“If Blacks of today want to measure the distance to the heights from which they have fallen, they need go no farther than Nowe (Thebes).” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
“Thus politically, but far more intellectually, was Songhay (Songhai) restored to its ancient position as a child of Egypt.” – Flora L. Shaw (Lady Lugard)
The kingdom of Thebes of ancient Egypt is the most important single city in the history of Black people. According to Dr. Chancellor Williams, author of The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 200 A.D., the history of Black people in Africa might well begin at Thebes because Thebes was truly the “Eternal-City of the Blacks” that presented the most compelling evidence that they were the builders of the earliest civilization in Chem (Kemet), later called Egypt. The foundation of Thebes goes far back, even into prehistory, that not even a general stone age period can be suggested.
“Yet, the very ‘Heartland of the Race’ and the cradle of civilization were actually southward below the First Cataract, centered around the capital cities of Napata and Meroe. From there black civilization spread northward, reaching its most spectacular achievements in what became known as ‘Egyptian Civilization.” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
During ancient times, the Blacks of ancient Egypt were called the “Thebans” because all Upper Egypt was for centuries called the Thebald after its greatest city, Thebes, and its people the black Thebans. “Thebald” also referred to the city itself as the intellectual center for the Blacks in Africa, the chief seat of learning, of science, religion, engineering, and the arts. “Thebald,” therefore, could mean the whole of Egypt of the “University City,” depending on the inflection of the voice. Also, the African name for Thebes not only comes from the South, but the name itself is the name of the imperial scepter of Ethiopia, a golden staff ribboned with ostrich feathers at the top. This is evidence that a single name that, all by itself alone, gives far-reaching insights into the history of Black people. Dr. Williams once stated the rediscovery of African names and their meaning is important for Blacks who are in pursuit of remembering their African past, which has been effectively blotted out along with other outstanding achievements of the ancient Blacks.
Thebes was also called the “Mother of Cities,” and was one of the chief centers of religion in Africa. Black people were and have always been a very religious people and there were many religious cities in ancient Africa, each one under the special patronage of a god, goddess, or any number of deities. The gods and goddesses of Thebes were among the most important because their city was most important, due to Black people being a very religious people. Religion for Black people during the ancient world was far more than ritual reflecting beliefs, but a reality reflected in their actual way of life. Religion from the earliest times became the dynamic force in the development of all the major aspects of Black civilization. The Blacks belief in life after death was the great inspiration for building on so grand of a scale, trying to erect structures that would stand forever. Necessity, therefore, gave birth to the mathematical sciences required for building the amazing pyramids and the architectural designs for the most elaborate system of temple building the world had ever known.
Ancient Egypt, under the rule of Black kings and queens was so rich that the country was known as the “Bread Basket of the World.” Since ancient Egypt was so highly advanced, the country stirred up envy from the peoples from Asia and Europe, from which migrants began to settle.
“But the Assyrians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans could make so such claim to support the myth of Caucasian superiority. For nothing seems clearer from ancient records than that the whole ancient world knew of nothing more ancient than the Black man’s civilization.” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
The great civilization of the Blacks which for countless ages was centered around Nowe (i.e., Thebes) did not just happen overnight. Progress does not happen automatically, because every step forward made by these ancient Blacks was made or forced by the imperatives of what had to be done to survive. For the ancient Blacks, spiritual survival was more important than physical, a concept the modern world is not expected to understand.
Thebald was all Upper Egypt, Upper Egypt as Upper Ethiopia, and Thebes (Nowe) as its most ancient city and one of the very earliest centers of Black civilization. Even the ancient whites (i.e., Greeks, Romans, etc.) regarded it as so. For example, during this early period, before the city of Memphis was founded in ancient Egypt, “The City of a Hundred Gates” (i.e., Thebes) spread six square miles over both sides of the Nile River. It was also the “City Beautiful,” being called by different glorifying names than any city known to the ancient world. Its widest avenues, lined the sphinxes, temples, palaces, and monuments could accommodate the array of colorful chariots, 20 abreast. It was also “The Two Cities,” or “The City of the Living” and “The City of the Dead.” One was on the east side of the river and the other was on the west side. Each vied with the other in a race for magnificence. Palaces and mansions were largely concentrated on the East Bank. Temples, which were everywhere, were about as numerous in the “City of the Living” as in the “City of the Dead” on the West Bank where the mortuary temples of Black kings and queens were located, along with the various religious cults, and houses of priests, craftsmen, soldiers, and the masses.
