships to be off kilter.

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However, it is possible to change the decimated or annihilated narratives that permeate so much of our culture. We do not have to think of humanity in terms of the conqueror and the conquered. The “killed off” narrative perpetuates the notion that there is a group of humanity who has the capacity to destroy whole populations of people. I doubt anyone would want to be recorded in human history as being solely responsible for the destruction of another branch of humanity, unless they are able to suggest that they were not killing actual humans. But we can see how there are many efforts to quail narratives and conversations like The 1619 Project or “Critical Race Theory.” People do not want to see themselves as inherently evil. So, it is possible for this culture to accept that the majority of humanity who inhabited the Americas prior to 1492 were not systematically killed off and replaced. IAFW people who migrated out of Africa starting more than 50,000 years ago have not all been annihilated or decimated. The greater possibility is that they are and have been systematically (culturally, linguistically, and ethnically) incorporated or genetically absorbed into people from Mongolia or Asia which took place c. 3000 years ago, with the later wave in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.7 They were incorporated into waves of African peoples migrating into the Americas centuries before the Columbian era. The Mande/Mandingo/Malian/Manding African migrations into the Americas, crossing the Atlantic, had been taking place over the course of more than 6000 years without end.8 A South Pacific migration of Africoid seafarers into South, Middle, and North America has also contributed to people who would be absorbed into the populations of the Americas which would be codified under the NBCAA nomenclature also. They/We are all still here in the Americas. Renowned author, teacher, physician, intellectual, Dr. Llaila Afrika, has written a brilliant text which covers our narrative as Gullah/Geechee people of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. However, he takes the side that a large majority of the earliest inhabitants of this land were “decimated.” He suggests that “the early African voyage, and contact (Pre-Columbus) is evident in cultures of the Creeks, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. The Indian inhabitants of the islands such as the Gaule, Cusabo, and then the Yamasee were killed, domesticated, or sold as slaves.”9 Wonderfully, he doesn’t say that the populations had been annihilated or that they have become extinct. He asserts that many were killed, domesticated, or sold as slaves. This insinuates that it may be impossible to locate them in the human family today. He gives us a systematic study of the racial, ethnic, and cultural makeup of the IAFW people who are the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, etc. He points out that all these people, especially the “Yamasee (Jamesse) along with other Black Native Americans were described as having thick lips, woolly hair and black skin by early European explorers and invaders.”10

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This suggests that the Indians, who could not be enslaved, had the ability to flee to the woods, or were systematically killed off, would be replaced by people who look just like them. The British and the Spaniards would replace the untamable Indian with a robust Negro who looks exactly like or have the exact same physical characteristics as the Indian. The proto-American stock has been labeled many things. Many modern-day historians refer to them as Algonquin speaking peoples or tribes, and they were often referred to as being short in stature and very dark in complexion. Dr. David Imhotep helps us get a better idea of who these Indians were (are) in the Americas. The traditions of the Algonquin people in the Americas suggest that they came from the same place as the enslaved Negro. He writes, 1.) Algonquians said they came from across the sea and kept yearly sacrifices for their safe arrival in America. 2.) The Algonquians are the most heavily populated and widespread of all (so-called American Indians) suggesting they predated other tribes. 3.) Some of their written language was identical to ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. 4.) Some of their oral language was Manding/ Egyptian. 5.) Eastern Algonquin skulls were of the African type. 6.) Some of their descendants as late as the early 1900s still look African. 7.) Algonquians were here before the first Asians entered the Americas 3000 BC 8.) Algonquians report they settled in New England 10,000 years ago.11

According to Tryggvi J. Oleson, author of Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, when the Vikings came to this part of the world, they encountered a people they called Skraelings. And they were described as African Pygmies.12 According to Dr. Imhotep, these Twa people or Skraelings to the Vikings, “were not only in Canada and New England tens of thousands of years ago, but also as late as the same time period of the Lenape ‘Indians’ to whom they preceded” along the North Eastern states of the US including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and parts of Pennsylvania.13 We mentioned this before, but we must restate that the term “Indian,” according to Dr. Jose Pimienta-Bey, must be reconsidered. He explains that Joel A. Rogers pointed out for us in his book Nature Knows No Color Line that Indi is a Latin word which essentially means “black people in general.”14 The Twa or Skraeling peoples have an oral tradition that teaches once they traversed the sea to come to this land, they continued south. These proto-Americans have been located along the eastern seaboard of North America in Canada and as far south as South Carolina. To date, much of the findings regarding their presence in South Carolina have been creeping out slowly under the directorship of Dr. Albert C. Goodyear III, founder of the Allendale Paleoindian Expedition in South Carolina. However, from where we are in our conversation about the depth of our human experience, it is

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understandable that any proof that the African in America did not begin via enslavement and that they are, in fact, the proto-Americans, is controversial. It is difficult to assimilate this information into our thought processes of humanity. Where would all of our understandings of the peopling of the United States reside if we began the narrative with an African presence first? Along the Pee Wee River in South Carolina there is mention of these so-called “Black Indians.”15 One such admixture of Black Indians was explicated by William Loren Katz in A Hidden Heritage. He describes the civility and democratic nature of the “Black Indians.” He explains that “in distant South Carolina forests, two and a half centuries before the Declaration of Independence, two dark peoples first lit the fires of freedom and exalted its principles.”16 Mr. Katz is indicative of all of us. We have been saturated with the narrative of independence developed from the 1776 declaration that charged the British crown with a myriad of atrocities. We conceive of independence from that framework. So, Katz has almost no choice but to use it as a frame of reference to suggest that before the rebellion of the thirteen colonies, there were people who rebelled against the tyrannical rule of a European nation on this North American continent. Knowing that dark people have been etched in the minds of the American public as being savage, heathen, or uncivilized, Katz suggests that these people had the same desires for freedom as any white Christian. He says that “though neither white, Christian, nor European, they became the first settlement of any permanence on these shores to include people from overseas. As such, they qualify as our earliest inheritance.”17 Katz also praises the civility of these “two dark peoples.” Even though, at times, his text reads as if the recognition is in no way genuine, he does juxtapose what are considered attributes of whiteness to those two dark peoples. He says that these people remained in the South Carolina area for generations after the first Spanish attempt at settlement failed. He says that “there is no way of knowing how long the settlement remained free of European intervention. Within a century, the march of white conquest would spill into their lovely streams and forests. But while this Black Indian community lived, it provided the Americas with an example of frontier hospitality and democratic camaraderie.”18 These primitive woods dwelling people who had no access to the refinements of European culture prior to their expansion into the Americas knew of and practiced a form of democracy (confederated republicanism) which did not exist in Europe at the time. Knowing this, I believe that IAFW people must be humanized and re-situated as being as advanced or even more civilized than any of the western (European) nations that came to the Americas to colonize it. Katz points out that the invading Spaniards (five hundred men and women with one hundred African slaves) attempted to create a colony in this area of

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South Carolina along the Pee Wee River near the dark-complexioned Indians. He writes, “Europeans, arriving to exploit land and labor, contrasted in many ways with the peaceful natives. The Indians lived harmoniously with nature and shared huge pine; weather insulated homes.” His descriptions of their homes suggest edifices that are more like two to three story buildings “that slept about three hundred people each.” He mentions that “Europeans tried to construct homes that kept men and women in separate rooms. Europeans wrote that these Indians lived long lives and ‘their old age is robust.’ While European men dominated their women, Indian women doctors served their people plant juices to cure fevers.”19 These dark peoples employed “women doctors” who used the skills of their craft, “plant juices,” to heal the sick. We still employ those same or similar plant juices as medicinal cures in the form of teas and juices that can be found in pharmacies (i.e., TYLENOL Cold & Flu and Theraflu). These people were scientifically sound and socially adept. Katz continues with his narrative of the Pee Wee River society stating that, “while native life moved peacefully ahead, the foreigners slipped toward disaster. Disease and starvation ravaged their colony and internal disputes tore it apart.”20 The one hundred or so “African” slaves who accompanied the five hundred or so Spanish men and women into South Carolina would be the second part of the admixture of the two dark peoples who would be the exemplar of liberation in North America. This is all taking place around the first quarter of the sixteenth century. At this time, Spain had not gained a stronghold on the continent of Africa. And Spain, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, was confined to the western side of the line in the Americas and not Africa. It had only been thirty-five years since the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and many of the Moorish Caliphates were re-establishing their dominance on the African continent. Spain was in the thick of its conquest of the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II, and they were about to be marching southward into Peru to take on Atahualpa. Where then would Spain acquire their 100 enslaved Africans to accompany them into South Carolina? It is more likely that these individuals would be from the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, or Moors who were still in the Iberian Peninsula after the surrender of Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII (Boabdil). Either way, these enslaved Africans would revolt against the Spaniards and join the dark Indians who were themselves an anti-slavery society. Where did these proto-Americans, or those dark Indians, go after they were joined by those Spanish captives who joined them in a fight for their liberation? We come to a place where we do not have written narratives from those people telling us how they continued to live after the Spanish evacuation of their homelands. It is often assumed that these people have become extinct. When there are no written narratives of the people, they often cease to exist

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in the imagination of others. We are not taught to think about how the Pee Wee River twists and turns throughout the state of South Carolina. While we are aware of the seafaring capabilities of the Indigenous populations in the Americas prior to 1492, we are not propelled to consider their own mobility. The Spaniards and others can come and go, travel as they will, but the Indigenous populations were sedentary and immobile. We are aware that these people had the democratic ability to house their populations in multistory buildings. But we do not consider that as a process of development. They had been in the region long enough to understand the medicinal properties of plants within their territory. And, we are not considering that these people survived within their own habitations after the Spanish fled. It would be inconceivable to suggest that a people who had the architectural and scientific knowhow to build insulated dwellings and cure ailments would, over the next few hundred years, become extinct. The admixture of these proto-Americans and the 100 or so “African” freedmen are not the only conglomeration of African people in the South Carolina area. Africans came and have been intermixing and trading with peoples all along the eastern seaboard for centuries, even before the group of Spaniards came in 1526. They were called by many names also; however, Mande is the most prominent. As he did with the Algonquin, Dr. Imhotep has also chronicled the Mande or Manding connection to the New World. He explains that the Mande people were a major ethnic group in the Nile Valley. Dr. Africa suggests that the people were called Galla and were considered a Cushitic speaking people of Southern Ethiopia, parts of Somalia, and Kenya. He says that they are related to the Masai in Kenya. Before moving on, I want to point out some of the similarities of the Indigenous populations in the Americas with those East African nations and people just mentioned. I was, for the first time, made aware of the Masai people of Kenya via the American movie and entertainment industry. There is a film titled The Air Up There, produced in 1994 by Paul M. Glasser. The film’s star, Charles Gitonga Maina, is Kikuyu. He was born in Buruburu, Nairobi, Kenya. The film is about a basketball coach from the US who travels to Kenya to recruit Maina’s character. The film surveys the Masai warriors enough to allow the basketball recruiter to be initiated into the Masai’s warrior culture to prove his allegiance to Maina. However, like so much of humanity whose narratives have been shaped and perpetuated by western media, I was tainted by that presentation of African people. I did not know how global they actually were. That global reach, as we are discussing in this conversation, was also documented in 1775 by James Adair Esquire, “a trader with the Indians, and resident in their Country for Forty Years.”21 In the History of the North-American Indians, Their Customs, &c. Observations on the Colour, Shape, Temper, and

