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SCIENCE AND AFRICA

FRANK E. CHAPMAN, JR

INTRODUCTORY COMMENT

In June 1964 the Editors of FREEDOMWAYS received in the mail what would ordinarily be a routine letter of inquiry. A young man (we later learned that he was twenty-one at the time) wanted to know if we would be interested in considering for publication an article he was preparing on "Mathematics in Antiquity." The article, he had stated, was part of a book on Science and Africa, the role that the folk of color have played in the development of what he called "The Queen of the Sciences-Mathematics."
In due course the article arrived. The author was a young Afro-American who was serving a life sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary. Because his article was of a scientific nature we sent it to a science magazine with our recommendation. This was the beginning of a very meaningful relation, through correspondence. In a letter concerning to article he said to us:
"I have tried to write this article in such a fashion where it will be complete in itself and at the same time be something of a prelude to other articles...At this point I would like to comment on the contents: At every opportunity I have tried to bring out the fact that there is nothing more terrifying than ignorance in action, and that man's salvation lies in his knowledge of the world and himself and not in the promises of ignorant visionaries. And I have endeavored to express this not in an ingenious or witty manner, but bluntly! I think it is high time the Negro genius be freed from the Negro problem; for it is my contention that before there can be any genuine solutions black men, like all men, must first understand their relation to the cosmos."
In a period of about two years a series of letters were exchanged
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A review of an unpublished manuscript, "Science and Africa: Essays on the Part Which Folk of Color Have Played in the Development of the Natural Sciences."
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