PHENOMENAL

PHENOMENALLY EMPIRICAL Some years ago a famous author and African American intellectual once admonished me not to be “too empirical” In my deductions. When I asked him what empiricism was, however, he made no reply. Today, in reading the book AFRICAN PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHY by John H. McClendon III and Stephen C. Ferguson II (2019), I see this: “Plato’s epistemology is best described as ‘rationalism’, whereby reason supersedes experience as the foundation for knowledge. Concomitantly, Plato rejects ‘empiricism’ because it establishes knowledge based upon perceptual experience.” P. 127. Now with a context for my friend’s admonition—Plato—a philosopher who learned what little he knew in ancient Kemet from its priests and sages, by his own admission, in his TIMAEUS that “the Greeks are like children intellectually”, I double- down on my so-called empiricism. After all, I am phenomenally one among the many who has blessedly descended from the iconic Greek philosopher, Plato’s, own ancient African teachers, including their intellectual legacy; thus, I am also therefore, perforce, experientially, empirical, by the grace of God!

POLICE KILLINGS OF BLACKS

The police killings of black people is no curious anomaly. It is enabled. It is sought. It is encouraged , rewarded, by several United States Supreme Court decisions, especially one from 1989, known as “Graham v. Connor .” The Graham v. Connor case gave police officers not only the power to kill, if they felt that their lives were in danger, subjectively . But this belief was not subjected to “objective” attack by any other police officer , who was not then “present at the scene” at the instant of the occurrence —not even superior officers in the chain of command—; nor forensic experts in law enforcement protocols, or anything else! The “fear of the cop” was the determining factor. Nothing else. Thus, police have carte blanche to kill people, if they claim to “fear for their lives.” By law since 1989. The Atatiana Jefferson woman who was killed while in her apartment looking out of a window in Texas, is but the latest in a string of stirring accounts of “fear for my life” lies. Hopefully her killer will meet the same fate as the female cop who killed Barbadian Botham James. Graham v. Connor :: 490 U.S. 386 (1989) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center

PRECESSION

“Precession calculation is a vital tool for the historian to help him understand ancient man, whose religion was often directed to the ‘sky gods’ and thus based on observations of the sky—what today we would call naked eye observational astronomy. It can be thus understood that ancient man built religious monuments and, prolifically, tombs which made use of geometrical astronomy to express astronomical alignments and other phenomena of the sky using symbolic architecture. It further follows that if an architectural feature of a monument is suspected to have been aligned towards a specific star, then, with the use of precession, it is possible to work out the date of such a monument to a fairly good level of precision . By also ‘re-creating’ the sky for a given epoch, we can see what they saw and hence understand further the religious importance of their observations through the design and symbolic expression of the monument .” P. 242, “Precession,” THE ORION MYSTERY (Appendix 2) by Robert G. Bauval (1994)

RICHARD ALLEN'S FORMULA

Richard Allen’s Formula Still Works in America Correctly read, the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was far more practical, intricate, sophisticated than the current version reflects—confined to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church itself grew out of the fact of the enslaved colonial roots of Richard Allen, whose mother and 3 siblings were sold away, whom he never saw again. Located in the Delaware-Maryland-Pennsylvania region, also made famous by Benjamin Banneker , his peer and contemporary, he heard an itinerant Methodist preacher tell a mixed audience of slaves and free persons, blacks and whites, that in Christ all were one, neither Greek nor Jew; nor free nor slave; nor male nor female. Instead, all people, slaves too, were God’s uniquely divine children. This revelation revolutionized his self-conceptions, lifted him up on high! As a consequence of hearing, of learning these basic facts , Allen weaponized religion as a tool in his personal war chest for freedom. He bought his own personal and his brother’s freedom by chopping wood, selling salt, moving about in a wagon with his brother. Allen also converted his master to Jesus Christ by his faithful example, as he traveled about with the leading preachers up and down the eastern seaboard proclaiming the power of Jesus Christ to the slaves. This message gave the slaves hope and a sense of “somebodyness.” He sought the company of other leading blacks who were spirited in thought in Maryland, Daniel Coker; in Massachusetts , Prince Hall; in Philadelphia, Absalom Jones. With these, he helped to organize the Free African Society, the Prince Hall Masons, the African Methodist Episcopal church; the latter after a fierce legal battle lasting for years over who would have the right to proclaim what “thus sayeth the Lord” to people of African descent? Those who arose from their status or those from white establishment that consisted of white supremacy? Battling white supremacy was the main reason for being of the African Methodist Episcopal church. They were a station on the Underground Railroad. They were involved in civic affairs, like abating “Yellow Fever” in 1793. They also had guns in the basement to protect themselves from enslavers. They taught school in church and church in school; they made use of young people—Bishop Allen’s son was secretary at conferences—they made use of women: Jarena Lee was one of the earliest black women preachers. They did for themselves on their own land “under their own vine and fig tree,” confidently, faithfully. Having myself been an African Methodist Episcopal church pastor in Butler, Bates County, Missouri , from 1995-2004, at Brooks Chapel, I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ when combined with true black history can defeat white supremacists minds, hearts, in the black and white peoples of rural, formerly slaveholding, Missouri! We erected a statue on the court house square in 2008, of a black soldier! This was a tribute to the forgotten black soldiers of the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry who won the Battle of Island Mound in October, 1862. The State of Missouri in 2012, dedicated a 40-acre park at the site of the battle in 2012, about 8 miles from Butler. It must be borne in mind that The “Emancipation Proclamation” was not issued until January 1, 1863, so these brave men of First Kansas —who were organized by Kansas United States Senator, James Lane, (with President Abraham Lincoln’s tacit consent) defeated a group of mounted Confederate irregulars, before blacks could lawfully fight. Often times, one cannot wait on the law; instead one must wait upon the Lord (obey God), regardless of the law or consequences! Memory was lost of this ground-breaking 1862, battle in Butler, in Bates, County, in local history and lore, except for a few, me and Chris Tabor, an ex-Marine cartographer, who had published articles about it in the local newspaper . I discovered it adventitiously, myself, in a book store in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1999, when Noah Trudeau’s LIKE MEN OF WAR (1998) summoned me from across the room. I opened the book and was shocked to see Butler in print as the place of this epochal battle! The truth is the light indeed! Bishop Allen’s example worked in the 18th-19th centuries. It worked in Butler in the 20th century. Richard Allen’s formula can work into the 21st century to cure the abased minds, hearts , conditions of our amazing people, who do not know God, who pray the work is done to complete its mission of deliverance!