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Dress of the Indians of America, Adair refers to those IAFW people he traded with over the course of forty years as “copper colour American Hebrews.” He says, “the Indians are of a copper or red-clay colour—and they delight in everything, which they imagine may promote and increase in: accordingly, they paint their faces with vermillion.”22 This is the same vermillion or red coloring that we find among the people in South America, Middle America, the Caribbean, and of course Kenya and the Masai. Let’s continue. . . Adair says that “from the most exact observations I could make in the long time I traded among the Indian Americans, I was forced to believe them lineally descended from the Israelites, either while they were a maritime power, or soon after the general captivity; the latter however is the most probable.”23 Throughout the course of his nearly five-hundred page composition about the lives of the Indigenous, he suggests that the religious, civil, martial, funeral, linguistic, and other particular traditions are indicative of the Biblical Hebrews. However, the ultimate goal of his text is to suggest to the British crown that there are numerous reasons to further colonize the people and the land. So, he does not function as an ally of IAFW people. He explains that there are divisions of the nation states into tribes and that each tribe has a symbol or a badge to distinguish one from the other. Each tribe has its own political leaders. He doesn’t, however, explain that the democratic structure that leads to the appointment/selection/election of the Commander in Chief is based on a semi-matriarchal complex based on the family. The unification of families created what was called among the Iroquois the Otiianer. The Otiianers were the female heirs to the chieftain titles of the clan. The elder women within the Otiianer would choose the male sachems. Sachems played no part in choosing their own successors or even their own appointment. It was the clan mothers within the Otiianer who could appoint or remove the sachem from office. The sachem (Chechem, Cheik, Chief) of each tribe was necessary for the granting or acceptance of a treaty with different tribes and, of course, the colonial nations. This structure does not seem to be indicative of the Biblical Hebrews which is both patrilineal and patriarchal. Regarding the similarities in languages of the Biblical Hebrews to that of IAFW people, he says that “the Indian language, and dialects, appear to have the very idiom and genius of the Hebrew. Their words and sentences are expressive, concise, emphatical, (sic) sonorous, and bold—and often, both in letters and signification, synonymous with the Hebrew language.”24 Adair is very thorough in his contemplation of the two language groups. He compares the languages to the cultural meaning making that the languages articulate. For example, he suggests that among IAFW people, the use of the

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double adjective or adverb creates the superlative (i.e., forever, forever-ever, ever-ever). While that is not Adair’s example, it is a wonderful example of IAFW people’s bio-cultural transmission of expressive language. Adair’s comparison to the Biblical Hebrews is, in no way, a major part of the argument in this conversation. He is just another example of how in-depth narratives of IAFW people are not part of our cultural traditions in the US. We are not taught to consider the Indigenous people in the US prior to 1492 or the 1607 colonization of the Americas as having a full spiritual, religious, linguistic, and cultural identity. Even more-so, we are not taught to consider that these people were in the Americas more than 50,000 years ago and that they have their own origin stories with them coming westward across the Atlantic and not eastward via the Bering strait. As mentioned, before we got a little sidetracked with Mr. Adair, Dr. Imhotep and Dr. Africa explained that these IAFW people’s origins are from east Africa, the region of Semitic languages. They suggest that there were multiple migrations (voluntary and involuntary) that brought them into the Americas. They explain that the Galla or Mande peoples migrated west from the Cushitic regions of east Africa where they were pulled into the Arab trade in Africans and eventually the European trade which brought many of them to the Americas after Columbus. Dr. Imhotep goes on to write that these Manding people “migrated early to West Africa, (they) built mounds along the Niger River and in Mauritania—they used the same gold spear formula as the Africans Columbus found in Haiti25—and they formed the base of the Olmec (Xi) people.”26 Along the Nile Valley, in Ethiopia and parts of Northern Kenya, the Galla or Oromo (meaning free people) is one of the largest ethnic groups. Upon migration westward into the area that would come to be known as Mali, the peoples name changed to Malian, Malinke, Mande, Mandingo etc., etc., etcetera., according to the town, province, or nation’s nomenclature. An example of this would be Haiti. The whole of the island at one time in history was Guanahini. This is before the 1492 expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Upon arrival in the Americas and claiming the territories and trade routes ceded by Moors, the Spanish would rename the island La Espanola, meaning the Spanish Island. It would eventually procure the title Hispaniola. The French would title their portion of that land mass Saint-Domingue after their incursion into the island in the seventeenth century. Upon the liberation of the western portion of the island from the French in the eighteenth century, it would be renamed Haiti. At the change of the name of the liberated portion of the island under Boukmann, Jean Jacques Dessalines, and Toussaint Louverture, the people have come to be known as Haitians. The eastern portion of the island, still under Spanish control, was then called San Dominique. Today it is the Dominican Republic and the people are now

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Dominicans. The nomenclature of a people can often be traced back to either migration, conquest, or colonization. The latter does not kill off the people entirely. It systematically renames and sometimes reshapes them and their culture. The new names and the renaming of the people become necessary for the survival of the colonizer because IAFW people must fit into the imagination of the colonizer, whether British, Spanish, French, etc., etc., etcetera. When the occupier names or renames the land or the people, the purpose is to expropriate and then exploit. These Manding speaking people have also been located throughout the Caribbean and known by various names. According to Kofi Wangara in his “Mandinga Voyages Across the Atlantic,” “the Black Caribs of Saint Vincent and the islands of the Lesser Antilles also represent a pre-Columbian Mandinga element. Their proper names Califurnam and Garifare (are) Mandinga variants of the Arabic Khalifatu-’n-Nabi, which in Mande becomes Kalifa-nami and can be shortened to Kalifa, or Karifa, or the Black Carib Garif.”27 This name is also the basic construct of many cities throughout the United States and the root word for the name California. It has been noted above that when Spaniards arrived in the Caribbean, they found dark-skinned, coarse-haired Mohammedans who spoke Arabic. While Colon (Columbus) noted that they were not as dark as those he’d known on the Guinea coasts and the continent of Africa, they were also not as fierce as them either. This suggested to him that they would be able to subdue them and reduce them to the will of Isabella of Spain and Ferdinand of Portugal. Hence, they colonized the people and renamed them. These connections between proto-American people, migratory and seafaring African merchants, along with the later absconding Africans from European enslavers create that conflux of African people in the Americas. However, it must be noted that the largest populations of African people in the so-called New World were a combination of proto-Americans and the free seafaring Africans and not the runaway or nineteenth century newly emancipated African. Wangara goes on to write that, We learn that West African merchant-marine fleets periodically left the Guinea Coast and sailed to the Middle Americas with gold and other merchandise. African merchants established trading stations in the Antilles and around the Gulf of Mexico. From these colonies, Black people, specifically identified as Mandinga, introduced the West African gold trade and the art of alloying gold with copper and silver into the Americas. Gold, so alloyed, was named after the Mandinga province of Ghana from which the art originated. The African merchants in the Americas were Muslims and exhibited many Islamic customs; they also bore Islamic names and titles expressed in a Mandinga form. These African settlers attempted to name, or rename, areas they settled after important

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localities in West Africa which were under the authority of the Mandinga emperors of Mali.28

Simply using Wangara’s point of reference, we can conclude that there was a major pre-Columbian African stock in the Americas. And they were not in chains. They came as merchants and peaceful settlers. Only on a few occasions, (i.e., Ecuador and parts of South America), are there any references to continued warfare between African people (of Ethiopian/Mande stock), the proto-American, or the latter thirteenth-century Mongolian conquerors. Wangara is correct when he suggests that studying African history from the standpoint of European assertions is counterproductive and absolutely inaccurate. Africans, with distinctly Africanoid features, found in the Americas by colonizers of the HRE were not all runaway slaves or shipwrecked Africans in constant warfare against the Indigenous peoples of this hemisphere. He explains that, The presence of fugitive slaves in the Middle American areas from the fifteenth century onward has obscured examination of pre-Columbian African elements. Too often, one has attempted to attribute fugitive slave origins to all Africanoids reported in these regions without considering pre-Columbian evidence. It appears that African slaves, escaping their European overlords, frequently sought refuge in territories where pre-Columbian Blacks had already been noted. This situation has given too many investigators a means to bypass the prospect of early African voyages to the Americas.29

As we talked about earlier, the Pee Wee River revolt by those one hundred or so enslaved Africans and their subsequent integration with the “dark Indians” of South Carolina was capable because of the commonalities between the two groups, and not just complexion. Another form of integration into the North American Continent by African people, of course, was forced. This integration was created by the enslavement of (as already established) African people in the Caribbean and their forced removal from the Caribbean to North American Colonies. Michael Gomez documents this contorted sort of cultural and ethnic exchange among African people. He writes, In contrast to the other colonies in British North America, South Carolina’s early population grew out of Caribbean rather than European antecedents. It is Wood’s estimate that in the very early years, from 25 to 33 percent of the colony’s population was black, and that prior to 1700 most of these were from the West Indies. They came mostly by way of Barbados, then St. Kitts, Nevis, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Antigua, Montserrat, and the Leeward Islands. From 1700 to 1775, however, Rawley estimates that of the 83,825 persons imported

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into South Carolina, some 67,269 originated from Africa, and Washington Creel writes that over 50,000 Africans entered the colony between 1740 and 1776.30

So, we know about the proto-American IAFW people who have been identified as an Algonquin-Mande admixture. We have the narrative of African people who accompanied the Spanish into the Americas and their unification with the proto-American, even though we are not sure of the origin of those one hundred or so Africans captives. We have accounts of trade and migrations of West African seafarers still present in the South, Middle, and North America during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. And, we have the forced migrations of IAFW people from South America and the Caribbean into the Carolinas via Spanish, British, and Dutch enslavers. At this point, I believe we can re-envision and revise the narrative that the Indigenous populations in America had been decimated or killed off. We do not have to continue the narrative that suggests that when Columbus came to the Americas, they killed off all the Indians and enslaved the Africans. We can revise the narrative that suggests that the original proto-Americans (IAFW) people were killed off by Asians who migrated to the Americas in the thirteenth century, nearly two hundred years before the expulsion of the Moors.31 These narratives are far too simplistic, and they do very little to humanize IAFW people in the Americas. All of those accounts suggest that these people were primed for conquest and extermination. And, the Mongols, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, etc., etc., etcetera., all had their turn in the decimation of Americans. Returning to the IAFW people in North America, we can see that the people of the Southeastern portions of the United States known today as the Gullah (Galla/Oglalla) Geechee (Ogeecheee), Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee (Kitowah), etc., are a conglomerate of Indigenous proto-American Africans (IAFW people). The Africanisms that have been recognized among the people, especially the similarities in language, should be obvious. The Africans who would eventually be forced into the Americas via enslavement came from the same regions of people who had already been coming to the Americas for thousands of years. Those enslaved brought to South Carolina and Georgia direct from Africa came principally from a section along the West Coast extending from Senegal to Angola. The areas involved were Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gold Coast, Togo, Nigeria, and Angola. Today the vocabulary of Gullah contains words found in the following languages, all of which are spoken in the above-mentioned areas: Wolof, Malinke, Mandinka, Bambara, Fula, Mende, Vai, Twi, Fante, Ga, Ewe, Fon, Yoruba, Bini, Hausa, Ibo, Ibibio, Efik, Kongo, Umbundu, Kimbundu, and a few others.32

