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FREEDOMWAYS
THIRD QUARTER 1972
the civilizations of Egypt, Kush and Ethiopia are the best known.
The African people have never been static within Africa. They have traveled extensively within their continent, spreading and taking on a diversity of cultures and ways of life. The Senegalese historian, Chiekh Anta Diop, calls attention to this neglected aspect of African history in his book, The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa. Professor Diop says: "I have tried to bring out profound cultural unity still alive beneath the deceptive appearance of cultural heterogeneity." He states further, "I have tried to start from material conditions in order to explain all the cultural traits common to Africans, from family life as a nation, touching on the ideological superstructures, the successes and failures and technical regressions."
Professor Diop goes on to explain the cultural conditions that shaped old African societies. One of these conditions was the development of matriarchy, which gave African women basic rights long before the idea was extended to women in other parts of the world.
When Africa is viewed through the work of historians like Chiekh Anta Diop, it is obvious that Africa was never what most white historians said it was. In the contest between Black and white historians over the correct interpretation of African history, we are witnessing what the writer Leone has referred to as "a contestation at the level of reality...a struggle over meaning and a struggle over truth." These new books by African and Afro-American writers have joined the issue in this struggle.
John G. Jackson's second book Man, God, and Civilization is an inquiry into the part that religion has played in shaping the destinies of men in nations. In this book, he says: "Nearly all the so-called world histories of civilization, so popular in contemporary academic circles, are based mainly on what is known as European civilization. This species of parochialism gives a false picture of human history; and few students become aware of the fact that European civilization, speaking historically, is a product of the recent past, and that European culture was not indigenous, but was derived from older civilizations of Africa and Asia."
Professor Jackson has made a mission out of the effort to set history straight, especially as it relates to African people. In doing this he has, throughout his book, displayed a sharp insight into world history in general. The more than 200 sources used for this book range from Diodorus Siculus to H. G. Wells. In this book he has updated the information that appeared earlier in his pamphlets such as: "Christianity Before Christ" (1938), "Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization" (1939),
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AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES
CLARKE
and "Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth" (1941). 
Chapters 11 and 12 in this book trace the origins of most North African and southern European civilizations to the heart of Africa. This will disturb many historians who cannot live with this point of view. A check of Professor Jackson's references, that a astutely integrated into the text of his book, will furnish sufficient proof to this claim.
In his early works, Professor Jackson wrote in detail about the Africans in the conquest of Spain. His research has been updated and extended for this book. The chapter that is called "The Evaluation of Civilizations: The Arab-Moorish Culture" is about the rise of Islam and the great African personalities who helped to make this religion a world power of its day. This chapter should be required reading for the growing number of black Americans who talk so much about Islam and know so little. This book flings down a challenge that cannot be ignored.
There has long been a need for a book about the invaders of Africa and their effect on the nations, people and civilizations. Chancellor Williams of Howard University has written such a book. His book, The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D., has broken new ground in this field. This book will not make Chancellor Williams popular in all circles. Blacks who have a romance with Islam will be furious. The chapters on the destructiveness of the Arabs and their insensitivity to African civilizations are most revealing. But this is not all of what the book is about. This is a good, general history of Africa—all Africa, and not just Africa south of the Sahara. From the beginning of his book, Dr. Williams puts the long distorted facts about Egypt's relationship to the rest of Africa in order. He refers to Egypt as Ethiopia's oldest daughter and that is precisely what it was. In African history, Egypt is over-rated and Ethiopia is under-rated. The incubation and early development of the civilization that is credited to Egypt had origins further to the south within Africa. The Nile River is the great highway that was used to spread the southern civilization to the North.
Dr. Williams explains his purpose for writing this book with the following statement: "This work," he says, "is mainly concerned with the crucial issues involved in the rise and fall of early black civilization and in Egypt and the Sudan, and the processes of the black-out of that civilization from history. With this end in view, the broad sweep from prehistoric times to the final subjugation of the continent includes only the principal lines of development."
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