CUMMINGS AND SMALLS

Late Congressman, Elijah Cummings, my Bison brother, has observed that he went from a sharecroppers’ son to Congress in one generation. So too have others even more dramatically than Elijah’s example! Robert Smalls of South Carolina went from being an enslaved ship pilot in Charleston, to ship liberator and family liberator of himself and of eight other enslaved crewmen families. These brave men, before dawn one day, had sailed that stolen battle ship, “The Planter”, that Robert Smalls piloted, in 1862, past 4 Confederate forts’ guns and mines in Charleston harbor, safely, secretly, to the Union fleet that was blockading Charleston out at sea, shocking the Union rescuers as much as they later had shocked the rebels . Smalls was later promoted to be the captain, of the “Planter” and used his knowledge of tides and waterways to help the North defeat the South there. Smalls later became the shipowner, when Congress granted him payment ; he was elected to the U. S. Congress during Reconstruction, where he served with others, like himself , who had “in the same generation” gone from from slavery to the U. S. Congress. God is a powerful captain!

FREE BLACK SLAVE CATCHERS?

I was shocked to read of “free black slave catchers” in Louisiana along the [Mississippi River’s] “east bank above New Orleans, on the “German Coast”, where there were “dozens of slave labor camps [that] stretched back from the river into French-surveyed ‘long lots’, narrow strips of land that ran a mile or two across cleared ground to a dense belt of forested swamps....The swamps themselves were almost impenetrable , full of alligators, snakes, panthers , and bears . Runaways sought refuge in the swamps, hiding from overseers and free black slave-catchers .” P. 56-57, “Heads,” THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD (2016) by Edward E. Baptist. I do not recall ever reading of “free black slave-catchers” in America, only in Africa. But I will read on!

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_philosophy?fbclid=IwAR3O4IeuSX_2QqdWQiloAfpudHDYFuM2Pt7W-CVvk0gC8g1XeJAUa9ifsUs LOST AND FOUND AT LAST I have long sought what we lost as Africans—if anything—to bring about our abasement, our enslavement, our being “scattered and peeled” to the four winds like dross which the winds have driven. At age 68, October 20, 2019, I may have found part of it. The part that I found is set forth plainly, accurately in the Wikipedia article below that is entitled, “Ancient Egyptian Philosophy”. Read it. Do not be at all spiritually deterred by its title. It is love’s sweet meat . It is the key to displaced African people’s long-sought liberation, restoration, reparations, redemption . As the stars’ precessions cycle in-out in phases, in seasons, so man’s destiny undergoes precessions. Whether 1250 years of mini/cycling or 26,000 years of grand cycles, our destinations, destinies, are linked both to heaven above, to earth below. Such ancient African philosophy reveals sacral science. The key to that ancient African assiduity that was celebrated by Plato, Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus; that assiduity was embodied in Tertullian, Origen, Plotinus , Augustine ; that assiduity has produced, has adduced, conception/perceptions of knowledge , wisdom, “God”, as fact and as ideal; as one and as all; that ancient African assiduity perfected philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, navigation , engineering, letters, art, agriculture , architecture, in short, world civilization—which it shared; this assiduity is the link with our past, which is ever present, in us. This link is whence came our faith, our adaptability, our creativity, our genius, our music, for the many seasons, “2000 seasons, “ of our divine oppression , earthly , riverine, precessions from divine favor on the Nile to divine disfavor on the Mississippi, Potomac, Missouri, Shenandoah and the rivers of which Lawrence, Kansas’ Langston Hughes poetically, presciently sang in “I’ve Known Rivers.” And in others. But having done our penance, having suffered, having survived , thrived, been elected chief of the United States of America, we are ascending, “rising”, on our way to the top to the stars, to our destiny ! Don’t believe me! Never believe me! Read the truth for yourself. Share it! Ancient Egyptian philosophy