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These people migrated (in the post-Columbian era they were stolen) from the urban areas of West Africa. They intermixed with a population of agriculturally, architecturally, and scientifically sound proto-Americans. From Africa came peoples who lived in cites that “covered an area of 2.5 million square miles, which is the size of the United States. West Africa is an area of low country grassland (three-fourths of it) and not a desert or jungle area. The area is similar to the Sea Islands and Eastern coastal states of Southern America.”33 Therefore, the earlier and latter admixture of African peoples would have been effortless due to the familiarity of terrain and peoples inhabiting both lands. Dr. Africa explains that “the cities of urban Africa had walls built around them. Within the major walls would be other circular walls—some of the large cities would cover an area the size of Texas—Small towns and surrounding suburban areas or villages were part of the large city. The cities had paved streets up to 300 feet wide, two-story buildings with glass windows, stores, colleges, and worship centers—no police and no jails.”34 These urbanites flourished on the African continent and in the Americas before the interference of western colonial nations. And their societies grew exponentially. In the Southeastern portion of the North American continent, “by 1710 (IAFW people in South Carolina) had so outnumbered the whites, that the latter began to be afraid and passed an act to encourage the bringing in of white servants. A letter of the time says there were 40,000 Negroes in South Carolina.”35 J. A. Rogers mentions that Europeans did not outnumber Africans in the state of South Carolina until 1930. We must also understand that numerical records of inhabitants in the early North American British colonies are referring to the populations inhabiting the actual colonies and not the whole of the territory that would eventually make up that state. For example, their first colony in Virginia was roughly 8,000 square miles. The state of Virginia is roughly 42,000 square miles. The British had neither the ability nor the authority to quantify the number of inhabitants in the territories outside of its colonies. They could only estimate the number of occupants on this land mass. Not until the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, ratified in 1868, did the US claim ownership of all of the roughly 3.1 million square miles containing the 48 contiguous states. And only then could this nation be able to conduct a census capable of enumerating its citizenry, excluding the Indigenous populations who refused to be counted and those areas of the contiguous states which had not come under the authority of the government at that time. The language, culture, trade goods, lifestyles, and even the naming practices of the Gullah people of South Carolina are well documented. However, what has been left out is the cultural continuity of that amalgamated people.

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Again, they are a people who left Africa more than 50,000 years ago and came to the Americas. They were subsequently incorporated into waves of migrations and importations of their kin centuries later. These people blended in with their migrating and seafaring kinsmen reshaping old culture in an old/ new land. To re-member or to reassemble this portion of the human family is essential in the reclamation of their humanity and their own narrative. To reassemble the identity of these people is to re-member a people who have been relegated to pre-history or they have been considered by western colonizers as having contributed nothing to human history. PART II OF CHAPTER IV—RE-MEMBERING TO BECOME WHOLE AGAIN Muscogees and African Americans intermarried more frequently than in other southeastern Native American tribes. In an old joke a Muscogee says to a Cherokee, “You Cherokees are so mixed with whites we cannot tell you from whites.” The Cherokee answers, “You Creeks are so mixed with Negroes we cannot tell you from Negroes.”36

There is an interesting point to be made about the above quip. None of the people, (Muscogee, Creek, Cherokee, Negro) would have been distinguishing themselves, one from the other, phenotypically prior to the seventeenth century. The Spanish claims to the southeastern territory of the North American continent, the British claim to the east, from South Carolina north to Canada, the French claim to access of the continent west of the Mississippi via Louisiana, and the Dutch, Russian, etc., etc., etcetera’s desires for the land and resources of this continent created the many fractures found among IAFW people then and today. The Indigenous people were being shaped by the culture, language, and often brutality of the occupying nation in their homeland. The colonial era classifications of these people were and are so arbitrary that we can become faltered in the nomenclatures that would be used in nineteenth- and twentieth-century explanations of pre-Colombian IAFW people. It has become difficult, if not taboo, to suggest that the original inhabitants of the Americas resembled the African phenotype prior to the two major Mongol migrations/invasions and the later European. When I began to think about how I wanted to construct this part of our conversation, my desire was to articulate an outline of the nations and people who inhabit the Americas. I wanted to evoke the shape of the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America. I wanted to show you all what I see in my mind when I explain the nation states, the confederations, and the people in this part of the world who were here before colonization.

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In doing so, I would then explain that the narratives of the Americas and its people have been shaped as the discovery of a singular individual. From the individual discoverer narrative, colonizers then claimed it was their manifest destiny to claim access to and control over the land and its people. Imagine that. The narrative of one individual’s “discovery” has become impetus for the erasure of the history and narratives of a myriad of people. That singular narrative of discovery has relegated anyone with African phenotypic traits in the Americas as the progeny of the enslavement period only. And, as we talked about earlier, that “one man” discovery narrative has almost completely expunged the narratives of the global African presence. We do not really have to imagine it happening because it has. We were taught to trade in the contributions of millions of people to the development of humanity for a single headliner. We have been taught and even socialized to rebuff or dismiss the contributions of Indigenous and African people in the development of western nations. We were even taught that African and Indigenous people had no civilizations prior to the colonial period. And the irony of us learning about the narratives of Indigenous and African people is that we were taught about them by people who were, themselves, ill-informed. J. Leitch Wright says that “it must be kept in mind, however, that much of our information is derived from a later time, filtered through white and acculturated mestizo’s accounts.”37 So, we were becoming acculturated by colonizers and those they colonized. Even moreso, the narratives that would shape our perceptions of the people were often filled with overtly racist (derogatory and outlandish explications of African people, language, and culture) sentiment toward all things Indigenous and African. On the opposite end of the overt denial of the pre-Columbian African presence in America is the mooring of the name “Indian” to the Indigenous people by European conquerors.38 This mooring maligns what individuals like Jose Pimienta-Bey, Dr. David Imhotep, Leo Wiener, Jack Forbes, Michael Gomez, etc., etc., etcetera have been investigating, uncovering, and teaching for more than 100 years.39 Remember, Dr. Pimienta-Bey has demonstrated that the nomenclatures African and Indian were synonymous in the sixteenth–nineteenth centuries. However, today the term Indian seems to have no connection to its original meaning. In our culture, the naming of a person, place, or thing is as important as the narrative that will follow it. For example, as we know, the term African American signifies descendants of slavery. Often, people who identify as African American begin their self-narrative with “when they brought us here.” Even though many African Americans have some knowledge of Africans in America before Columbus, that knowledge is quickly abated with the narratives that suggest “they’d all been killed off.” There would have to

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be a full paradigm shift to alter the associations between the nomenclatures African and slave. The same goes with the term “Indian” and its noble savage association. J. Leitch Wright states that “Europeans are responsible for most of the onomastic confusion” of the pre-Columbian populations of America. He says that his text is about, “an Indian people—the Muscogulges—who were not a people, and of Indian nations—the Creeks and Seminoles—that were not nations.”40 Remembering IAFW people using what Wright suggests as a western acculturated mestizo or his rejection of their codified cultural identity might seem counterproductive. However, I believe there are many statements in his book that we can use to demonstrate just how much of a nation they were and how closely knit a people they were and are. Wright, through a weird sort of identity confusion, affirms that the Creek, the Seminoles, and the surrounding confederacies which they treated with and warred against were indeed nations of people. Many of the claims regarding the Indigenous people of the Americas, in some texts, are often crude. And they do not render the full humanity of IAFW people. So, we do not have to spend too much time addressing everything some writers and publishers have decided to disseminate. However, we can use some of their mishaps to make assertions about how humane, civil, and ingenious the Indigenous people were and still are. Wright, in an attempt to classify the people, states that “the alternative to referring to them (the Indian people) as Muscogulges, Creeks, and Seminoles is to rely on a welter of tribal (or linguistic) names: Yamasee, Tuckabatchee, Hitchiti, Koasati, Alabama, Timucua, Natchez, Shawnee, and Yuchi.”41 He is suggesting that the Indigenous people could be classified, at any time, as any of those nomenclatures. This means that a Creek could be an Alabaman, Natche, or Yuchi if they were in that particular territory. A Creek is a Muscogulges because the Creek speaks one of the dialects of the Muscogulges. But those “Indians” who make up the Muscogulges are not fixed as being Muscogee. These are supposed dialects of two specific language groups (Algonquin and Muscogulges) along with the physiological constitution of the people in a particular region. Wright says, The term Muscogulges includes those southeastern Indians who were usually known as Creeks and Seminoles though Muscogulges spoke not only Muskhogean languages but also those in entirely different linguistic families such as Yuchean, Algonquian, and Iroquoian. Muskogulge (muskogalgi) is plural, as are Shawnee, Yuchi, and many other tribal names.42

Tribal names are one thing while the language of the people is often interchangeable. To understand all of this, we just have to re-member how Dr.

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David Imhotep explained to us who the Algonquin-speaking people were, what they looked like, and where they came from.43 Wright also states that the lists of language groups may be between fifty and a hundred. It is only out of “expediency,” that Wright decides to refer to these southeastern peoples as Creeks and Seminoles. It should also be mentioned that these names, Creek and Seminole (Spanish Cimaroon—wild and untamed non-white, Indian or African), are not part of any Muskogee or earlier Algonquin language group.44 Wright’s text is important for our conversation because of his attempts to describe the people and the language groupings. He explains that the Creek and Seminole populations inhabited lands that included Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida. He also mentions that the first European settlers who came into Charleston, South Carolina, immediately began trading with the Creek nation, yet he does not have any of these Creek people living in South Carolina.45 The “Indians,” supposedly, were not Cherokee, Choctaw, or Chickasaw because they were not considered to be a part of the five civilized tribal nations identified by the US federal government in the nineteenth century. But, what does that mean and who were the five civilized tribes? This is not a simple answer. Any answer, outside of the US federally accepted notion of the five tribes will often offend several different groups of people. However, I want to explain what I think Wright is attempting to suggest. He says that they were not really the civilized Cherokee, Choctaw, or Chickasaw (the Creek and Seminole will be added to the list in the latter part of the 1800s), but rather “refugee bands” of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee. So, the Creek and Seminole are actually Choctaw, Chickasaw, or Cherokee when they inhabit territories of the southeast which had not been distinguished as reserved lands designated by the US federal government. Let’s try to explain that a little further. The fledgling US government, which officially established itself with a presider and chief in 1791, took only another 30 or so years for it to establish itself as the military authority on the North American continent. With the development of its military capabilities, it began to remove the Indigenous populations from their lands wholesale. Those who refused to be forced onto the reserved territories were considered refugees, hence the Creek and Seminole being the refugees of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. Therefore, the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw are also called Creek and Seminole when they are not inside of the reserved territories for their people. So, who are the Creek and Seminole? What do they look like? What are the phenotypic traits of the people who don’t really have distinctive linguistic or territorial differences unless determined by the colonially established government? Wright explains:

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A matter of further confusion was the fact that in the late eighteenth century an observer could look closely at these Indians and discover that, though they dressed in the usual native fashion, their skins were black and they had Negroid features. The African influence among these southeastern Indians was considerable.46

So, the five civilized tribes have Negro or African influenced features. The five civilized tribes are indistinguishable from one another, and they, for the most part, look like Negroes. So, who was decimated by the colonizers? If the Indigenous people are indistinguishable from the Africans who were transported across the Atlantic Ocean into the British colonies, how do we know who was eradicated?47 It is difficult not to converse with all of Wright’s text to demonstrate that we have been cultivated to see IAFW people as having been killed off in the westward move of colonialism. And, as we should be recognizing, there has been a concerted effort to disassociate the relationships between continental Africa and its people and America. I would like to move on to focus more attention on how we can re-member the people so that they fit into our current narrative of humanity. However, we have to take notice of a few items. For example, when we talk of, see, or read about the Indigenous people of the Americas, we are often compelled to imagine the people of the American western film and television drama. Those images transport themselves into reservation narratives and people with casinos. Yet, a casino and the movies have nothing to do with their full humanity, historical narrative, or where they currently reside in the Americas outside of that constructed narrative. But let’s continue because there are a few more examples from Wright which I’d like to review and further elaborate upon. He explains that by the eighteenth century, slavery—Indian, African, zambo—was an established part of Muscogulge life.48 Also, we get a glimpse into another inability to determine the origin of Negro or African looking people in the Americas as they somehow pop up out of nowhere. The actual status of slaves varied in Indian society. Some remained simple chattels having no more rights in the family than herds of cattle or horses owned by wealthy Indians—In the nineteenth century, autonomous Negro villages appeared. Whether Negroes living in them were slaves or free, in many instances they did not belong to a clan—Africans and their pure and mixed-blood progeny entered—and influenced Muscogulge society, and in some instances the Indians we will be dealing with were these kinds of Muscogulges.49

