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...."

Traditional African Religion is Science

Specific problems are solved by common sense. General problems are solved by theory.


From Pattern of Thought in Africa and the West by Robin Horton

I suggest that in traditional Africa, relations between common sense and theory are essentially the same as in Europe. That is, common sense is the handier and more economic tool for coping with a wide range of circumstances in everyday life. Nevertheless, there are certain circumstances that can only be coped with in terms of wider casual vision than common sense provides. And in these circumstances there is a jump to theoretical thinking.... But it is only from the more recent studies of African cosmologies, where religious beliefs are shown in the context of the various everyday contingencies they are invoked to explain, that we have begun to see how traditional religious thought also operates by similar process of abstraction, analysis and reintegration. 

Women in Traditional African Religion

This is a small snippet from a larger scholarly article. http://www.mamiwata.com/women.html

"With few exceptions African Societies have been described from a masculine perspective. However, a feminine perspective on women’s' roles in traditional religion can be richly illuminating .  This paper will therefore focus on the possibility of a feminine image of deity in African traditional religions and the functions of women, in a world which is fundamentally masculine." 

from

WOMEN IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIONSby Kenneth Kojo AntiFaculty of EducationUniversity of Cape Coast

Cape Coast, Ghana, West Africa