BLACK INFLUENCE ON EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND EARLY ETHIOPIAN ADOPTION

There is a strong indigenous religious tradition in Africa, but like other parts of the world, two of the major religions, Christianity and Islam, have had a strong influence. This post will focus on Christianity. 

From Introduction to Black Studies by Maulana Karenga

"Th[e] concept of African presence and critical participation in Christianity in its formative years calls forth names like Origin, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Plotinus, and Augustine. These were all North Africans and are often raised to impose both racial and religious modesty on Whites who deny the multicultural origin of the faith. The issue, however, is whether these early teachers of Christianity and the fathers of the Church were simply in Africa or also of Africa. By this I mean, did they draw on African views and values or did they work within the Western Asian and European worldviews and value systems? Furthermore, evolution of Christianity in Ethiopia has a long and rich history starting small in the early 4th century and a national religion in 325 C.E. (AD) with its embrace by Emperor Ezana." 

From: Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch

"The most remarkable and exotic triumph of Miaphysite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism) cause around the Byzantine Empire was far to the south even beyond Nubia, in Ethiopia. The origins of Christianity in this remote and mountainous region are not clear, beyond the mysterious self-contained story of the Book of Acts of an encounter in Judaea between Philip, one of the first Christian leaders in Jerusalem, and a eunuch servant of the  'Queen of Ethiopia', who was fascinated to hear that the Jewish prophesy had been fulfilled in the coming of Christ. The first historical accounts are from the fourth century, and make it clear that Christian approaches came not southwards from Egypt but from the east across the Red Sea, via Ethiopia's longstanding trade contacts with Arabia and ultimately Syria. It was a Syrian merchant, Frumentius, who is credited with converting Ezana, the Negus (king or emperor) of the powerful northern state of Aksum.... Ezana has left a surviving inscription in Greek announcing his renunciation of his status a son of the Ethiopian war god, putting himself under the care of the trinity." 

BLACK HERITAGE, BLACK STUDIES

Picture from http://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu/

Black Heritage Network seeks "to inform and entertain all Americans with the inspirational people, singular stories, and soaring sagas of our nation’s Black Heritage while presenting the people and events of today as they lay the groundwork for tomorrow’s Black Heritage."


Black Heritage is basically what Black people have accomplished that is worthy of note and admiration. Black Studies is a critical study of that heritage. Black Heritage and Black Studies go hand in hand. "Heritage" implies what of value can be mined from history. What can we learn from the past and the present; therefore, one cannot merely relate stories of Black accomplishment without thoroughly understanding it. In this blog, I will make an attempt to be not only informative, but critical (in a positive sense) of Black Heritage. This means trying to explicate the meaning Black Heritage.  

From Introduction to Black Studies by Maulana Karenga: http://www.maulanakarenga.org/

As a discipline, a specialized branch of study and knowledge, Black Studies is a critical and systematic study of the thought and practice of African people in their current and historical unfolding....

Black Studies ... began as both a political and academic demand with grounding in both the general student movement and social struggles of the 60's out of which the Student Movement evolved. The 60's was a time for upheaval and confrontations, and students--Africans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Whites-- were at the center of the struggle which produced this process. Beginning first off campus in the struggle against the racist structure and functioning of society, students began to see the university as a key institution in the larger system of  coercive institutions created by the established order to maintain its power." 

FIRST PUBLIC ABOLITIONIST-SAMUEL SEWALL IN 1700

On June 24, 1700, Judge Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts became one of the first public officials to denounce slavery when he published a three page statement, entitled The Selling of Joseph (available at  http://www.masshist.org/objects/2004september.cfm). Here he compares slavery in the colonies to the Old Testament story of Joseph who was sold into slavery by his own brothers because of jealousy. 

What shows this a true act of bravery is that at the same time laws in all colonies regarding slaves were getting  more and more restrictive. 

From The Massachusetts Historical Society:

Sewall noted in his diary that the slave trade had long troubled him, but The Selling of Joseph appears, at least in part, to have been inspired by a petition circulated in Boston in 1700 "for the freeing of a Negro [Adam] and his wife, who were unjustly held in Bondage." Adam was the slave of John Saffin, a prominent Boston merchant and magistrate. Saffin hired out Adam for a term of seven years and promised him freedom upon his good behavior. Saffin denied Adam his freedom, leading to several years of legal proceedings and a public war of words between Saffin and Sewall. In 1701, Saffin published A Brief and Candid Answer to a late Printed Sheet Entitled the Selling of Joseph, in which he refuted Sewall's objections to slavery and defended his actions in Adam's case. In 1703, after a long legal struggle, Adam finally gained his freedom, but Sewall did not reply directly to Saffin's A Brief and Candid Answer until 1705 when he reprinted an English condemnation of the slave trade that had originally appeared in The Athenian Oracle. 