There are free and autonomous “Negro” villages among Muscogulges. If we accept the idea that to be African American is to be a descended of slaves, if these Negro villages were not decimated and the people killed off, would

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their descendants be African American today? More importantly, what happened to these autonomous cities and the people? To continue, Wright, at one point incorrectly suggests that these Negro people in their autonomous townships did not speak one of the traditional Muscogulges languages. That is not possible because later on he suggests that not infrequently the Negro women from these independent and free communities served as “linguisters” for the Moscogulge and the colonists. Another point to be made is that whoever these Negro people were and where they might have sprung from, they were master linguists. He says that “a West African tongue served little purpose: Negroes had to learn one and usually several other languages, including English, Spanish, French, Creek, Hitchiti, Yuchi, Alabama, Shawnee, Gullah, and Geechee. As a result they became versatile linguists in great demand as interpreters.”50 Even though this statement does not seem to take into regard the evidence cited by Wiener, Wangara, Winters, Van Sertima, and others who demonstrate the deep and intricate impact of West African people and language on proto-American people and culture, it does say remarkable things about those Negro people. How does one determine that the people whose skins were black with Negroid features (Muscogulges) are different from the autonomous African villages appearing among them? How do we handle these multi-lingual Negro populations who can navigate in between multiple tribal nations either autonomously or internally on reserved lands? Wright explains this to us later when he says that any of the monikers used to describe Muscogulge people were discretionary.51 Terms like Negro and Black were used as much as Indian. Sean O’Brien, author of In Bitterness and in Tears, explains the Africans among the Muskogee as some being “runaway slaves who had escaped the reach of the white man’s law. Others came to Muscogee country with their white masters. There were close to 1,900 slaves in the Muscogee nation by the 1790s. Many African Americans were carpenters, blacksmiths, and tanners, and they taught these skills to the Muscogees.”52 Of the African Americans who were enslaved in Muskogee townships, O’Brien states that they were not subject to the harsh laws of European enslavers. Again, how does one tell the difference between a free Negro and a Muscogee? The difficulties are exacerbated even more because these enslaved Africans among the Muscogee seem to have the same rights and privileges as the Muscogee themselves. In fact, they “could own property and even marry into their owners’ families. And free blacks in the Muscogee nations had none of the restraints on their movements and freedoms that they would have encountered in white society.”53 Who were the “free blacks” and how did they arrive into Muskogee country? Wright and O’Brien gloss over these peoples as if they were inconsequential. Wright suggests that these free Blacks were actually runaways. If

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that were so, then they are not at all free. And, why or how could this population of “free” runaways build autonomous communities among the Muskogee people and be of vital importance to the Muskogee people’s way of life. O’Brien mentions that “historian Joel Martin believes that the apocalyptic teachings of African American religion influenced the Muscogee prophetic movement.”54 So runaway Africans taught these proto-American people their religious culture or influenced it dramatically. However, they were an autonomous group among the Muskogee people. Again, Wright explains: On the other extreme were blacks who were Creoles born in America of African parents, or Negroes of mixed blood. These “virtual Indians,” or “black Indians,” had resided for years among the Muscogulges, and not infrequently had been born in the Indian country. They dressed like the natives—in stroud flaps, moccasins, leggings, linen or cotton shirts, knee-length coats, and cloth turbans often adorned with ostrich feathers. Whites were confused, never sure whether to style these virtual Indians as Upper Creeks, Lower Creeks, Seminoles, or Negroes.55

Wright brilliantly explains that the Muscogulge people are indeed hard to define. They must be Creek, Seminole, or Negro. The reference to the turbans worn on the heads of many of the men is indicative of Muslim or Moorish contact and influence. Jose Pimienta-Bey points out that the Smithsonian published a text in 1991 titled The Native American, and in it they explained that many of the Osage and Arikara Indians of the southeast plains wore turbans. It also explained that many of the Seminole men wore turbans that resembled Maghribi Fezez.56 This could be because of the Moorish influence on the Florida peninsula after 1492. However, there is also the possibility that it predates that time period as we find the same head dresses further north and out west. As far as these “Indians” having multiple narratives to identify themselves among themselves, it was even more convoluted among whites who enslaved both Africans and so-called “Indians.” Muscogulgue people who enslaved anyone, Wright points out, were not really “slaves” per se. They were inferior immigrants “and a minority of them was literally chattels owned by other Indians.”57 However, for the European’s concerned with slavery, Wright mentions that at the outset and aftermath of the American Revolution, it was considered ignoble “for Washington’s contemporaries, citizens of a new republic, to enslave the noble savage. Whites continued to enslave Indians, but to avoid unnecessary criticism—they usually called the enslaved Muscogulges ‘Negroes.’”58 As Joel A. Rogers points out, “an Indian is more mulatto and Negro than anything else. . . . In certain states, such as Virginia, an Indian is only one while on the reservation. Away from it; he is a Negro.”59 It is remarkable that all of what we just covered simply says that the noble savage

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is the African, the African is the Indian, and none of them would have been distinguishable one from the other outside of the colonial and federal government’s impositions and declarations of identity. It is very important to fully humanize and explain the diffusion of the peoples known historically as Muscogulge, Algonquin etc., etc., etcetera. They are the proto-American, so-called “Indians.” They are an amalgamated population of people who have been called by many names. They were both free and enslaved. The institution of slavery renamed them Negro. The US federal government forced them onto reserved allotments of land, and when prudent for the expansion of European immigrants into North America, Indian/Negro removal was the choice. Whether they were part of the “Trail of Tears” or not, these people are the full definition of amalgamation. And, as demonstrated throughout this conversation, their phenotypic traits would have identified them as an Africoid people. However, they have somehow, over the course of the last century and a half, become a people distinct from their proto-American-African origins. Let’s continue. Another way we have been able to reconnect the IAFW people of North America to their African roots is through their town structures and cultural practices. The Muscogulge people’s communities did not stray far from the biogenetic architectural foundations that existed in Africa, South and Middle America, and the Caribbean. Wright points out that “house construction and the talwa’s physical layout varied.” He states that, In the center was the square ground, council house (rotunda), and plaza. Beyond were houses and streets laid out in a generally regular fashion. Each residential unit was a miniature square ground often containing four structures, one on each side: a cook house and winter residence, a skin house, a provision house, and a two-story building, the lower story for potatoes and the upper a hall for receiving visitors. Less affluent Indians had three, two, or even one structure, but at least the symbolism of the square and the sacred number four remained.60

Wright’s description is far more liberal than William Loren Katz in his, A Hidden Heritage: Black Indians. As mentioned above, Katz pointed out that the invading Spaniards (five hundred men and women with one hundred African slaves) attempted to create a colony in South Carolina along the Pee Wee River. He says that the Spanish colonials were in stark contrast to the Indigenous populations who lived harmoniously with nature and shared huge pine, weather-insulated homes. There is a constant among proto-Americans. They were city and town dwellers. They were accustomed to constructing two- and three-story buildings that housed not only stored agricultural surplus, but they also functioned as congressional buildings. There were meeting houses where outlying

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communities could come and get reprieve for wrongs by the counselors and judiciaries of the township. Re-member Dr. Llaila Afrika’s description of West African townships and cities are nearly identical to that of the proto-American or the Muscogulge.61 Arguably, as Wright suggests, the African or Negro who had escaped from the British colonies and set up their independent communities influenced the Moscogulge people’s ways of knowing and living. And it is also possible that the proto-Americans are the progeny of African people who had come to the Americas in successive waves over thousands of years before Columbus, bringing all of their cultural sciences with them. Therefore, the city constructs and layouts resemble descriptions of West African societies because they were of the same stock of culturally developed and civilized people. There are other cultural continuities between these proto-Americans and the African continent which are spiritual and religious in nature. In the eighteenth century, Eleazar Wheelock was a principal member in the founding of the “Moor’s Indian Charity School” in Lebanon, Connecticut. He wrote in his memoirs that he believed the Indigenous people of America were direct descendants of the people of Judea and Israel. Remember James Adair earlier. He too had a similar response to the IAFW people he lived among. Either way, their associations with Indigenous American people to East Africa and the Middle East simply makes the Indigenous contemporaries of continental African peoples, especially ancient Kemet, Nubia, and Ethiopia. Wheelock made a list of several attributes he believed were a part of Hebrew life and culture. He wrote that the peoples of America and Judea were known to “wear white garments during Holy events, wear conch-shell breast plates, have a high priest and a prophet—possess white towns and red towns, customarily take new names with new conditions, and practice circumcision.”62 Among the proto-Americans, the white and red towns function as safe havens and warzones respectively. However, the red towns are not at perpetual war. The inhabitants of these towns are kinsmen, and soldiers are allowed to travel back and forth between towns. The white towns functioned as a place of refuge, which many writers have used to explain how so many African runaways could end up living among the Muscogulge people. Also evident of cultural integration or diffusions of an African influence on the proto-American is that of religious dance and ceremony. While the names of the dances differ, drawings and reproductions have been developed to help describe the practices of both peoples. However, in the texts produced by some scholars, especially Wright and O’Brien, any reference to an African influence on the dances within the religions have been met with derogatory explications of “nigger dance.” It is well known that the term nigger is not of Muscogulge or Algonquian origin. So, we do not have to address that derogatory description. However, it is simply remarkable that almost everything

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that makes up the cultural heritage of a people from their languages to the religious ceremonies, to their architecture, etc., etc., etcetera, was influenced by “run-away Africans” from British colonies. We would have to conclude that the Muscogulge had no culture before the British brought the African to America. And to conclude that, in itself, would be absurd. There has to be another explanation of the predominance of African cultural elements found in the Americas. And, the greatest irony is that, if we do not tender an alternative narrative, then we would essentially be suggesting that the British are responsible for all of the culture we know of in North America. Again, this is an exercise in re-membering. It is an attempt to put back together or reassemble the legacy of members of the human family who have been considered extinct. I would like to assert as emphatically as I can using this form of communication that the proto-Americans are not extinct. They have not been decimated. They have not “all been killed off.” They are alive and well (as well as a people can be after being removed from their historical narratives), wandering about on their own soil, in their own lands, under assumed names. Many of them have succumbed to the many wars executed against them by the Mongolian, Spanish, British, French, etc., colonizers. Many have been forcefully segregated onto territories with the least amount of natural resources or forced into slavery on plantations, which were carved out of their own land by invaders. If we were to stop and think about that last statement, we could see that the British colonialists did not come to North America with tobacco, cotton, or any type of seed to begin cultivating via their own ingenuity. They confiscated the lands that were already being farmed and had already been producing the crops for internal and external trade. In taking the land, the colonialists removed the original cultivators of those crops from their soil and forced them into territories that were not being cultivated. Then the colonialists forced the Indigenous and African captives to continue to cultivate the crops for further exploitation wherein only the British colonial could become enriched. Upon being enslaved by the colonialists, their historical narratives were discarded and their cultural identities were changed. They had been enslaved and renamed. Upon emancipation, they were vigorously trained to see themselves as the progeny of enslaved Africans who were brought to America in chains. They were no longer the seafaring people who had cultivated three continents. The bio-historical makeup of the people known as African American is indeed a mixed bag of African genomes. We must reinforce the fact that NBCAA people are made up of their ancestors who left the continent of Africa thousands of years ago and came to the Americas. They are the progeny of seafaring traders and migratory statesmen. They are the admixture of