The West Bank was a beehive of industrial, commercial, and religious activities that the “City of the Dead,” even though it refers to its famous burial places, is a misleading name. Thebes’ status as the capital and center of imperial activities rose and declined, with few exceptions, according to the race of nationality of the ruling dynasty at that time.
“The still interesting fact about Thebes is that many of its formally great temples were prehistoric ruins even five thousand years ago. The most ancient temple at Karnak, for example, in what was the center of Nowe (i.e., Thebes), goes back beyond the reach of man’s records. No other city on earth ever had so many temples, and even today there are more ruins of temples there than anywhere in the world. Because of the splendor of their architectural designs and the colossal size of the structures they, like the pyramids, became wonders of the world. Religion was not only the immediate occasion for the development of art and architecture but it also inspired the drive for bigness, the grand design on a scale as huge as human skill and effort could achieve. Nothing less was befitting the gods.” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
Thebes being the center of “Black Power,” it was a main object for destruction by non-African invaders from Asia and Europe. When the invaders had achieved control, they established new capitals elsewhere.
The Songhai Empire (West Africa)
At its height during the 16th century, the Songhai Empire was the same size as all of Europe combined. The Songhai Empire comprised of parts of the present-day countries of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Northern Nigeria, Guinea, Senegal and The Gambia.
About 93% of the present-day African Americans came from the Western Sudan region of West Africa, which included the empires of ancient Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc.
“We (African Americans), the descendants of the Songhai Empire, living in the Western Hemisphere cloaked under the name of ‘Negro,’ lost our history and cultural background. The lack of knowledge particularly today has caused us to be a race in name, rather than in fact; a condition, rather than a full consciousness, in terms of sentiment, rather than a joyful experience and all we’ve had from a total point of view, were problems in common.” - Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson and Redman Battle, authors of The Journey of the Songhai People
Songhai was the last of the vast of the great West African empires. The Songhai Empire dominated West Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Songhai people were the nuclear group that was to build their name to the greatest African empire in West Africa. They were one of those unique peoples who can be characterized as highly intelligent, industrious, aggressively invisible as both traders and warriors, farmers, fishermen, hunters, and craftsmen.
The Black Revival of Learning
One of Songhai’s hospitals. The scene of course is doctor, nurse and attendants caring for a sick person.
An Arab traveler and historian, Ibn Battuta notes that at the College of Medicine of the University of Sankore, his blind brother was made to see by an operation removing cataracts from his eyes. In West Africa, during the period of the “Dark Ages” in Europe, caring for the sick through training schools was operated under the aegis of the emperors of the Songhai Empire.
“Songhay’s (Songhai’s) greatness was due to something more than the remarkable expansion of its empire over a territory larger than the continent of Europe. That was great, but greater by far was the grand scale on which the revival of learning spread among the Blacks of West Africa―The Western Sudan, or ‘Land of the Blacks.’ Three of the principal centers of learning were at Jenne, Gao, and Timbuktu.” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
The Songhai people had a sophisticated educational system in the golden kingdom of Timbuktu at the world-famous University of Sankore, which attracted students from all West Africa and scholars from different foreign countries. The University curriculum consisted of:
Faculty of Law
Medicine and Surgery
Letters
Grammar
Geography
Art
The University of Sankore had thousands of students from all parts of West Africa and other regions who attended. Although there is no record of the exact number of students who attended, but there are accounts of large numbers of Black scientists, doctors, lawyers, and other scholars at the University of Sankore. Under the reign of Songhai Emperor Askia Mohammed Toure I (Askia the Great), Timbuktu was a city with a population of 100,000 people, filled to the top with gold and beautiful dazzling Black women. Timbuktu was one of the most fabled and exotic cities of the whole medieval world, and the Sudanese metropolis was celebrated for its luxury and light-heartedness.
Emperor Askia Mohammed Toure I (Askia the Great) ascended the throne of Songhai in 1493, just one year after Christopher Columbus “so-called” discovered America in 1492. Askia the Great was responsible for building the Songhai Empire internally and externally and was religiously sincere and very faithfully committed to African people. Through conquest victories, he was the reason why the Songhai Empire was the same size as all of Europe combined.
