When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the dignified existence and rich histories of African nations prior to European colonization.
John Henrik Clarke's quote emphasizes the respect and significance of the relationship between early Europeans and Africans. It underscores the fact that African societies had a long-established history and cultural depth, challenging the narratives that depict Africans merely as victims of slavery, instead showcasing them as dignified peoples with their own legacies and contributions long before European influence.
In practice
In a history class discussing colonialism and its effects.
I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers.
Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. In order to do this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known abut the Africans.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.
The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved.
Like Israel, New York City's history has been defined by immigrants who come in search of freedom and the opportunity to build a better life. And like Israel, New York City has remained a target for terrorists who seek to destroy that freedom
History is not history unless it is the truth.
We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.
Blacks have experienced a history of victimization in America, beginning obviously in slavery and then another 100 years of segregation. I grew up in segregation. I know very well what it was about and all of the difficulties it placed on black life, and how we were truly held down before the civil-rights movement.
I've met many Holocaust survivors who find the era infinitely compelling because they have this deep hunger to understand how it all could possibly have happened.
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