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a Bering Strait migration of Asians. And they are the progeny of survivors of the MAAFA and the Maangamizi.63 They are Indians (Blacks). They are town builders and craftsmen. They are agriculturalists and statesmen. And they are judiciaries who ruled democratically before any population of post-Columbian Europeans set sail on the Ethiopian Sea to enslave and rename them. So, let’s attempt to answer the most pressing questions that I am sure many of us have been grappling with while we have been communicating. The first one, I think would be: so what do we do with all this information and how will it free us? The next question is what would or should our academic spaces look like if this narrative was part and partial to the African American, Moorish, Indian, or Black experience? And lastly, after acquiring this information, is any of this supposed to change who we are, where we are, and alter our current conditions in the United States of America? Let’s see . . . PART III OF CHAPTER IV— RE-MEMBERING AS A CORRECTIVE In my serious study of Pan Africanism, I’ve been greatly influenced by a little-known essay by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois called, “Pan Africanism, A Mission of My Life.” While Du Bois called Pan Africanism as a mission of his life, I look at Pan Africanism as more than just a mission. I look at it as an effort with many dimensions. I look at it as a priesthood and a sacred order, in the struggle for the liberation and unification of African people. I look at Pan Africanism as a restoration project . . . an attempt to restore what slavery, colonialism and massive anti-African propaganda took away.64

The above quote is from Dr. John Henrik Clarke, published in an authorized biography of his life by his longtime friend and secretary, Dr. Anna Swanston. His quote is probably the most accurate explanation for this conversation. It is the total summation of everything we have been talking about thus far. I have had only one intent for the entirety of this discourse. The goal has been to RE-MEMBER. I remember the first time I wrote the word (RE-MEMBER) on the board for my students. One young person quickly questioned me regarding why I hyphenated the word. I explained that, from my own understanding, the word signifies hyphenation. The prefix -re- suggests that something must be done again: it must go backwards in space or time, and it must augment and enhance our understanding of past and present phenomena. So, re-membering means to remake. It means to rebirth. It means to re-collect. It means to

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reflect. And it means to reinforce. Therefore, we are in the process of remembering our full humanity. And I believe that remembering is part and parcel of liberation.65 Before I continue, I must proffer the notion that we will not be closing out our conversation with the suggestion that we have come a long way since the colonial, enslavement, jim crow etc., etc., etcetera, days of yore. . . . We will not adjourn this conversation suggesting that things have changed for the better. El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) has taught us that progress is not the repositioning of the knife that has been stuck into our collective backs. Progress only happens when the knife has been completely removed, the wound has been properly cauterized, healing has begun to set in, the perpetrator has been tried and convicted, restitution has been assessed and granted, security has been established so that we can protect ourselves from future assault, etc., etc., etcetera. It is not progress to continue to argue or be charged to prove our humanity to the scions of those colonial governments. We should not be inclined to participate in conversations that attempt to make us feel grateful that “things aren’t as bad as they used to be, or it could be much worse.” We do not have to prove our humanness, and we do not have to ingratiate people for attempting to treat us humanely. We do not have to beg anyone to assert our humanity for us. And, we do not need to defend why we exist to anyone. Let’s continue . . . I believe we all accept that humanity began in Africa. I also believe that even the people who desire to prohibit teaching anything related to race in the United States, especially the 1619 Project and what they believe to be Critical Race Theory, would agree with that premise. So, all humanity has its genesis in Africa. That would mean that understanding what it means to be human is African. And therefore, to be African means being human. Humanity migrated outside of the African continent hundreds of thousands of years before the continent had been given the nomenclature Africa. These people where already building nation states in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In the Americas, they’d been here for more than 50,000 years. So, they are the Indigenous, Autochthonous, First World (IAFW) people. To suggest that we are African American is not enough. To say that we are Black is not enough. To say that we were ever Negro, Colored, a person of Color, Mulatto, etc., etc., etcetera, is an assault on our humanity. Each of those nomenclatures are political designations. They are, in fact, the result of colonial interlopers classifying us to determine particular rights and privileges within the colonial system. IAFW is not a political designation. So, there is no need to look for the US census to add IAFW as a category for racial identity. In fact, IAFW is not a racial identity. It is a marker to identify and assert our humanity.

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This does not suggest that once NBCAA people re-member that they are IAFW that they will miraculously secure all the rights and privileges of a first-class citizen which have been denied for nearly two hundred and fifty years. We are very aware that the particular nomenclature that an individual or group uses determines the rights and privileges of citizenship according to how it was agreed upon and written into the nations’ constitutions and laws. Therefore, this conversation is not suggesting that the masses of NBCAA people change their identifier again. It was a major battle to go from Negro to Black to African American. And still, there are contentions about being named African American for some people. What I am suggesting is that our identity should function as a meta-discourse. Our identities are, in all, social, political, cultural, scientific, historical, etc., etc., etcetera. Therefore, to limit ourselves to a singularity marginalizes our full humanity. Re-member, this is our planet. We are not just the product of the African continent. But how will this meta-discourse on our identity look and function in spaces outside of our discourse? First, the principle of our existence and knowledge of ourselves should begin with, “This is Our Planet.” It should have a philosophical ideal that sees IAFW people and cultures as the first principle, and it is the ultimate nature of reality and existence for all IAFW people even when their political identifier (NBCAA) is used to interact with the colonial governments that sanctioned those designations. When the discourse becomes elaborate enough to transcend the political signifier, it is to become a conversation that is defined by IAFW people for IAFW people and not western historiography of the people they’ve colonized. Essentially, I am suggesting that engaging in conversations about our humanity while utilizing colonial methodologies, (i.e., starting from the premise of Darwin, the noble savage, or primitive Africa), is not only counterproductive, it is insane. As stated above, Dr. Anderson Thompson explained to us that “historiography is the core science or mother science of Western Civilization”66 He goes on to say that “by examining the world of European Historiography, it becomes apparent that the African world exists in ideological captivity.”67 The adjustment away from colonial designation which have become ingrained in our understanding of who we are via “history” should emerge from or have its roots in a collective humanistic worldview and cosmology. We, literally, have developed complex notions of what it means to be a Negro, or Black and proud, or African American. And all of those designations are the product of oppression. The enslavement of IAFW people in the Americas and Africa, colonialism, and its modern expressions via neo-colonialism and modernism have had destructive effects on IAFW people, their cultures, and their self-concepts. Dr. Asa Hilliard explained that “the conscious and directed cultural wars

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which have plagued Africans over the past four hundred years, have left many of us in a state of physical and mental dependency on Europeans.” He goes on to state that, “oppression disrupts social and cultural institutions and leaves people confounded, confused, and disoriented. W.E.B. Du Bois has said that this oppression leaves us with ‘no true self-consciousness.’”68 The nomenclatures, Negro, Black, Colored, Afro-American, African American, were constructed out of that otherness. They exist as an anathema to “white” identity which was developed over the past three hundred years or so. If we are to truly heal from the dagger which has been thrusted into our collective backs, we must reconcile the “warring ideals” that Du Bois coined in his Souls of Black Folk. If our intent is liberation and the re-membering of how full humanity, we must accept the fullness of our human experiences and contributions to the whole of humanity. Any hyphenated nomenclature we use to identify us should not be predicated on our response to or the product of colonial aggressors. The warring ideals that frustrate IAFW people undermines our ability to re-member who we are, which leads to the practice of who we are, is the reality that we often imagine that we are members of the European colonial system, that is, the United States of America and knowing that the very system (the cultural connotation of being a US citizen) is antithetical to our humanity because the system is what stripped us of our full humanity. And, it does not purport to recognize or even see our full humanity. NBCAA people are its products. And because we have often accepted the hyphenated nomenclatures, narratives, and identities which were heaped upon us, we have internalized them and developed a culture which allows us to survive within the dictates of the colonial era constructs. Dr. Marimba Ani writes, A people’s world-view affects and tends to determine their behavior. A universe understood totally in materialistic, rationalistic terms will discourage spirituality. An ethos characterized by a will-to-power, by the need to control, will derive pleasure from a technical order, from conflict (war), from winning (destroying), and exploitation. Diasporic Africans are forced to ask, and to answer the question, “what happens when a people are forced to live (survive) within a culture based on a world-view that is oppressive to their ethos?”69

This notion is also asserted by Cheikh Anta Diop in his Towards the African Renaissance. He writes, On the philosophical and moral plane, the endemic state of war in the Eurasian steppes, the resultant feeling of general insecurity, in short, all the conditions of nomadic existence in these deprived regions seem to have predisposed the Indo-Aryan to what Nietzsche calls efficient sin and criminality. Nietzsche lays claim to the Promethean myth as a cultural prerogative of the entire Aryan

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race. According to him, the Aryan has the peculiar gift of building pessimistic metaphysical and moral systems; his concept of the Universe is always tainted by a feeling of guilt. Nietzsche believes that this is a faculty that derives from the innermost state of mind. The Promethean myth is related to that of the fall of man following Adam and Eve. Here the contrast seems profound. From the time of Ancient Egypt to the present, the African has never thought of founding a durable moral or metaphysical system that is based on pessimism.70

IAFW people can be citizens of any nation they choose. Identifying their persons and personality constructs as anything synonymous with the hyphenated political identities within those nations is contrary to a unique collective cosmology. IAFW people can live in Europe without being or becoming a European. IAFW people can function on their historical lands (i.e., North, Middle, and South America), do commerce and interact with the governments that occupy their lands, and not become hyphenated people. Our goals do not necessarily have to coincide with that of the colonizers. Dr. Carruthers suggested that “although Carter G. Woodson in Mis-education of the Negro asserted ironically that the educated Negro is useless, he also implied that European trained African intellectuals are the most useful Africans for the Europeans.”71 Dr. Carruthers goes on to argue that since the enslavement of African people, those Africans who were trained by Europeans have always been able to “provide the master with vital information about the condition and mood of the oppressed African population.”72 He reasons that many of us, especially those of us who have assimilated our identities based on hyphenated nomenclatures, do the exact same thing. Their work and efforts provide the colonizers with the tools to further oppress. He explains that they provide this information knowingly, but oftentimes, unknowingly. To identify oneself as the product of other peoples’ making, (i.e., the enslavement period), is equivalent to schizophrenia or the existence of strongly contradictory elements, characteristics, and motives, within the self-concept of not only the individual but also the collective. According to Dr. Wade Nobles, “the natural consciousness of Black people is forced to relate to a reality defined by the cultural prerequisites of white people. Such a situation it was argued was tantamount to Black people living in an insane environment.”73 In his text The Maroon Within Us, Dr. Hilliard asks, “to see (Africans) in—green on St. Patrick’s Day, saying—prayers with the sad belief that God speaks only in Old English (thee, thy, thou)—joining others in calling (African) sacred ancestors ‘pagan’ and ‘heathen’; struggling hard to master English literature; speaking the French language with pride; abandoning gospel music, body movement, call and response, and other traditional ways of