“In Timbuktu, there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics, all receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a big demand for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary. More profit is made from the book trade than from any other line of business.” – Leo Africanus
In the narrow streets of Timbuktu, scholars mingled with rich Black merchants and young boys in the shade, reciting the Koran. Visiting Arab businessmen wandered the streets looking for excitement for which the city was famed. The Songhai Empire under the rule of Askia the Great, which was the same size as all of Europe combined was safe because travelers had no problems in any part of his huge empire. People within the limits of the Songhai Empire were treated as they were in the Emperor’s court during Askia the Great’s 36-year reign of absolute peace on the Songhai throne. In ancient African tradition, Black people established and developed the extended family concept, where every adult male and female in the Empire, was considered mother and father of every child. In the societies of ancient and medieval Africa, there was no need for jails, halfway houses, and youth detention centers. Black children before the invasions and conquest of their motherland were some of the best-behaved children in the world.
Timbuktu was an intellectual paradise because the University of Sankore had large and valuable collections of manuscripts in several languages. For instance, Timbuktu housed the largest library in Africa since ancient Egypt’s Great Library of Alexandria. The University of Sankore had between 250,000 and 700,000 manuscripts, while the library of Alexandria had between 40,000 to 400,000 manuscripts. Scholars traveled to Timbuktu to check their Greek and Latin manuscripts. Ahmed Baba, the last Black President of the University of Sankore was the greatest and most prolific African writer and scholar in the 16th century. Dr. Chancellor Williams said, “Perhaps ‘African’ should be dropped here, for who else, Asian or European, authored a comprehensive dictionary and forty other works during this period? His fame as a scholar-educator spread to distant lands.”
If Songhai writers can be believed, Timbuktu was Paris, France; Chicago and New York of the United States of America all in one and blended into an African setting. Songhai historians were shocked to find out the people amused themselves with music, love, and pleasures of drinking. Music like orchestras with both Black men and women singers and midnight revivals were common. There were also dramatic displays, including dancing, fencing, gymnastics, and poetic recitations were popular.
Black women dressed extravagantly luxurious, and both men and women were fond of jewels, and women were known for having gold bands in their creative hairstyles. There were many shops of various types and materials located in the Songhai cities. One city, that specialized this, was the city of Kano (present-day Northern Nigeria). According to the accounts of a German traveler, in the 19th century, he said that Kano exported to Timbuktu, alone, 300 camel-loads of clothing annually. The cotton clothing was woven and dyed in Kano. Some were in the form of robes and dresses of all colors and in plaid of various colors, as well as black.
“… The first, and perhaps the most important fact is that the general enslavement of Africans, proclaimed to the world as savages, began during the very period and in the very West Africa in the center of which one of the great universities of the world and other colleges were located.” ― The Black Revival of Learning, p. 247
The Fall of the Songhai Civilization and The Beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
“Finally, the great revolt of white slaves (Mamelukes) in 1250 A.D., and their murderous onslaughts against their Turk and Arab masters ended forever the general enslavement of whites, and thereafter led to a concentration on the enslavement of only Blacks. This changed the course of history and came to make the myth of racial superiority-inferiority, master and slave, appear to be a visible reality. Could there be any question about it? Even the (Black) slaves would realize that their actual situation was one of inferiority. And after centuries of bondage, the slaves generally came to believe that they were, in fact, inferior beings, and that their (white) masters, by the very arrangements of life, were superior. For whether in Asia, Europe, South America, the United States or the West Indies, the story was the same: The essential links with their past were broken. All knowledge of former greatness was lost. Even their kinship and family relationships were destroyed along with their true names. They were not human beings. They became a race of outcasts hating themselves for being. The Caucasian triumph was complete.” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
In Songhai, weak leaders and short reigns led to internal conflicts and social, political, and economic disorganization. These conditions led to revolts by conquered states and attacks by others. Sultan Al Mansur of Morocco (Northwest Africa) sought the opportunity to capture the salt mines of Taghanza and the gold of Songhai. The news of Sudanese gold for years was drifting back to Europe and other countries. In fact, Europe found out about the movements of West Africa because medieval maps displayed the wealth of the Mali and Songhai Empires.
