Black Music Month, 2006

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

African-American musicians have added to the rich culture of our country and of countries around the world. During Black Music Month, we recognize the African-American artists who have enhanced our lives and created some of our Nation’s most treasured art forms.

Throughout history, African-American artists have produced music with the power to change hearts and shape our national conscience. From gospel to blues, from jazz to rock and roll, the songs of America’s black musicians have defined our times and enriched our culture. Performers such as Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie and vocalists such as Lizzie Miles and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson have made their mark as great American musicians, strengthening our Nation’s diversity and lifting the human spirit.

Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) was the leader of Ghana, the former British colony of the Gold Coast and the first of the European colonies in Africa to regain independence with majority rule. He was an iconic figure of the African liberation movement. In the following speech one gets a sampling of the inspirational meditations of the mighty prophet Dr Kwame Nkrumah:

I Speak Of Freedom — Dr Nkrumah

For centuries, Europeans dominated the African continent. The white man arrogated to himself the right to rule and to be obeyed by the non-white; his mission, he claimed, was to “civilize” Africa. Under this cloak, the Europeans robbed the continent of vast riches and inflicted unimaginable suffering on the African people.

Egyptology: Hanging in the Hair

West Africa Magazine (July 8, 2001)

by Anu M’bantu and Fari Supia

F0R YEARS, EGYPTOLOGY has been fighting a losing battle to hold onto an ancient Egypt that is Caucasian or, at worst, sun-tanned Caucasian.

At the 1974 UNESCO conference Egyptology was dealt a fatal blow. Two African scholars wiped the floor with 18 world-renowned Egyptologists. They proved in 11 different categories of evidence that the ancient Egyptians were Africans (Black). Following that beating, Egyptology has been on its knees praying to be saved by science. Their last glimmer of hope has been the hair on Egyptian mummies.

France remembers slavery victims

A French envoy has said her country did profit from slavery as it officially commemorates the victims of the trade for the first time.

“It profited from the commerce in human beings… ripped from the African homeland,” Junior Co-operation Minister Brigitte Girardin said in Senegal.

She was visiting a notorious slave island off the coast of Senegal.

In Paris, President Jacques Chirac said facing up to the colonial past was a “key to national cohesion”.

He opened an art exhibition in Paris’s Luxembourg Gardens while other cities and venues around France held their own ceremonies for Slavery Remembrance Day - the first such event in an EU state.

Ethiopia (Bible-period Africa) is mentioned so many times in the Bible that one would presume that its extensive political, cultural and economic significance in the Biblical period was common knowledge.

Below, find a few examples of the recognition given to Africa in the ancient times:

Jeremiah 13:23:

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

Amos 9:7:

Are you not as children of Ethiopia unto me, O children of Israel. Have I not brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt?

The Africans Who Discovered Europe 45,000 BCE

It is not without some ironic humor that one considers the incendiary sentiments of the modern European politicians especially Spanish politicians respecting African immigration. It is usually forgotten in the tumult of patriotic passion that the notions of country, nation and state are very fragile and susceptible to time. It is forgotten that many of those that live in countries such as Spain are not indigenous to the place. Rather their ancestors were once immigrants into the areas or belonged to pillaging armies and tribes that committed a thousand unspoken atrocities.