Black history is human history. If we are celebrating Black History Month, which is every day, then let us start from the beginning of human history. According to the Holy Bible, “the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and became a living being” Genesis 2:7. Why celebrate Black history? The answer is simple: because no matter what your race, your very own great, great, great ancestors came from Africa.
Like so many of us growing up in the Western educational system, we were never taught about ourselves and the greatness of our ancestors. Black people in the Western world were basically taught that they were inferior and that they never contributed anything to humankind. As a result, so many Black people, as well as whites, became ignorant to human history and Black history. All we have been taught in school is mostly about the enslavement of Black people in the Western Hemisphere. In the Virgin Islands and on Puerto Rican soil over 100 years ago, a child was born who gave his contribution to Black history.
His name was Arthur A. Schomburg, born in 1874 to Mary Joseph, a woman of color, and into a well-known family of St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. His father was Carlos Federico Schomburg, a merchant on the island of Puerto Rico. According to historical records, Arthur grew up on St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. Both of his parents were “kallaloo” (of mixed racial origin). His grandfather was “pure” Black.
As a child in school, Schomburg wanted to know why the textbooks had no pictures of Black people and achievements of greatness. His teacher replied to him, “Negroes had never accomplished anything worthy of recording in a book…”. Well, Schomburg set out to prove that his teacher was wrong. He became one of the greatest collectors of books worldwide of Black people in science, philosophy, astronomy, arithmetic, religion, etc. Believe me, the list is endless.
In Schomburg’s lifetime, he collected over 100,000 books. This includes material in French, Spanish, Latin, rare books, photography collections of over 150,000 prints, 10,000 phonograph records and 2,000 tapes, which represent traditional and contemporary forms of African American, African, and Caribbean music and history, etc. His library is in New York, known today as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which occupies a five-story building almost the length of a city block.
His library is one of the most comprehensive and most frequently used resources documenting Black people and Black experiences worldwide. Through his study and research, Schomburg discovered that the African continent gave birth to human civilization. Believe me, it is too much to comprehend Africa’s greatness to world history. In fact, the first university in the ancient world was in Africa. Furthermore, Africa has 95 percent of the world’s natural resources. Yet it is poor in the distribution of the wealth, which is another topic itself.
Schomburg learned that it was the ancient Egyptians, who were Black people, who first civilized and colonized Greece, then Phoenicia and Thrace. We are talking about Black history.
“We are told by Apollodorus from whom Syncells drew his information that Ptolemy II ordered Eratosthenes, the Cyrenean (i.e., a Black man and native of Cyrene) and librarian of the Alexandria Library, to write a chronology of the Theban Kings, and that Eratosthenes did so with the aid of the Egyptian Hierophants at Thebes (Ancient Egypt by John Kendrick, Vol. II p. 81: Apollodorus; Syncellus; Clinton, Fasti Hellenics, sub anno),” noted historian Dr. George G.M. James.
In other words, it was customary for the Greeks and Romans to use the services of Egyptian priests, scholars, and professors at the school of Alexandria. Remember, ancient Egypt existed many centuries before the rise of modern Europe. A thousand years after ancient Egypt reached its height, tribes known as Goths, Franks, and Vandals began forming alliances of what is known today as Europe.
It was much later in the 11th century A.D. that the Franks banded together to form what is known today as France. People in world history like Plato, Aristotle’s Herodotus, and others were taught by Egyptians and other great civilization of Africa. Of course, you wouldn’t learn this in our educational system in the Virgin Islands. Believe me, our educational system was not designed for us to learn about ourselves.
You think I am joking! Look what the Trump administration is doing now when it comes to diversity of learning history and culture of this great country of ours. Do I have to tell you? Why do you think Alexander the Great raided and took thousands of scientific books, etc., from Egypt? All what modern man knows today comes from Africa and other great ancient civilization of the Earth.
Before Schomburg died in 1938, he had proved that his teacher was wrong when it comes to Black history. With the technology at our fingertips today, we can search the engine and learn about world history or anything under the sun. However, not everything you learn on the internet is true. You must search diligently. Some of the greatest resources of humankind are in the world libraries and individuals’ home collections of ancient books of the human species.
We are living in a world of enlightenment. Therefore, we shouldn’t be ignorant to who we are or to the contributions Africans made to the world’s human family. Peter Tosh was right, “don’t care where you come from, you are an African.” Happy Black History Month to the world human family!
— Olasee Davis is a bush professor who lectures and writes about the culture, history, ecology and environment of the Virgin Islands when he is not leading hiking tours of the wild places and spaces of St. Croix and beyond.
