Our American Black sisters and brothers are today in the midst of their biggest-ever exercise to re-discover themselves and “establish the supreme truth that it was the Blacks who founded the world civilization and that a Black was the world’s first woman (“Blacks Founded the World”, DV Oct. 1 1991, p.24). The brain behind this great Black revivalism is the celebrated Black historian and a devoted friend of DV, Ivan Van Sertima, Editor of the prestigious Journal of African Civilizations which has gained international UNESCO has rightly honored him by nominating him on its reputation. International Commission to Rewrite Cultural History of the World.
Sertima edited the famous book, African Presence in Early Asia, which has a chapter on the Untouchables of India by the DV Editor, V.T. Rajshekar, whose theory that the Blacks and India’s Untouchables have a common origin has caught the imagination of the entire Black world. This discovery may soon bring hundreds of American Black scholars to India to see and cement this growing solidarity formally inaugurated by the visit of the famed Black historian, Runako Rashidi.
Brother Sertima has become so famous in the US that the latest issue of the American Newsweek (Sept-20) has a detailed writeup on his works. He is rightly hailed as the “most important Black cultural thinker in the US.” We are proud to announce that DV has just received yet another gift of six books from Sertima. (The first set of books were advertised in DV, Sept. 16 p.12, 13 & 24).
These books reveal that the US Blacks, like India’s Untouchables are also victims of racism, but they have stolen a march of 300 years over us. Therefore, we have every reason to gain from their rich experience, their wonderful strategies and tactics. In US the Blacks are visible with their skin color. But in India many untouchables are fairer than Hindus and yet they are subjected to racism. That means India’s racism is not physical like in US but it is mental. With the Hindus Nazis of India racism is a mental disease. And mental disease is much more serious than a physical ailment. Hence the need to make a deep study of the success stories of American Blacks so that we may also fight out the Indian brand of sanctified racism before the Gandhi an era (20th century) ends and the Dr. Ambedkar Era (21st century) begins — which is just eight years away.
Black Women in Antiquity
Editor: Sertima 192 pages, $12.50, 1984
The book provides an overview of the black queens, Madonnas and goddesses who dominated the history and Imagination of ancient times. The authors have concentrated on Ethiopia and Egypt because the documents in the Nile Valley are voluminous compared to the sketchier record in other parts of Africa, but also because the imagination of the world, not just that of Africa, was haunted by these women. They are just as prominent a feature of European mythology as of African reality. The book is divided into three parts: Ethiopian and Egyptian Queens and Goddesses; Black Women in Ancient Art; Conquerors and Courtesans.
African Presence in Early Europe
Editor : Sertima; 317 pages; $15; 1986
This book places into perspective, the role of the African in world civilization – in particular his little-known contributions to the advancement of Europe a major essay on the evolution of the Caucasoid discusses recent scientific discoveries of the African fatherhood of man and the shift towards albinism (dropping of pigmentation) by the Grimaldi African during an ice age Europe. The debt owed to African and Arab Moors for certain inventions usually credited to the Renaissance is discussed, as well as the much earlier Afro-Egyptian influence on Greek science philosophy.
Egypt Revised
Editor: Sertima 440 pages $20.00
Two distinguished historians (Davidson and Diop) present the evidence which establishes the African claim to a physical and cultural predominance in the classical Egyptian dynasties. A review of the major Black dynasties (Bruce Williams, Chandler, Runako Rashidi, Brunson, Clegg, Hilliard, Goldman) and includes a working chronology of the dynasties. Obenga initiates a rewriting of the beginnings of philosophy, Karenga provides a fresh study of the world’s oldest treatises on social order while Finch informs us of starting medical breakthroughs in his commentary on the Edwin Smith papyrus.
Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern
Editor: Ivan Van Sertima; 300 pages; $15; 1985
The book draws on the latest researches to show that Africa had an impressive scientific tradition in certain centers and historical periods. Highlights steel-smelting machines in Tanzania dating back 1,500 years ago, using semi-conductor technology and achieving temperatures 200 degrees higher than the best in Europe; an observatory in Kenya 300 B.C.; 13th century discoveries by West African astronomers of an invisible star, their accurate plotting of its orbit around its parent star as well as an orbit on its own axis, a fact unknown even ‘to modern science; cultivation of crops and domestication of cattle 6,000-7,000 years before Asia or Europe; African first discoveries of tetracycline, vaccines, aspirin, as well as advances in operations like eye-cataract surgery and caesarean sections; African invention of half a dozen scripts before European colonization. The book also deals with African-American inventions, especially in the fields of telecommunication, space, and nuclear science. (90 illus).