Figure 6. Musa Mali [Mansa Musa]. Lord of the Negroes of Guinea, from a panel of the Catalan Map of Charles V (1375). Source: The Golden Trade of the Moors, Bovill, frontispiece.
On the famed 1375 Catalan map drawn by Abraham Cresques of Majorca, Mansa Musa was depicted as, “a monarch seated on a throne … in royal robes and a crown, [holding] a sceptre in one hand and in the other a nugget of gold.”
“Europe during the middle ages had some knowledge of these movements in the Sudan and Africa. Melle (Mali) and Songhay (Songhai) appear on medieval maps.” – Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, author of The Negro
Sultan Al Mansur convinced his Council of War that the conquest of the Songhai Empire would be easy since the Sudanese people were not familiar with guns and cannons. Also, it was even speculated that Songhai was richer than all North Africa combined.
The Moroccan army (the Moors: Arabs, Berbers, and Coloureds: Mixed Africans) with their guns and cannons and hired 2,500 European mercenaries (i.e., British and Spanish) invaded Songhai. Guns and cannons were unavailable to African armies during this time. The army of Morocco invaded Songhai in 1591, and the Songhai’s spears and bow and arrows were no match for the fire power of Morocco’s guns and cannons. The Songhai cities of Timbuktu, Jenne, Gao, Watala and other cities experienced wholesale slaughter, rape and looting by the Moor-European invasion. The Songhai Empire was invaded by the “Moors” and not the indigenous “Black-a-Moors” (who originated from Mauritania in West Africa and spread throughout the whole region of North Africa. As amalgamation became more widespread, only the Arabs, Berbers and Coloureds: Mixed Africans in Moroccan territories were called “Moors,” while the darkest and black skinned Africans were called “Black-a-Moors.” According to Dr. John G. Jackson, author of Introduction to African Civilization, “While they (Blackamoors) were occupying Spain in 700 AD, they established schools, libraries, hospitals, and other great science centers and much more.”) because it would not have made sense to burn and destroy their own books of wisdom and knowledge.
In 1593, arrests took place where Songhai scholars were captured and deported to Morocco in chains, and some were killed along the way. Those from Songhai who survived were forced to serve the Moroccans, and others were imprisoned. The Moroccans also confiscated the libraries of the scholars like Ahmed Baba, who lost 1,600 books on his way to Morocco.
Thereafter, Songhai forces split up into small units to harass enemy garrisons and outposts in surprise attacks. These attempts to dislodge the invaders lasted over 70 years, but the Songhai of glorious memory was no more. By the time Morocco attacked from the north, later European slave traders were able to step in and dominate West Africa. With a lack of a unified West African resistance or a single African identify, the predatory Europeans drained the region of its manpower on an industrial scale for their booming slave economy.
“Once trade in slaves had been started in any given part of Africa, it soon became clear that it was beyond the capacity of any single African state to change the situation.” – Dr. Walter Rodney, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Warfare between African kingdoms increased to meet the increased European quotas for enslaved Black people. For every 2 million Black people enslaved over 1 million died. Over half of the captured Blacks died before reaching their destination. The record indicates clearly that millions of Black people preferred death to slavery. Black chiefs failing to secure the required number of Black people as slaves were themselves enslaved. Over 100 chiefs and other nobles of Black civilizations were sold into slavery in a single year and another 100 were murdered by the Portuguese in the Central and Southwest region of Africa. When African leaders were murdered or sold into slavery, it created widespread confusion and terror among the already hunted and leaderless people.
The European enslavers’ main aim was to provoke war between Black kingdoms, where Black kingdoms who were able to secure guns from Europeans fought Black kingdoms with only shields and spears. Not only were whole villages depopulated, but entire kingdoms were depopulated, and the formally proud citizens were marched off to the Atlantic coast in chains, collard and joined together by heavy poles. Many royal lineages were among the Black captives, including chiefs, which, according to Dr. Chancellor Williams, is how it should be if any people were to be enslaved. Only a tiny percentage of the population in Africa were kings and queens and members of the holy royal family. The vast majority of the populous in any kingdom, about 99.9 %, were common folks, farmers, carpenters, healers and the like. They developed their individual skills, formed trade associations, and offered their services to the community. The Black king and queen served as models for the development of human potentiality and were often affiliated with the priesthood.
