MODERN AFRICA

Ideas that are energies repeatedly reinforced by actions to calcify into rational beliefs. Beliefs repeatedly reinforced may become customary. Back of all custom, back of tyranny, back of hegemony is belief; behind which are ideas that are repeatedly reinforced by actions into custom. To be free: Attack the ideas in back of the offensive infrastructure, be they church, state, philosophy with ideas of your own that are as often reinforced repeatedly and you will achieve the deadlock that enables development of you and your work. Dr. Basil Davidson, whose fine book, MODERN AFRICA: A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY (1994), inspired my insight , put it this way: "In those days, thinking about the future, educated Africans saw two big obstacles to any progress. One of these was raised, and always built higher, by the racism of the colonial systems. The Africans, this racism insisted, are inferior. They have made no history. They cannot rule themselves: we superior Europeans must do it for them. "These assertions were not truths but myths which buttressed colonial rule. Africans had made history, and built civilizations, and ruled themselves, through countless years before any colonial ruler came up on the scene. Yet these myths, however surprising they may seem today, were widely believed in those early decades of our century. That was partly because the colonial rulers were far advanced in machinery and modern technology, and they consequently claimed that they had 'invented everything.' Partly it was because children in colonial schools were taught the same racist lesson. Africa's own development was never mentioned or discussed." P.31, "Key Ideas for Progress"

AFRICANS INVENTED "TIME"

AFRICANS INVENTED “TIME.” Friday, August 02, 2019 BY REV. DR. LARRY DELANO COLEMAN AFRICANS INVENTED TIM E. ETHIOPIANS/EGYPTIANS ‘ PREDECESSORS—HOWEVER THEY WERE KNOWN-- INVENTED “TIME” . TIME IS FACT. TIME IS CONCEPT. TIME IS IDEA. TIME IS “WATER CLOCK”. TIME IS THE 365 ¼ DAY CALENDAR. “TIME” WAS INVENTED BY THE VERY FIRST INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH IN AFRCA, WHO STUDIED STARS. THESE PEOPLE LIVED CLOSE TO GOD AND GOD’S NATURAL RHYTHMS. AFRICANS INVENTED TIME THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, WHEN THEY PRODUCED THE 365-DAY CALENDAR. THE CALENDAR WAS DEDUCED FROM THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF STAR-GAZING . THEIR STAR-GAZING WAS ALIGNED WITH EARLY PHENOMENON, LIKE SUNRISE, AND THE NILE RIVER ANNUAL FLOOD. ALL SUBSEQUENT CALENDARS ARE BASED ON THE AFRICAN ORIGINAL. FROM 365 DAYS THEY HAD 12 MONTHS OF 30 DAYS, WITH THE REMAINING FIVE DAYS LEFT AS HOLIDAYS. FROM 12 MONTHS CAME WEEKS, DAYS, HOURS, MINUTES, SECONDS. HOW IMPORTANT IS TIME OR TIMING IN OUR LIVES? Ecclesiastes 3 King James Version (KJV) 3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

RECONCILIATION

Reconciliation is more than man with man. Reconciliation is ciliation of man with himself, with nature, man and God.

AMEN

Immobile armies turn their guns, knives on themselves. Stagnant water infects. Activity energizes, engenders, maintains the total corpus, singly, collectively, wholly. Unorganized armies are immobile. Unorganized economy is stagnant. Activity of each dispels stagnation. A perfect organization is spiritual in its conceptions, correlations, aims. At the same time, man being earth made, earth-bound, man's corpus is maintained by the earth while its spirit is sustained by eternal God, the vertex-vortex of all existence.

MARVEL

MARVEL OF MARVELS Grappled inside Greek tapia, roped ruefully in place by Roman fascia, plundered punitively by Muslim invaders, Turkish traders, Byzantine Mamelukes' harems/eunuchs, nipped, gnashed, by merchants, pinched off piece by piece by: vain Napoleon, by bloody British cannonballs and scholars, it is a marvel that anything remains of Africa's aboriginal Kemet and Kush! Not to mention the earlier raiders, Assyrians, Persians, both invaders who preceded the Greeks who entered under Alexander in 322 B.C. "Egypt" as they renamed it, having already fallen in 650 B.C., hoary with age already when Plato first came to learn, when Alexander came to be anointed pharaoh at Libya's Oasis Oracle of Delphi as the legitimate heir to the pharaohs, without him ever fighting a battle. But much remains underground, in the lake and seabeds, seemingly surfacing with each dig, each document, interminably: pointing to their very prehistoric antiquity and a divine propinquity of their primal people's global marvel of mankind.

