ANOTHER BLACK PRESIDENT TAKING OVER IN TROUBLE TIMES

Congratulations for Fred Luter's election to the Southern Baptist Convention. Much like President Obama, he is taking over when the Convention is in serious transition. Their membership is down, baptisms are down, and more minorities are joining their church, much like Obama coming in at a time of fiscal disaster and facing two wars. I wish he could have come into power in less challenging times. But perhaps I'm just being cynical. I shouldn't give power to past stereotypes or old motives. I hope Pastor Luter will do a great job and be strong voice for his entire organization.

From: The Christian Post
http://www.christianpost.com/news/a-new-era-in-the-sbc-fred-luter-paves-way-for-diversity-76995/

All eyes are on Fred Luter as he officially begins his term as the first black president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
His election comes at a time when the SBC is already seeing growth among ethnic minorities. The percentage of Anglo churches has decreased from 95 percent in 1990 to 80 percent in 2010. Despite the decline in overall baptisms and membership, Hispanics, Asians and African Americans are the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the SBC, according to A.B. Vines, the newly elected president of SBC's National African American Fellowship, to The Christian Post. "

From:
http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2012/06/southern_baptist_convention_el.html

Luter's election occurs at a time when the nation's largest Protestant body has been experiencing a decline in membership and baptisms and is aiming for greater participation among minorities. In 1995, the body apologized for its racist history. And it has recorded growth in nonwhite churches of 5 percent to 19 percent between 1990 and 2010, according to the Baptist Press, the denomination's news source.

FIRST ORGANIZED BLACK PROTEST

In 1644, eleven Blacks petitioned for freedom in New Netherland (later called New York). The Blacks were freed by the Council of New Netherland because they had completed their seventeen to eighteen years of servitude. Each received a parcel of land in what is presently Greenwich Village. 

Adapted from:

A-Group Nubia 3100 BCE to 2780 BCE

Around 3100 BCE there flourished in Nubia a culture that archaeologists call A-group, because theirs was the first culture found in upper Nubia.  A-Group remains are quite distinct from those of contemporary Egypt, so there is good reason to suspect that the people differed from the Egyptians politically, linguistically and culturally, and perhaps ethnically. Their unmistakable objects have been found well distributed throughout Lower Nubia, from the Second Cataract north to Aswan, and a few of their objects have been found at Hierakonpolis, site of the earliest Egyptian capital in Upper Egypt. Although a few small and rather poor looking settlement sites were identified before the region was flooded forever by the Aswan High Dam, the A-Group people are known primarily from their much more prosperous looking cemeteries.

Adapted from: http://www.nubianet.org/about/about_history3.html

The most important archaeological source material related to the Nubian A-Group came from about seventy-five village cemeteries. Many graves had rich and varied funeral offerings that consisted of a whole array of indigenous and imported pottery types, including Nubian bowls and dishes with rippled surfaces, delicate thin-walled vessels with red-painted geometric patterns, and Egyptian bowls and wine jars. Among the other finds there were ivory bracelets, stone beads and amulets, mollusk shells from the Red Sea, copper tools, quartzite palettes, mortars and grinders, and female pottery figurines.

The leaders of the A-Group communities probably played an important intermediary role among the fast-developing Egyptian economy, the communities in Upper Nubia and those in surrounding regions, furnishing raw materials of various kinds, including ivory, hardwoods, precious stones, and gold, perhaps also cattle. 

Adapted from: http://www.numibia.net/nubia/a-group.htm

FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN DOCTORS

During the early Colonial Period in English North America, there were virtually no apprentice or institutionally trained physicians. The single recorded exception seems to be Lucas Santomee, a Dutch-trained physician who practiced in New Amsterdam during the 1660s. Santomee was successful and a property owner. In 1644, he was issued a Dutch land grant in New Netherland that included property in what eventually became Brooklyn and Greenwich Village. Santomee was the son of Peter Santomee, one of the first eleven Africans brought to the area. Lucas, a free black, became a well-known physician in the area.

There were many African medical practitioners. This can be viewed as a continuation of ancient African medical traditions and was the healing method with which slaves were most comfortable. These healers could be described as slave midwives, root doctors, spirit healers, conjurers, or “kitchen physicks.” They were hands-on medical work force that staffed the slave health subsystem and provided the medical care and attention most Black received during the Colonial Period until the Civil war.

Adapted from Black Saga: The African American Experience by Charles M. Christian and An American Heath Dilemma: A Medical History of African Americans and The Problem of Race by W. Michael Byrd and Linda A. Clayton. 

FREE YOUR MIND WITH BLACK HISTORY

This is a video where Dr. Hilliard speaks about how Black folks can free their mind through the study of history. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TkE90WDL8s&feature=related

Dr. Asa G. Hilliard III was the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education. A teacher, psychologist, and historian, he began his career in the Denver Public Schools. He earned a B.A. in Educational Psychology, M.A. in Counseling, and Ed.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver, where he also taught in the College of Education and in the Philosophy colloquium of the Centennial Scholars Honors Program.

TRADITIONAL AFRICAN BELIEFS

from:

THE MEANING OF PEACE IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND CULTURE

Godfrey Igwebuike Onah

Pontifical Urban University, Rome 

@ http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/

"Considering Africa as a whole, the main objects of religious belief are: God, the divinities, spirits, and ancestors. Belief in God, conceived as one Supreme Personal Being seems to be shared by the majority of African cultures. Nevertheless, there are a few cultures where the situation is not very clear....
            Next to God are what one may call divinities, for lack of a better expression. These are spiritual beings who owe their origin to and are dependent on God. Some of them are personified attributes of the Supreme Being, like the thunder divinity, which usually represents God’s wrath...
            There is yet another class of spiritual beings who are not always good. There is yet another class of spiritual beings who are not always good. Some of them are good, some are, to say the least, mischievous, while others are outright evil. And they are innumerable! Some of these are human, like the wandering spirits of some dead persons who due to some lack did not make it to the home of the ancestors and also the spirits of witches and wizards who, though still alive, are believed to be able to leave their bodies and inhabit lower animals in order to harm other persons....            
            Perhaps the most dearly loved spiritual beings in ATR are the ancestors, those “living-dead” (to borrow the expression of John Mbiti), who are effectively members of the family and clan, now living in a state that permits them to enjoy some special relationship with God, the divinities and the good spirits...."

FIRST BLACK LEGISLATOR

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/de-souza-matthias-circa-1642

Matthias de Souza, an indentured servant, was the only black person to serve in the colonial Maryland legislature.  As such he is the first African American to sit in any legislative body in what would become the United States. From www,BlackPast.org