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communicating those things most deeply felt in our churches; shedding tears over European symphonies—Is that ‘excellence’ to you.”74 In reality, it is insane to consider another people’s culture superior to one’s own. It is insane for NBCAA people, for example, to posit that they are Pan-African, yet they use all of the tools of oppression, especially capitalism, to argue for the rehabilitation of Africa and its diaspora. At its core, capitalism is the exploitation of IAFW people and their lands. Its methodologies are based on colonial exploitation. Therefore, Pan African institutions are often forced to use the scions of colonial rule for them to implement their liberation plans. This insane environment can be defined as a paradox. The coupling of an IAFW cosmology determined by colonial prerequisites is similar to coupling a paradoxical argument and the absurd. A paradox is by definition absurd, contradictory, and false. A method NBCAA people have used to explicate this falsehood and survive in this insane asylum, as Dr. Mwalimu Baruti articulates, is to disassociate. Regarding the “the inhumane brutality Europeans zealously unleashed on the indigenous peoples they encountered,” throughout their history Dr. Baruti states that IAFW people “have been led to believe that those Europeans are something different and unique from the Europeans of today. Africans see those Europeans of the past somehow distant, less civilized, not fully evolved Europeans, as compared to the ones of today.”75 Or, today, they are forced to suggest that the US has come a long way and has made many advances in race relations. IAFW people have been coupling survival, and at many times material success, for their acceptance of the immoral, imperialistic, and colonial nature of our current existence. Dr. Wilson suggests that “Afrikans who have internalized an ethnic self-concept depreciated by—Whites are thereby made to want to act the way they have to act, to desire to do what is objectively necessary for them to do in order to unwittingly collude with—Whites in perpetuating the system that dominates, exploits, and deprives them.”76 This conversation suggests that IAFW people must re-member their full humanity. They are not the product of the colonial era and enslavement. Those things happened to them. The enslavement process and the ongoing oppression of IAFW people should not impede any of us from re-membering that we are not a biproduct of colonial aggressions; rather, they are an autonomous people with an autonomous culture and history. We must re-member that we are not hyphenated people or an adjectival anything, especially American. We were here in North America before 1492. We were in the Caribbean before 1000 BCE. We were in South America before 30,000 BCE. Being IAFW is not a modification of being American, African, or anything else. It is the discourse that allows for the acceptance of our full humanity. It is a starting point.

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IAFW people are on every continent of this globe. Only those who have forgotten their historical selves, their human selves, have become extinct or nonextant to society and history. We must assert that we are not an afterthought in the history of the world. Our goals should not be to re-member only for our individual assertions of our humanity. Upon asserting our individual human existence, we should act on that identity via the meta-discourse that affirms the hyphenated nomenclature is a political designation and not a humanistic one. The political designations are performances for governments. The colonial governments were not developed to guarantee the survival of IAFW people. They were designed to subdue and subjugate IAFW people for economic exploitation. I do not know of any other reason the colonial systems existed. Our re-membering should be so efficient that, in practice, our behavior renders to the colonial institution the performance of being NBCAA, but our reality is the foundation or re-development of our own institutions that guarantee the survivability of us as a people with our full humanity on display. The ultimate goal is to transmit our historical way of life into the future for future generations. Please re-member, we had been thriving for thousands of years before this last interruption a little over five hundred years ago. It must be re-membered that the ability to build monuments that span millennia, that is, the stone cities of the great Zimbabwe’s and Azania, the Pyramids of Giza and Nubia, the sacred sciences of Western Africa, the monuments and Pyramids of the Olmec Maya (Xi), the pyramids and mounds that dot the Mississippi River, etc., etc., etcetera, come from the wisdom of IAFW people. We should be at the helm of recovering and transmitting that knowledge into the future for generations to come. The wisdom to build those monuments and traditions has survived for millennia, and the insight to coexist in harmony with nature is an Indigenous people’s (IAFW) sacred science, cosmology, and most importantly, human right. NOTES 1. Author. 2. Family here is considered to be all those who have come to be known as the Gullah/Geechee people of the Southeast United States. 3. Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, 116. 4. Anderson Thompson, “Developing and African Historiography,” 29. 5. Ibid. 6. William Loren Katz, A Hidden Heritage: Black Indians, 110. 7. For documentation of the Mongolian entrance into the Americas see David McCutchen’s The Red Record and Powell and Neves’ study “Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans: Pattern and Process in the Peopling of the New World.”

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Both works reason that there was a wave of Asians (the Hiuang-nu) who entered the Americas c. 3000 to 2600 years ago. Their studies are used to demonstrate that the Mongolian featured “Red Man,” that is most popularly used to identify Amerindian peoples is the result of interbreeding with a pre-Mongolian stock already present in the Americas. 8. Dr. Albert Goodyear of the South Carolina Institute of Archeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) heads a study in Allendale, South Carolina, near the Savannah River, not far from the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina. Dr. Goodyear found an ancient campsite and a chunk of flint that was being used to make micro-blades for knives and spear tips. Two radiocarbon dates were given for the flints, one of 50,300 years ago and the other 51,700, making Allendale the oldest radiocarbon-dated site of human activity in North America. 9. Llaila Olela Afrika, The Gullah: People Blessed by God, 9. 10. Ibid. 11. David Imhotep, The First Americans Were Africans, 65. 12. Pigmy is a derogatory word used by Europeans to identify the Twa or Twi people. 13. Imhotep, 30. 14. Pimienta-Bey, 70. 15. See William Loren Katz, A Hidden Heritage: Black Indians (1986). Katz posted images of people who have been identified as Black Indians with all of their African features. If they were in Harlem, New York, they’d be called Negros of African descent. 16. William Loren Katz, A Hidden Heritage, 25. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. The Spaniards were led by Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon in 1526. 20. Katz, 24. 21. James Adair, The History of the American Indians. 22. Ibid., 96. 23. Ibid., 14. 24. Ibid., 37–38. 25. Imhotep, 64–65. 26. The Olmec society had a written language and it was brought to the Americas by the “Manding speaking people,” of the Malian Empire or earlier. See Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, Egypt VS. Greece and the American Academy: The Debate Over the Birth of Civilization (Chicago: African American Images, 2002), 145. 27. Kofi Wangara, “Mandinga Voyages Across the Atlantic,” 207. 28. Ibid., 169. 29. Ibid., 208. 30. Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 22. 31. Author David H. Childress tells of a pyramid site in Aztalan, Wisconsin, that is now covered by a lake, and supposedly the site of an ancient city built by Protoamericans. “Childress says that a historical researcher named Kingsley Craig who worked for the Epigraphic Society related a story to him about Aztalan. He claims that

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around 1250 AD 20,000 Mongols left Asia for North America, escaping the clutches of Genghis Khan. Craig says they traveled east to the Mississippi Valley. In 1250 AD there were many African mound communities all along the Mississippi River. He says these Mongols completely destroyed Aztalan, and then headed south.” See Dr. D. Imhotep, 42. 32. Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, 1–2. 33. Afrika, 1. 34. Ibid., Also see J. A. Rogers print of the Loanga Capital in the Congo, in Africa’s Gift to America. (1961). Dr. Llaila Africa’s description of West African cities is similar to the Loanga Capital; however, it is even more similar to the proto-Americans of the Pee Wee River, or those “dark Indians.” 35. J. A. Rogers, Africa’s Gift to America, 82. 36. Sean Michael O’Brien, In Bitterness and in Tears, 4. 37. Leitch J. Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 79. 38. The word moor here is used as a play-on-words since the actual word means to be made secure or fixed in place by cables, anchors, or the like. It was the seafaring Moors who, according to this study, are part and partial to the makeup of the so-called American Indian, and it is that Moor who has become displaced from the society. 39. Gomez, Forbes, and Wiener have asserted on many occasions that there were major populations of African people in the America’s prior to Columbus and the enslavement of African people. And, these African people in America were not all “slaves” or shipwrecked Africans. 40. Ibid., 1. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., xiv. 43. Algonquian’s oral history suggests that they came from across the sea and kept yearly sacrifices for their safe arrival in America. The Algonquians are the most heavily populated and widespread of all (so-called American Indians) suggesting they predated other tribes. Some of their written language was identical to ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Some of their oral language was Manding/Egyptian. Eastern Algonquin skulls were of the African type. Some of their descendants as late as the early 1900s still look African. Algonquians were here before the first Asians entered the Americas 3000 BC. Algonquians report they settled in New England 10,000 years ago. See David Imhotep, The First Americans Were Africans: Documented Evidence (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2011), 65. 44. Ibid., 5. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 6. 47. In previous research I’d been doing regarding the pre-Columbian African presence in America, I came across a list of names that were associated with all of these particular “Indian” peoples represented in the Five Civilized Tribes. One such name was Myles. I remember my father spelling our last name with a “y” instead of an “I” while we lived in South Carolina. However, when we moved north, he changed the spelling. Finding this name among the others became the fodder for further research into identifying the historical genesis of my family.

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48. The word zambo is African in origin. Sambo (m.): Turner lists this name, relating it to Hausa “sanuboi” “name given to the second son in a family”; “name given to anyone called Muhammadu”; “name of a spirit” Mende “sambo” “to disgrace” “to be shameful”; Vai “samsboi” (personal name) “to disgrace” (T 155). See Baird, Keith E., Mary A. Twining, “African Presence in the Carolinas & Georgia: Sea Island Roots,” In Names and Naming in The Sea Islands (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc, 1991). However, according to Wright, the name Zambo was ascribed to the descendants of an enslaved African and an Indian. He writes, “some Negro slaves were the offspring of Africans and Indians (zambos), and both zambos and pure Africans lived in Indian villages.” In the early nineteenth century separate or autonomous Negro communities emerged in the Indian country, and with some justification whites looked upon them as havens for runaway slaves or maroon settlements. For more on Zambo’s in the Americas, see also William Bennet Stevenson. A Historical and Descriptive Narrative of Twenty Years Residence in South America Vol II (London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., MDCCCXXV), p. 387–88. 49. Ibid., 29. 50. Ibid., 97. 51. Ibid., 87, 52. O’Brien, 4. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Wright, 74. 56. Pimienta-Bey, 59. 57. Wright, 74. 58. Ibid., 77–8. 59. Joel A. Rogers, Nature Knows No Color Line, 204. 60. Ibid., 31. 61. Afrika, 1. 62. Eleazar D. D. Wheelock, Memoirs of the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock D.D., 109–110. 63. Maangamizi is a Kiswahili term for holocaust, enslavement of the people, or a great disaster. 64. Anna Swanston, Dr. John Henrik Clarke: His Life His Words His Works, 208. 65. In the Asarian Drama, it is Aset and Nebhet who re-members (piece back together) the body of Asar for Heru, the liberator, to be born. 66. Thompson, 29. 67. Ibid. 68. Asa G. Hilliard III, The Maroon Within Us, 116. 69. Marimba Ani, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, 4. 70. Cheikh Anta Diop, Towards the African Renaissance, 134. 71. Jacob H. Carruthers, African or American, 20. 72. Ibid. 73. Jacob Carruthers and Maulana Karenga, Kemet and the African World View, 111.

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74. Asa G. III Hilliard, The Maroon Within Us, 110. 75. Mwalimu K. B. Baruti, ASAFO: A Warriors Guide to Manhood, 238. 76. Amos N. Wilson, Blueprint for Black Power, 108.

