Yosef Ben-Jochannan Quotes
Long before they had an Adam and Eve there was an Africa and African people, with concepts that predated Abraham. All of the pyramids of Africa, not only those in Egypt, but those in Sudan, and the two in northern Ethiopia … were built thousands of years before there was an Adam and Eve mentioned anywhere on the planet
Yosef ben-Jochannan, Historian, Egyptologist, and Cultural Anthropologist, Address, The African Contribution to Technology and Science, Greater London Council, March 1986
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At the time the scientific proof of Africa as the origin of Mankind was just emerging. The President’s tentativeness is typical of his careful avoidance of hyperbole, in contrast to many other popular leaders.
American socialists and communists were very vocal about the terrible racial discrimination that existed in the United States until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed in the 1960s. In 1933 describing Black African societies as anything but primitive was rare regardless of the historical facts. When communists and socialists too these anti-racist positions, the racist Southerners then conflated this position and accused all opponents of segregation of being socialists and communists. This tactic actually worked quite well and for many years discouraged many politicians or others from speaking out against discrimination lest they be accused of being a communist or socialist.
Asante is known as “the Father of Afrocentrism.”
Often referred to as “The Dean of Black Historians.”. Although critical of the behavior of Africans involvement in the slave trade, Person-Lynn maintains that there was a qualitative difference between African concepts of slavery where the enslavement was conceptually of human beings whereas the chattel slavery of the Atlantic trade considered the slaves as sub-human property. It is arguable as to which of the two views is the greater moral failure, but many regard it as a difference not worth much in that both views were grossly immoral and had devastating consequences for a large number of people.
What Garvey believed about Egypt was not quite true. However, there was a more important grain of truth in Garvey’s assertion, but he was not aware of it as the science did not emerge until the latter part of the 20th century. Specifically, all humans today genetically had a common Black ancestor in Africa. In that sense, at one point, there were no other humans but Blacks, and they certainly ruled their world. However, man moved out of Africa to inhabit much of the world and different racial attributes evolved over time. See {618972} for a modern pickup of Garvey’s notion. The majority of historians and archeologists believe that ancient Egypt was a multi-racial society with extensive intermarriage. The Nubians to the South (Sudan) were and are very dark-skinned, the Lybians in North Africa were much like the Arabs of toady, and there were Greeks and other Caucasians who were in Egypt which was one of the centers of world civilization that attracted people from all over. The Pharoh of Egypt, Ptolemy was a white Greek—one of the Generals of Alexander the Great, (for whom Alexandria was named) and Cleopatra was descended from him and more traditional Egyptians.
Yosef Alfredo Antonio Ben-Jochannan, referred to by his admirers as "Dr. Ben", was an American writer and historian. He was considered to be one of the more prominent Afrocentric scholars by some Black Nationalists, while most mainstream scholars dismissed him because of the basic historical inaccuracies in his work, as well as disputes about the authenticity of his educational degrees and academic credentials.