ANGOLA GOOD NEWS: OIL RICHES TRICKLE DOWN

Many countries in Africa suffered from poverty and war. Angola was no exception. Luckily, it is now blessed  with peace and oil riches. Some of that money is being used to improve the lives of the general population. Spreading the wealth is the path to long term prosperity.  

Where is Angola?

Check out the Embassy of the Republic of Angola site: http://www.angola.org/

Picture from: African Arguments

http://africanarguments.org/2011/12/13/angola%E2%80%99s-new-oil-banking-legislation-by-kissy-agyeman-togobo-songhai-advisory/

 From The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21557811

"Generally deemed wretched after a 14-year war for independence from Portugal followed by 27 years of civil war that only ended in 2002, Angola is now one of Africa’s economic successes—thanks almost entirely to oil. With a population of 20m, it has Africa’s fifth-biggest and fastest-growing economy. Between 2004 and 2008 its GDP surged by an average of 17% a year, topping 22% in 2007. It is the continent’s second-biggest oil producer after Nigeria. Foreign investment is pouring in at a rate of more than $10 billion a year. In the past decade GDP per person is said to have tripled."

SUCCESS AT OVERCOMING GREAT ODDS

It was all a set up to make all Black males appear to be criminals. There must be something wrong with us. The fact is that there is nothing wrong with Black men. Everyone needs more money, more education, better health, deeper understanding. Khalil Gibran Muhammed argues in his book, The Condemnation of Blackness, that African-Americans were systematically condemned as criminal and inferior without being allowed the opportunity to prove otherwise. The amazing thing is the degree of success many African-Americans have enjoyed despite being vilified.  

Photo: http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/40under40/profiles/2011/khalil-gibran-muhammad

Interview with the author: Khalil Gibran Muhammad
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-confronting-the-contradictions-of-america%E2%80%99s-past/


From: Harvard University Press Blog
 http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2010/01/whites-commit-crimes-but-black-males-are-criminals.html

"In The Condemnation of Blackness, Muhammad shows how “the racial data revolution” was made to work against blacks even as social scientists, journalists, and reformers created pathways to rehabilitation for Irish, Italian, and other foreign-born immigrants once tagged with a similar stigma of criminality. Where white criminals enjoyed the privilege of “racial anonymity” and were afforded an understanding of the structural roots of poverty and crime, black criminals, whose crimes, we can now see, differed little in form and function from those committed by whites, were made to stand in for the imagined deficiencies of the race as a whole, so that in evaluations of black fitness for modern life, the innocent came to be tarred along with the actually guilty. “Whites commit crimes, but black males are criminals”—in exposing the roots of this persistent refrain, one that has justified not only racial violence but the kind of benign neglect that has relegated blacks to the margins of an American social sphere that has historically expanded to incorporate new and different groups, Muhammad shows how this particular mismeasure of man has become foundational to our thinking about modern urban America, and how its insidious logic remains with us to this day."

AFRICAN KINGDOM, MEROE, ONE OF THE FIRST TO HAVE ELECTIONS

Quote:
"One of the peculiar features of the Meroitic political system was the choice of a new sovereign by election. Classical authors from Herodotus, fifth century BCE, and Diodorus of Sicily, first century BCE express their surprise about this usage, so different from the other ancient kingdoms." from General History of Africa: Abridged Edition  Vol. II page 172

http://www.dignubia.org/maps/timeline/bce-0330c.htm

Background:
Meroe seems to have been a flourishing town at least as early as the eighth century BC. It was situated at the junction of several main river and caravan routes, connecting central Africa, via the Blue and White Niles, with Egypt, and the Upper Nile region itself with Kordofan, the Red Sea and the Ethiopian highlands. Since it lay within the rainbelt, the land about it was seasonally more productive than the region of Napata, and it was thus a somewhat more pleasant place to live. By the third century BC it was only one of several large towns that had arisen in the same region. Bounded to the west by the Nile, the north by the River Atbara and to the south by the Blue Nile, this area, now known as the Butana, was the heartland of the later Kushite kingdom, and came to be known in classical literature as 'the Island of Meroe.' From Nubia Museum http://www.numibia.net/nubia/meroe.htm

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GABBY DOUGLASS - FIRST PLACE AT OLYMPICS TRIAL

Gabby Douglas website:  http://gabrielledouglas.com/

From:

http://espn.go.com/olympics/gymnastics/story/_/id/8121407/2012-olympic-games-gabby-douglas-clinches-gymnastics-spot

Long called an underdog, Gabby Douglas likes her new label a whole lot more.

Olympian.

The 16-year-old with the spectacular uneven bars routine and personality to spare beat Jordyn Wieber for the first time Sunday night, winning the Olympic trials and the lone guaranteed spot for the London Games.

"Everyone was telling me you have this great potential and you can be on top," Douglas said. "I didn't believe that, but everyone was just telling me to believe in myself. I did and I'm kind of up on top and it's amazing."