WASHINGTON: DUBOIS, LOGAN CRITIQUE

WASHINGTON : DuBOIS AND LOGAN CRITIQUE I was relieved and glad to read that two of Dr. Booker T. Washington's most often quoted educational critics had somewhat mitigated and contextualized their vituperative, visceral criticisms of the “Sage of Tuskegee” in their later writings. I make specific reference to Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and to Dr. Rayford W. Logan. Dr. DuBois' “Souls of Black Folks” and “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.”are two essays of 1903, which have been cited repeatedly by Washington's liberal scholarly traducers as cardinal truths. The reader is beseeched to read both DuBois essays, as I have previously done, to fortify themselves. In his 1925 essay, “The Negro Mind Reaches Out,” in Alain Locke's classic THE NEW NEGRO: AN INTERPRETATION (1925), Dr. DuBois reconnoiters himself with respect to Washington as he writes: “Once upon a time in my younger years and in the dawn of this century I wrote: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” It was a pert and singing phrase which I then liked and which since I have often rehearsed to my soul and asked:—how far is this prophecy or speculation? To-day in the last years of the century’s first quarter, let us examine the matter again, especially in the memory of that great event of these great years, the World War. Fruit of the bitter rivalries of economic imperialism, the roots of the catastrophe were in Africa, deeply entwined at bottom with the problems of the color line. And of the legacy left, the problems the world inherits hold the same fatal seed; world dissension and catastrophe still lurk in the unsolved problems of race relations. What then is the world view that the consideration of this question offers?” p. 385 My point here is that if DuBois reconnoiters DubBois' estimation of Dr. Booker T. Washington in light of supervening factual occurrences, it is obvious that today's detractors of either man must do no less! The assertion, “ The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” appears in “The Souls of Black Folk' where DuBois scolded Washington. DuBois reaffirms his earlier sentence which was true of all centuries from the 15th forward when the Portuguese began the African slave trade to Europe. Dr. Rayford W. Logan, another Harvard Ph. D., like Dr. DuBois, who had also gained some credence by his equivalent denunciation of Washington, albeit more subtly. Logan's major work is titled, THE BETRAYAL OF THE NEGRO (1965, 1997). He says in Chapter 5, “”The Nadir Under McKinley”: “[Grover] Cleveland's second administration was so beset with national and international problems—the Panic of 1893, Free Silver, the Populist Revolt, Hawaii, Venezuela and Cuba—that he had little opportunity to stop the steady deterioration of the Negro's status. He probably concluded that the Southern question was definitely settled when Booker T. Washington won national acclaim for his Atlanta Compromise Speech in September, 1895. In the following year the United Supreme Court consolidated the triumph of the former slave states when it sanctioned the doctrine of 'separate but equal accommodations.'” p.79 Of note, here, is Dr. Logan's deliberate calumny on the legacy of Washington by referring to his internationally famous “Atlanta Exposition Address” as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech,” without qualification, as though Washington were a diplomat with authority to bargain away, to compromise away 'rights' of African Americans that had survived the betrayal of 1876-77, the “Civil Rights Cases” of 1883, and terrorist lynchings and land thefts. Logan's snide mockery continues into the next sentence where he implies that the “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision of 1896 was attributable also to Booker T. Washington. As far as mitigation goes DuBois and Logan note Washington's work's awesomeness and his powerful influence on North and South. But it would belabor this disquisition unduly to do more than to note their begrudging existence which you can read yourself.

AMISH CONVERSATION

We spoke with an Amish father of 8 yesterday at the train station in Chicago. His wife and their 3 younger children were traveling with them to Mexico, where one of their daughters is teaching. We joked amiably that they were rather like "reverse migrants,." going from the USA into Mexico. He farms a 57 acre spread in Indiana from which they gather and can their food; but they "still shop;".as noted by his kids' footwear. He is a gray-bearded, productive, 52-year old, but looks to be somewhat substantially older. "Monroe's" main business is home construction, in which two married sons work along with him and others. I was very enriched by our conversation. He said he was too! He was the first Amish person to whom I ever spoken, as best I can recall. He is a speaker of high German, (where he traces his descent), Amish and English. A spirit of love and familial sharing was observable in their interactions.