The Recovery of African-American History

"Other minorities have had to recover their past because it was neglected or considered unworthy of study, which was the case, for example, of African-American history until scholars set out to recover it in the mid-20th century."--Richard Schneider, Jr., Ph.D, editor-in-chief, The Gay & Lesbian Review (September/October 2011).

Schneider doesn't seem aware of the fact that the recovery of African and African-American history began long before the mid-20th century. Several names of scholars involved in that effort come to mind--Carter G. Woodson, J. A. Rogers, Arthur Schomburg, and Leo Hansberry, the late playwright Lorraine Hansberry's uncle.

In a 1979 issue of Freedomways magazine, devoted to the life and work of Lorraine Hansberry, historian Lerone Bennett, Jr. stated that Leo Hansberry was "the greatest pioneer in African history in this country."

Although scholars like Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, and W.E.B. DuBois were not historians, what they said and wrote in their particular fields (anthropology, philosophy, and sociology respectively) influenced historians of the black experience, both black and white.

The Controversial African Historian

Historian Yosef ben-Jochannan (born in Ethiopia in 1918) is "controversial," he said, in a lecture published in Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America, edited by Herb Boyd and Robert Allen (Ballantine Books, 1996), "not because something is wrong with my documentation, but because I challenge Western hegemony." It was "the African," he further stated "that caused people to understand science, medicine, law, engineering, etc."

As an expert on the history of North and East Africa and the Nile Valley, he has self-published several books, including Africa: Mother of Western Civilization. He has also distributed lessons and lectures on records and tapes, such as Black Man, Wake Up. Major publishers refused to publish his works. As a result, he co-founded Alkebu-lan Books in 1969. ("Alkebu-lan" was what the Moors and the Egyptians called Africa. It is the most ancient name of Africa that is known, according to Dr. ben-Jochannan.)

In an interview with me several years ago, he told me that he saw the black historian as a leader; one who "records the events and charts the future," and who must never subjugate his or her veracity for money.