141

Epilogue The Intersectionality of Blackness

I am more than what and who I say I am. Therefore, I know that I am more than what they say I am.1

I am before 1492. I am before 1619. I am after 1776. I am Intersectionally Black. When Kimberly Crenshaw Williams coined the term Intersectionality in her 1989 article, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex in Anti-discrimination Law: A Black Feminist Critique, she said that it was developed out of necessity. She stated in an interview that it came about “as a tool to unlock many of the misconceptions and erasures surrounding the social justice demands of Black women before the law.” I too believe that we indeed need to develop a way to properly address the misconceptions about Blackness that permeates not just our day-to-day conversations but also how we interact with the legal, social, economic, and especially political narratives of Blackness. We are responsible for determining our interactions with all groups of people, not them. I am of the Yamasee Confederation: the Oglala, Ogeechee branch of the Creek people who inhabit(ed) the territories of today’s North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. The Creek are one of the most expansive groupings of Indigenous people in the Southwestern territory of the North American continent. Because of our ubiquitousness (phenotypically African), we can be found among any Algonquin or Muscogulge (Muskogee) speaking groups. The Muskogee and Algonquin language groupings vary regionally. However, what I found to be the greatest of interests in acquiring more information about the languages is how much Arabic is interspersed within the language groups along the eastern coasts of North America. Also intriguing is that the Yamasee/Creek are also Moors. 143

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There is an eighteenth-century Dutch painting of the Yamasee war. The artist titled it “a gruesome attack of the Indians on the English in Carolinas and West Indies on April 19, 1715.” In the portrait, the “Indians” are wearing fezzes, turbans with a feather, almejia garbs (cut off at the knees), metal shields, scimitars, tomahawks, and leather boots. The “Indians” are not typical of what would become the twentieth-century mass media production of indigenous people in North America. The soldiers fighting the English are Moors. But how long were these Moors in South Carolina? Whether we have an exact date of their coming or not, they were entrenched enough to desire to remove the English from their lands. I am also African American. Today, the Oglala, Ogeechee Creek go by Gullah, Geechee. Many of the narratives that explicate the origins of the Gullah, Geechee are constructed so that our genesis story begins with “when they brought us here.” We are told that the sea islands were a port of entry for West African captives of war who were trafficked into the Americas to farm the lands that would become integral in the production of rice, sugarcane, and eventually cotton. The coastal areas served multiple purposes. One is that the islands could function as a waystation for the seasoning (forced domestication of the enslaved) of imported Africans. While there, their lack of proximity to enslavers allowed for the retention of many of the cultural traditions that they brought with them from Africa. Also, the land, as the narratives suggest, is by natural condition, nearly identical to that of Guinea coasts of West Africa. I am, however, not African American because a part of my narrative is rooted in the trafficking of my ancestors across the Atlantic during the seventeenth–nineteenth centuries. I am IAFW/NBCAA and I am indigenous to the Americas. I am an autochthon who is genetically (intergenerationally) linked to the earliest inhabitants of this land mass from the southern tip of South America to the Northern most tip of Canada. I am the progeny of those Moors who came to the Americas for centuries before the 1492 calamity of the Reconquista. We have been here before the marauding of this continent, the Caribbean, and South America, and after as migrants who were stamped with the misnomer “free people of color.” I am a son of the enslaved who were renamed by inquisitors and colonists who asserted that we were destined to be their property for life. They called us Negro. We, however, asserted ourselves and we celebrated being Black and African. We are intersectionally Black. We do not need to assert the fullness of our humanity for anyone who would attempt to render us the outcome of someone else’s machinations. We are before them. And we will be after them. So, how do we use this intersectionality? How will it free us? Throughout this conversation we talked about the ability for a people to determine the course of their own lives. This, I believe, begins with an acceptance of who we

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are. When the turmoil of battling one’s own identity subsides and we become free within ourselves, then interaction with others can be determined by our own will and designs. This is the sovereignty introduced to us by Noble Drew Ali when he established the Moorish Science Temple of America. For those of us who still struggle to identify as African America or Black because they know they “got Indian in their family,” they can rest assured that to be African American does not negate their Indigeneity. African American is more than the narrative of slavery. To be African American is to be Indigenous to both continents. One need not indicate that they are of the African stock that came before or after 1492. We are both, in one body: a people “whose dogged strength alone keeps them from being torn asunder.” NOTE 1. Author.

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Index

Abdallah, Abu Muhammad (Boabdil), 38, 113 Abdul, Aziz al Sa’ud, 90 Aboriginal, 151 Adair, James 114–116, 129, 138 Aesop, 152 Afghani, Jamal al-Din al, 89 Africanism, 119, 131, 139 Africanoid, 70, 118 Africoid, xv, 12, 15–16, 110, 128 Afrika, Llaila Olela, 110, 129, 138–139 Afroasiatic, 83, 148 Afrocentric, 20, 31 Akhenaton, 95 Alabama, 15, 51, 123–124, 126 Ali, Drew, xi, 88–90, 93–98, 104, 145 Algerian, 74 Algonquin, 42–43, 111, 114, 119, 123– 124, 128, 139, 143 Allendale, 111, 138 Americanization, xiii Amerindian, 7, 12, 138 Amerrique, 9 Amexem, 102, 105 Andalusia, xi, 45, 81, 86–87 Anderson, Claud, 5, 30 Andronicus, Titus 81 Ani, Marimba, 134, 140 Antigua, 118

Antilles, 13, 117 Appomattock, 42, 45 Aqualithic, 13 Arab, 11, 36, 68, 83, 85, 116 Arabia, 11, 84 Arabic, 14, 84, 117, 143 Aragon, 16, 38, 101 Arawak, 39–41 Arrohattock, 42, 45 Asante, Molefi Kete, 20, 31, 67, 70–71, 97, 102, 105, 138 Asiatic, 85, 91–92, 97, 102 Atahualpa, 100–101, 103, 113 Australopithecus, 10 Autochthonous, xv, 30, 67, 132 Aztec, 40–41, 51, 113 Baepler, Paul, 74, 78, 148 Baldwin, James, 22, 31 Bambara, 14, 119 Barbados, 64, 78, 118 Barbary, 74–75 Bartels, Emily C., 44, 77, 85 Barton, Paul Alfred, 15, 30, 148 Bartran, William, 51–52, 77 Baruti, Mwalimu K. B., 136, 141 Beaufort, South Carolina, 107 Bedouin, 49 Bell, Derrick 8, 20, 31 155

156

Index

Berber, 11, 68, 83–85 Bernal, Martin, 95, 97, 105 Bible, 5, 48, 50, 91 Biblical, 89, 115–116 Blackamoors, 44–45, 77, 81, 85, 86 Blackness, xiii, 37, 55–56, 61, 79–83, 85–86, 104, 109, 143 Boukmann, 116 Bridenbaugh, Carl and Roberta, 74, 78 British, 16, 19, 25, 29, 31, 42–45, 47–48, 52–56, 62, 64, 69, 81, 92, 108, 111–112, 115, 117–121, 125, 129–130 Brunson, James E., 84–85, 87, 104 Cahokia, 50 Cajamarca, 99, 101 Califurnam, 117 Caliph, 37 Caliphates, 113 Canaan, 83, 89, 91 Canada, 15, 50–51, 93, 111, 121 Cannibals, 47, 58 Carew, Jan, 7–8, 10–13, 16, 30 Carib, 13–16, 41, 117 Caribbean, 7–8, 10–16, 21, 30, 41–42, 48, 56, 62, 69, 74, 76, 85, 93, 108, 113, 115, 117–119, 121, 128, 136 Carolina, x, 15–16, 51, 62, 77, 88–89, 107–108, 110–114, 118–121, 124, 128, 138–140 Carr, Greg E. K., 149 Carruthers, Jacob, 96, 105, 135, 140 Carter, 5, 30, 135 Castile, 16, 38, 101 Catholic, 16, 38–39, 65, 81, 87, 100 Charlemagne, 85 Charleston, 124 Cherokee, 52, 89, 92–93, 110, 119, 121, 124 Chickasaw, 110, 124 Chief, 11, 29, 40, 42, 45–46, 48, 50, 62, 92, 101–102, 115, 124 Choctaw, 110, 119, 124, 148

Clarke, John Henrik, 97–99, 105, 131, 140 Confederation, 41–43, 46–47, 49–51, 53, 121, 143 Congo, 57, 59, 139 Constitution, 22, 25, 28–29, 31, 45, 50–51, 96, 120, 123, 133 Cordova, 37 Corsair, 74 Creek, 52, 110, 119, 121, 123–124, 126–127, 139, 143–144 Creoles, 127 Cress-Welsing, Francis, 18, 31, 104 Cuba, 13, 40 Cushite, 11, 84–85, 99, 102, 104–105 Cushitic, 83, 97, 114, 116 Dekaniwidah, 50–51 De Landa, Bishop, 102 Dent, David, 4, 29 Desdemona, 81–83 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 97, 105, 134, 140 Dominican, 9, 40, 116–117 Dred Scott, 27–28, 31, 33 DuBois, W. E. B., 3, 6, 16–17, 22, 29, 57–58, 77, 131, 134 Dunjee-Houston, Drusilla, 84, 97, 99, 104–105 Eddis, William, 61–62, 65, 77 Egypt, 13, 36, 52, 70, 89–91, 94, 96, 105, 135, 138 Emperor, 41, 100, 102, 105, 113, 118 England, 24, 36, 38, 43, 50, 55, 59, 61–62, 64, 74, 81, 86–87, 102, 111, 139 Enlightenment, 58, 82 Enslavement, 8, 11, 17–18, 21, 24–25, 40–41, 45–48, 53, 56, 60, 64–65, 67, 69, 71–73, 75–76, 90, 93, 97–98, 112, 118–119, 122, 132–133, 135– 136, 139–140 enslavers, 6, 19, 24, 62, 117, 119, 126, 144 Espanola, 13, 116

Index

Ethiopia, 13, 96, 114, 116, 129 Ethiopian, 10–11, 18, 36, 56, 83–85, 87, 97, 99, 102, 104–105, 118, 131, 150 ethnic, 13, 15, 18, 33, 68, 73, 82–84, 110, 114, 116, 118, 136 ethnocide, 8 Eurasian, 57, 134 European, 7–9, 12, 16, 20–21, 24, 50–51, 53, 55–63, 68–69, 72–76, 81–83, 91, 97, 99, 102, 109–110, 112–113, 116–118, 120–124, 126– 128, 131, 133–136, 138 Evolution, 36, 76, 95 Exile, xii, 7, 30, 99 Explorers, 10, 39, 58, 71, 110 Fante, 119 Federalist, 24, 29 Fehrenbacher, Don E. 27 Ferdinand, Franz, 38 Feudalism, 41, 43, 59–60 Florentine, 8 Florida, 15, 51, 77, 87, 92, 108, 110, 124, 127, 143 Forbes, Jack, x, 64, 77, 122, 139 Fourteenth Amendment, 28, 85, 100, 110, 120 Fratricide, 80 Freire, Paulo 21, 31, 150 French, 9, 57, 64, 69, 87, 96, 102, 116– 117, 119, 121, 126, 130, 135 Frobenius, Leo, 57, 77 Galla, 114, 116, 119 Gambia, 102, 119 Garifare, 117 Geechee, 108, 110, 119, 126, 137, 144 Geneva, 83, 87 Georgia, 15, 51–52, 77, 92, 108, 110, 119, 124, 140, 143, 147–148 Ghana, 11, 14, 87, 105, 117 Giza, 50, 137 Gomez, Michael, 16, 30, 118, 122, 138–139