According to African tradition, the leader and the people were one in the same, sharing a common lot. This sense of oneness applied only to members of one’s “tribe” (i.e., Songhai, Mandinka, Yoruba, etc.) and not Africans outside of it. This is why Black kings and chiefs would secure “prisoners-of-war” by attacking other African kingdoms. Only a savage and ruthless chieftain would sale their own people into slavery, and the European enslavers learned this very quickly and found that it fitted well with their general plan to keep Black people divided, having mutual hatreds, and being forever suspicious of each other by fighting amongst themselves. This “tribal warfare” is derived historically from Black people, and all the European enslavers did was take advantage of the disunity among the Blacks, and unfortunately, millions of Blacks were either exiled to foreign lands (I.e., the American continent) as enslaved peoples or conquered and colonized in their homeland being ruled by foreign alien powers.
At the end of the day, according to Dr. Chancellor Williams, Africa was indeed conquered for the whites by the Blacks, and thereafter kept under colonial control by Black police and Black soldiers. The instructions were strict and brief: Always use the Blacks at the forefront of any war and keep the European forces safely in the rear. This was the reason why very little European blood was ever spilled during the period of the colonial wars in Africa.
The Conspiracy and Betrayal of the Century
“PAFO (The Pan African Federation Organization) is attempting to show that the Africans in our West African homeland had a great and beautiful civilization. Had this civilization not been interrupted by a calculated sneak invasion―with the aid of mercenaries, there is no telling how far world civilization might be advanced today.” - Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson and Redman Battle, authors of The Journey of the Songhai People
According to Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson and Redman Battle, there were other African leaders who helped devise a plan of confidence to keep guns out of the Songhai Army’s hands. The Songhai government officials were pressured because of their extreme devotion to Islam. The game was “two Islamic brothers should not use guns of the Europeans against other Moslem (Muslim) brothers.”
“Real men met on the battlefield with sword and shield face to face.” – Songhai Government Officials
All evidence indicates that it is abundantly clear that most of the African people, particularly from the Western Sudan responded bravely against the Moor-European conspiracy. The invaders enjoyed the advantage of the gun, however, in all other aspects of the conflict such as generalship strategy and battle tactics, Black people, more than held their own against the graduates of the best military academies of Europe. Blacks only armed with spears, bow and arrows, and swords, displayed greater valor than the Moors and Europeans firing guns and cannons from a safe distance.
A king of the Nedebele (South Africa) observed that:
“A gun is a weapon of a coward.”
The Muslim faith and law forbid enslavement of fellow Muslims, but that didn’t count when the victims were African people. Although both the Moors and Songhai believed in the Islamic faith, but this didn’t stop the Moors and Morocco from invading the Songhai and the Songhai Empire in 1591.
The Western Sudan never provided any significant capital for the trans-Saharan trade. The capital came from the merchants of Fez, Tlemcen, and other cities of the Maghreb (all North Africa except for Egypt); and they sent their agents to reside in the Western Sudan. According to Dr. Walter Rodney, to some extent, it was a colonial relationship between the Western Sudan and the Maghreb because the exchange was unequal in North Africa’s favor. As the Muslim religion and its language spread over much of West Africa, West Africans embraced the religion, particularly by Black rulers, nobles, and merchants, along with their immediate followers. The masses of West Africa, however, held on to their African spiritual systems, although thousands of West Africans found it expediate to pass as Muslims in towns and cities.
On the authority of Dr. Chancellor Williams, the Arabic language is unlike any other in the world, because the language had advantages in its spread, which were religion, learning, trade, and commerce.
The Arabic language was used by the Black scholars of West Africa, whether they were Muslims or not. The study of the Islamic Koran, law and literature was at the core of the University of Sankore’s curriculum. All this made the revival of learning in Africa appear to be an entirely Muslim affair. The thirst for learning among the Blacks of West Africa was so compelling that the introduction of any written language after the loss of their own native writing was welcomed as a “godsend.” West Africans were able to read and write again, and higher education was far more important to Black people in West Africa than the vehicles of religion as media, whether Muslim or Christian in orientation. For Muslim and Christian missionaries, religion was the main objective; but for most West Africans education was the main objective.
