Black History does not start with Slavery

Since I was a young child, during Black History Month, my teachers would always start teaching us from the Civil Rights Movement. Then, once I got a little older, on came the teachings of the brutal and harsh times of slavery. It hasn’t been until recently that I thought to myself, “What happened before slavery?” “What were our people doing?” “Why is it not being taught to me?”
It wasn’t until a forum here at Southern University, named “What it Means to be Black” was presented and Chike Akua enlightened me with the truth. For about an hour and a half, I sat and soaked up all of the excellence of our people, and from that I decided to do some research of my own to only confirm what had be told to me.
The late, great Malcolm X was one of the first to remind us, long before the pro-black movement, that our history “did not begin in chains”. Somehow, the world has disregarded not only the great people of Ancient Africa, but also the great things they accomplished.
I was shocked to learn that not only were our people stolen from Africa, but a lot of our teachings, books, architectural sculptures and much more. There are even books from Africa that show “scratch work” of the Pythagorean theorem as a method used to build the Great Pyramids. Some of the greatest American historical monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, all are similar to ancient African structures.
This may be hard to believe, as it has never been taught in schools or can be read in your textbooks, but the evidence is there. Sadly, this appears to be something that has to be self-taught.
Hopefuly, the next question that would generate in one’s mind is, “Why does it have to be self-taught?”
The answer to this question is simply the evidence of our history here in America. Think about it. Why would people capture innocent Africans, strip them of their culture and religion, and forbid them from learning how to read and write?
My answer to that is the fear of the Africans finding out who they truly are. Imagine if in the 1600s, when slavery began, all slaves knew how to read, write and maintained their culture and religion. How would they allow themselves to be treated like animals by such mediocre people?
Honestly, I hope that this time next year there is a bigger focus on what happened prior to slavery and who God chose us to be. There has been 400 years of our people not knowing who we are, therefore we don’t act like the kings and queens we are supposed to be. From allowing humiliating reality TV to inspire our youth, and they in turn falling to the prison pipeline, we have to begin somewhere. Once we have knowledge of self, we can set higher standards and expectations for generations to come.