157

Government, xi–xiii, 9, 22–29, 31, 49, 55, 61, 66, 120, 124, 128, 132– 133, 135, 137 Granada, 37, 68 Grenada, 38–39 Guanahini, 13–14, 116 Guinea, 57, 108, 117 Gullah, 108, 110, 119–120, 126, 137–139, 144 Gypsy, 90 Hackensack, 107 Haiti, 40, 116 Hakluyt, Richard, 44–45 Hamitic, 83, 96 Harris, Trudier, 79, 82, 104 Hausa, 119, 140 Hawkins, John, 44 Hebrew, 50, 115–116, 129 Heritage, ix, 12, 67, 69, 112, 128, 130, 137–138 Hermeticists, 95 Hieroglyphic, 14, 52, 70, 111, 139 Hilliard, Asa 97, 105, 133, 135, 140–141 Himalayas, 10 Hispanic, 12 Hispaniola, 9, 40, 116 Historiography, 108–109, 133, 137 Hitchiti, 123, 126 Holocaust, 72–73, 86, 99, 105, 140 Hopi, 50 Hopkins Bey, Azeem, 89, 104 Houghton, Katharine, 82–83, 85 Houston, Drucilla D., 84–85, 97, 99, 104–105, 150 Huego, Island of, 108 Husia, 96, 150 IAFW, definition, 30 Iberia, 51, 68 Iberian, x, 38, 68, 99, 113 Imhotep, David, x, xvii, 4, 13, 29–30, 111, 122, 124, 137–139 Imperialism, 33–34, 58, 76, 152

158

Index

Inca, 41, 101, 103 India, 10, 36, 86, 94 Indian, x–xii, 1, 3, 9–10, 13, 15, 18, 30, 39–40, 42–46, 48, 50, 52–54, 61–65, 67, 71, 75, 77, 88–89, 100–102, 109–115, 118–119, 122–129, 131, 137–140, 144–145 Indies, 15, 44, 64, 118, 144 Indigenous, x–xi, xiii, xv, 6, 12, 15–16, 30, 39, 41–43, 45–54, 62, 64–67, 69, 71–72, 75, 93–94, 98, 100, 102, 105, 114–116, 118–125, 128–130, 132, 136–137, 143–145 Inquisition, 30, 37, 40, 48, 65, 87 Inquisitors, 41–42, 53, 69, 144 Integration, 118, 129 Intersectionally Black, 143–144 Iroquois, 50–51, 53, 115, 123 Isabella of Castile, 37–38, 68, 100, 117 Islam, 74, 80–81, 87–88, 90, 97, 104 Islamic, xi, 16, 39, 50, 68, 87, 117 Israel, 49, 129 Israelites, 115 Jackson, John G. 83–84, 89, 91, 104 Jairazbhoy, R. A. 11 Jamaica, 13, 16, 64, 118 Jamestown, 43, 45, 47, 54 Jefferson, Thomas, 19, 24–25, 29, 31 Jews, 38, 41, 44, 87, 100 jochannan, Yosef Ben, 97, 105 Judaism, 38 Judea, 83, 129 Kabala, 91 Kalifa, 117 Karenga, Maulana, 67–68, 71, 73–76, 78, 96, 105, 140 Katz, William Loren, xi, 112–113, 128, 137–138 Kemet, 83, 96, 105, 129, 140 Khalifatu, 117 Kikuyu, 114 Kiswahili, 140 Kitowah, 119

Kongo, 119 Koran, Circle 7, 90–92, 94–96, 104 Kush, 13, 83 Las Casas, 9, 40 Lebanon, 49, 129 Lenape, 111 Liberation, 4, 12, 21, 67, 113, 116, 131–132, 134, 136 Liberia, 119 Libyans, 84 Ligon, Richard, 74, 78 Loanga, 139 Locke, John, 23, 26, 31 Loewen, James 7, 19, 30–31, 35, 43, 55, 76 Louverture, Toussaint, 116 Lucayos, 8 Lugard, Lady, 36 MAAFA, x–xi, 93, 108, 131 Maangamizi, 131, 140 Maghribi, 127 Mali, 13, 87, 116, 118 Malian, x, 102, 110, 116, 138 Malinke, 116, 119 Mande, 10, 14–15, 110, 114, 116–119 Manding, 11, 13–15, 102, 110–111, 114, 116–117, 138–139 Manichean, 40, 43, 86–87 Maroon, 135, 140–141 Marvel, 1, 36, 80, 100, 103 Maryland, 63, 102 Masai, 114–115 Masons, 95–96 Maspero, 96 Massachusetts, 4, 25, 28, 31, 48 Massacre, 47–48, 52–53 Matriarchal, 115 Matrilineal, 42 Mattaponi, 42, 45 Mauri, 79, 84 Mauritania, 13, 116 Maya, 11, 137

Index

Mazama, Ama, 67, 70–71, 102, 105, 138 McCabe, Joseph, 36–37, 76 Meakin, Budgett, 69, 73, 78 Mecca, 90–91 Medieval, 30, 83, 85, 87 Mediterranean, xi, 36, 49, 64, 80, 100 Mende, 119, 140 Mesoamerica, 70 Mesopotamia, 50 Mestizo, 12, 122–123 Metacom, 48 Meta-discourse, 133, 137 Mexico, 10–11, 15, 41, 48, 50–52, 62, 69–70, 85, 92, 113, 117, 121 Mimesis, 66 Mississippi, 41, 51, 85, 92, 121, 137, 139 Moab, 83 Moabite, 90 Moctezuma, (Montezuma), 41, 51, 113 Mohammedan, 74, 117 Mohawk, 50 Mongol, 119, 121, 139 Moor,10–12, 18, 34–38, 44–45, 49–50, 56–57, 59, 65–70, 73–74, 76, 79–93, 95, 97, 99–105, 113, 116, 119, 129, 139, 143–144 Moorish, 10, 12, 16, 34, 36–39, 50–51, 68–69, 71, 76, 78, 81, 83, 86–94, 96–102, 104–105, 108, 113, 127, 131, 145 Moriscos, x Moro, 84, 92 Moroccan, 34, 89, 96 Moscogulge, 126, 129 MSTA, xi, 34, 88–91, 97–98 Muhammad, Elijah, 97, 104 Mulatto, 63–64, 127, 132 Musa, Mansa, 100, 102 Muscogee, 121, 123, 126–127 Muscogulge, 123, 125–130, 143, 148 Muslim, 10, 39, 41, 68–69, 84, 94, 100, 117, 127 Muur, 104–105

159

Myers-EL, Noble Timothy, 89–90, 95, 102, 104–105 Nanticoke, 102 Nationality, 16, 34, 91–93 Negritoes, 10 Negroid, 125–126 Nobles, Wade, 135 Nomenclature, 2, 6, 8–9, 34, 66, 75, 85, 93, 110, 116–117, 121–123, 132–135, 137 Obadele, Imari A., 22, 24, 28, 31, 105 Ogeechee, 19, 143–144 Oglala, (Oglalla), 119, 143–144 Ohlone, 41 Olmec, 10–11, 15, 30, 69–70, 102, 116, 137–138 Oneida, 50 Onondaga, 50 Oromo, 116 Osage, 127 Otasses, 52 Othello, xiii, 81–83, 85–88, 104–105, 147 Otiianer, 115 Ouachita, 15 Oxtotitlan, 11 Paleoindian, 111 Pamunkey, 42, 45 Panama, 15, 44 Paspahegh, 43 Pequot, 48, 64 Phoenician, 84 Pigmy, 138 Pimienta-Bey, Jose V., 83, 94–96, 102, 104–105, 111, 122, 127, 138, 140 Pizarro, 37, 99, 101 Poitier, Sidney, 82–83, 85 Portugal, xi, 35–36, 38–39, 43, 50, 56, 59, 74, 80, 99, 117 Powhatan, 42–43, 45–47, 62, 75 Quiche, 102

160

Racism, 18, 61, 63, 68, 148, 151 Rashidi, Runoko, xvii, 84–85, 87, 104 Reconquista, 16, 87, 144 Reconstruction, 22 Redding, Saunders J., 54, 77 Religion, ix, 5, 55, 57, 80–81, 90, 97, 105, 127, 129 Renaissance, 24, 86, 88, 134, 140 Repartimientos, 9 Rogers, Joel A., 66, 111, 127, 140 Roman, xi, 3, 30, 36, 38, 65, 84–85 Rosicrucian, 95–96 Runaway, 42, 46–47, 62, 117–118, 126–127, 129, 140 Sachem, 42, 115 Said, Edward, 33, 58, 76–77 Sambo, 140 Saracen, 84–85 Seminole, 123–124, 127, 139 Semitic, 83, 97, 116 Shabazz, El Hajj, Malik, 132 Shakespeare, 81–82, 85 Shaw, Flora, 36, 76 Shawnee, 123, 126 Skraelings, 111 Slavery, 9, 17, 19, 22, 24–27, 40, 42, 45, 47–48, 55–56, 59–65, 68–69, 72–75, 87, 98, 109, 113, 122, 125, 127–128, 130–131 Slavocracy, 59–60 Spirituality, 96, 104, 134 Sultan, 90 Sultanate, 92 Sundry Moors, 47, 66–67 Swanston, Anna, 131, 140 Syria, 49 Tatler, British, 44 Tawny Moors, 44 Teuton, 3 Thanksgiving, 1–2, 19 Thompson, Anderson, 108–109, 133 Timbuctoo, 57, 77 Timucua, 123

Index

Togo, 119 Tordesillas, 113 Tuareg, 11 Tuckabatchee, 123 Turban, 74–75, 127, 144 Turk, 46, 74–75, 87 Twining, Mary, 140 Ugandans, 34 Umbundu, 119 UNESCO, 16 Valverde, Friar Vicente de, 101 Vandal, 36 Van Sertima, Ivan, x, xvii, 10, 14, 30, 34, 97, 101, 105 Venezuela, 14 Venice, 81, 87 Vernagu, 85 Vespucci, Alberigo, 8 Vikings, 111 Virginia, 42, 46–48, 54–55, 61, 63–64, 102, 120, 127 Visigoth, 12, 36 Wahunsenacaw, 42 Wampanoag, 48–49 Wangara, Kofi, 117, 138 Warfare, 48–49, 56, 75, 93, 118 Welsing, Francis-Cress, 18, 31, 104 Wheelock, Eleazar D. D., 129, 140 Whiteness, xiii, 55, 61, 66–67, 80–82, 85–86, 88, 109, 112 Wiener, Leo, 30, 137, 139, 153 Winters, Clyde, x, xvii, 13 Woodson, Carter G., 5, 30, 135 Wright, Leitch, 82, 122–129, 139–140 WWII, 66 Yakub, Mansur El, 74 Yamasee, 53, 110, 123, 143–144 Yoruba, 11, 108, 119 Yosef, 97, 105, 148 Youghtanund, 42, 45 Yucatan, 9, 69, 102

Index

Yuchi, (Yuchean), 123, 126 Zambo, 125, 140

161

Zimbabwe, 137 Zinn, Howard, 9, 30, 35, 37–38, 53–54, 56–57, 59, 61, 63–67, 69, 73, 76–77

About the Author

Larry L. W. Miles was raised in Paterson, New Jersey. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in English, psychology, and history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a dual concentration PhD in English and Africana studies at Clark Atlanta University. He has served as the Southern Region President for the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) and as a board member for the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS). He is also a veteran of the US Army. His research spans the African diaspora. He is currently doing research on pre-Columbian African people in the Americas with a focus on the Algonquin speaking nations, Moorish travelers, merchants, and early American culture and languages. Currently, Dr. Miles is a lecturer, world history teacher with Atlanta Public Schools, and an adjunct professor of English and the humanities at Clark Atlanta University.

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