“But what happened in the process of converting the blacks to Islam and Christianity was the supreme triumph of the white world over the black. Millions of Africans became non-Africans. Africans who were neither Muslims or Christians were classed as ‘pagans’ and therefore required to disavow their whole culture and to regard practically all African institutions as ‘backward’ or savage. The blacks in their own right became non-persons―members of a race of nobodies, and so hopeless that self-realization as personalities, even in a subordinate status, could only be achieved by becoming Muslims or Christians. Indeed, in order to destroy completely not only their African heritage but also their very African identity psychologically, they were forced to change their names to Arabic and Christian names.” - Dr. Chancellor Williams
It was the invention of the gun during the early 1500s that gave European nations the edge in defeating African nations during medieval times. Some Black people, living in Western civilization today, believe that their ancestors have committed some sin for the punishment they suffered through hundreds of years of slavery and racism they experience today during the modern era. There are many Black people who defend white people’s injustices against their own Black people, and according to Dr. Chancellor Williams, the reason why Blacks are generally still quicker and more polite to white people and have distasteful attitudes towards members of their own race is left-over residue from slavery. “Black” gradually became the badge of evil, all that was bad, and even bad luck.
The ancestors of African Americans were forcibly brought to the United States of America like cattle and worked as enslaved people from sun-up to sun-down for 10 generations without a payday for 300 years.
“Our (ancestors of African Americans) chattel captivity defied the ‘laws of nature and nature’s God’ and, therefore, should no more have existed than the ten thousand murders each week committed by the Europeans.” - Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson and Redman Battle, authors of The Journey of the Songhai People
On the authority of Historian Stanley Elkins, he concluded that the whites had succeeded in reducing the Blacks of the U.S. to the level of dependency of infants during their time in bondage. These diabolical tactics were not just used in America, but also throughout the African continent when Africa was still under European colonial rule.
The origin of African American’s “anti-black” attitude towards themselves was learned behavior from slavery, and Dr. Chancellor Williams said this anti-black attitude of Blacks towards Blacks “must be uncompromisingly and even ruthlessly dealt with in both training and day-to-day administration.” At times, Black people generally agree that their own Black people are their own worst enemy. Many Black people are not even aware of the “brainwash” and many more who think they are aware but know not how to calculate the extent of the brainwash because most of it comes through subliminal seduction. The Stockholm and Patricia Hurst cases which were later probed, came up with the same rationale of why the victim sides with the oppressor. In the case of African Americans being stolen from Africa, the scale is grandiose. Sociologists and psychiatrists have stated time after time that what has happened to Black people who were forced to build the foundation of Western civilization as enslaved peoples, in both mind and body, would have driven any other people completely out of their minds.
This sensation of “anti-Black hate” among Black people is not just privy to African Americans, because in Africa during the era of Europe’s conquest of Africa, the whites were busy establishing and building their “Black armies,” who were trained to hate, kill, and conquer other Black people. The French were the most efficient in this development, the phenomenon of Blacks more readily fighting and dying for the white man’s cause than their own.
African Americans, having been subjected to the greatest trauma in the history of mankind was yet able to develop some of the world’s greatest talented people, such as statesmen, poets, doctors, scientists, philosophers, inventers, lawyers, and many other well renowned people. Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson and Redman Battle have stated considering the degree to which the white captures went, to dehumanize and robotize the ancestors of African Americans in the U.S., it is a “wonder” that they were able to survive at all because there was no limit to the kinds of cruelties and humiliations that was forcefully imposed on the ancestors of African Americans.
To put in perspective how far Black people have fell, many travelers during the ancient world in Africa, like the ancient Greeks (i.e., Homer and Herodotus) after spending considerable time in Africa, could only praise Black people for their just acts towards mankind, wisdom, and beauty.
By the time of the European colonial era of Africa in the 1800s, West Africa, particularly the region of the Songhai Empire, had been stripped of its natural resources and human population to the extent that it became a barren wasteland. The apparent success of the European control of Africans throughout Africa came about, first because of the military takeover, through bloody wars. Secondly, as each kingdom was conquered, Black people were then removed by force from their beautifully built brick and stone homes (some of which were two to three stories high) with inside plumbing and running water facilities.
Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were forcefully moved from West Africa, not only across the open Atlantic Ocean to the Americas but also across the deserts to other places in Africa or further abroad. The undermining of African civilization and unity of alliance between indigenous African States was a tactical maneuver to wrestle the continent out of the control of Black people.
According to Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization: Exploding the Myths Vol. 1, by Dr. Anthony Browder, the total number of Black people stolen from Africa during the Transatlantic slave trade era varies greatly from source to source, but a minimum of 50 million Black people were displaced, and more than 80 million Black people died. Black people are the only people on planet Earth who had their continent stolen from them and were forcibly exported to other continents by the millions. These actions depleted the human and natural resources of Africa, while simultaneously developing them in Europe and America (Western civilization).
“Certainly, I knew from reading all about the ‘Rape of Africa,’ but to know the scale on which this was done one must see at least some of it in Europe with his own eyes―and be amazed. The museums in various cities of the European colonial powers are the repositories of much African history.” – Dr. Chancellor Williams
King Oduduwa of the Ife Kingdom (Yorubaland), West Africa, present-day Southwest Nigeria.
“Of the human actors in this revolution, the greatest, according to all the traditions, was Oduduwa. So monumental was the role this man that, probably even from as early as his own life-time, popular traditions and legends elevated him to the awesome pedestal of father of the Yoruba race and founder of the monarchical system which thenceforth became their typical system of government. His successors defied him, and subsequent generations transposed him all the way back to the very beginning of creation and crowned him as the first human to walk the earth, the progenitor of the Yoruba race.” – Dr. Stephen Adebanji Akintoye, author of A History of the Yoruba People
Peoples from Asia and Europe had been hauling out just about all the historical materials of Africa over the centuries. For instance, during the periods of decline or conquests, Asia and Europe seized and transported from Africa as many of the artifacts of its civilization as they could. King Cambyses of Persia, for example, as early as the 6th century BC, hauled away over $100 million of precious historical materials from Thebes alone.
According to Dr. Chancellor Williams, the descendants of the robbers of the great treasures of Africa smugly declared:
“The Blacks never had any worthwhile history; if so, where are their records?”
The Western Sudanese countries like ancient Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc. were known as the “land of gold” and was ruled by the “lords of gold” would be drained of its mineral resources. Its people, who were used as warriors to consolidate the lands, were overcome by foreign armies, or sold into slavery. The great empires of West Africa had collapsed upon themselves by the height of the European Transatlantic slave trade that approximately lasted from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s. This left the Western Sudanese people vulnerable to European colonization from the close of the slave trade until the mid-20th century, after which they regained independence and established modern, sovereign states.
370 years after the fall of Songhai, the descendants were ruled by foreigners (i.e., the French). African Americans, of which 93% of whom came from the Songhai Empire are the direct descendants of the last great empire in the Western Sudan, and they carry the genes of creativity, resourcefulness, and genius of their illustrious ancestors.
The Songhai Empire dominated West Africa for 129 years, and its cousin empires like ancient Ghana and the Mali Empire, had ruled the region for almost a millennium before that.
African history is often catalogued in such a way that it becomes the history of Arabs and Europeans. For example, the American History Association says the first period is from the fall of the Roman Empire to 700 AD. The second period of African History is the period of the Arab invasions and Islamic civilization, which is 700 AD to the coming of the Europeans in 1500. The European period from 1500 to 1960 is subdivided in 1880 to mark the period of colonialism, and from the White viewpoint, there is no Black civilization. Through mass murder and dispersal of those deemed suitable for slavery, many African societies that were founded during ancient and medieval times came to a complete end.
“Black women cried and Black men gnashed their teeth when news of an assassin’s bullet on February 21, 1965 cut down a brilliant self-taught prince of the genetic line of Songhai. His ability to persuade people, and to put to flight groups of white learned men on the subjects of freedom for Blacks, Malcolm Little but better known as ‘Malcolm X’ was bent on uniting all Black groups under a single banner, and was in the process of doing that until the time of his death.” – Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson and Redman Battle, authors of The Journey of the Songhai People
Sources:
Akintoye, S. A History of the Yoruba People. Amalion Publishing. (Jan 1, 2010). April 18, 2024. p. 98.
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