PART 2: AFRICAN HISTORY AS A GUIDE TO AFRICAN ACTION

(Excerpted from Consciencism, by Kwame Nkrumah, page 62-63)

The history of Africa, as presented by European scholars, has been encumbered with malicious myths. It was even denied that we were a historical people. It was said that whereas other continents has shaped history, and determined its course, Africa was only propelled into history by the European contact. African history was therefore presented as an extension of European history. Hegel's authority was lent to this a-historical hypothesis concerning Africa, which he himself unhappily helped to promote. And apologists of colonialism lost little time in seizing upon it and writing wildly there on. In presenting the history of Africa as the history of the collapse of our traditional societies in the presence of the European advent, colonialism and imperialism employed their account of African and anthropology as an instrument of their oppressive ideology.

Earlier on, such disparaging accounts had been given of African society and culture as to appear to justify slavery, and slavery, posed against these accounts, seemed a positive deliverance of our ancestors. When the slave trade and slavery became illegal, the experts on Africa yielded to the new wind of change, and now began to present African culture and society as being so rudimentary and primitive that colonialism was a duty of Christianity and civilization. Even if we were no longer, on the evidence of the shape of our skulls, regarded as the missing link, unblessed with the arts of good government, material and spiritual progress, we were still regarded as representing the infancy of mankind. Our highly sophisticated culture was said to be simple and paralyzed by inertia, and we had to be encumbered with tutelage. And this tutelage, it was thought, could only be implemented if we were first subjugated politically. The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class. But if the history of a nation, or a people, cannot be found in the history of a class, how much less can the history of a continent be found in what is not even a part of it - Europe. Africa cannot be validly treated merely as the space in which Europe swelled up. If African history is interpreted in terms of the interests of European merchandise and capital, missionaries and administrators, it is no wonder that African nationalism is in the forms it takes regarded as a perversion and neo-colonialism as a virtue.

In the new African renaissance, we place great emphasis on the presentation of history. Our history needs to be written as the history of our society, not as the story of European adventures. African society must be treated as enjoying its own integrity; its history must be a mirror of that society, and the European contact must find its place in this history only as an African experience, even if as a crucial one. That is to say, the European contact needs to be assessed and judged from the point of view of the principles animating African society, and from the point of view of the harmony and progress of this society.

When history is presented in this way, it can become not an account of how those African students referred to in the introduction become more Europeanized than others; it can become a map of the growing tragedy and the final triumph of our society. In this way, African history can come to guide and direct African action. African history can thus become a pointer at the ideology which should guide and direct African reconstruction.

N.A.B.P.P. - PC

S/N T.E.L. II
Komrad B.A.B.O.

*****

Greetings N.A.B.P.P./PC Comrades!

[photo of a smiling Patrice Lumumba raising his hand]

*****

Prison Panthers

The W.L. Nolen Mentorship Program

P.O. Box 7907 * Austin, Texas 78713

Internationalism, Solidarity and Global Struggle

[picture of a man with a beret and a Black Panther badge, holding up a clenched fist]

Comrade Malik

S/N O.L. II/Komrad B.A.B.O.

COMRADES

[a row of faces, likely political prisoners past and present]

*****

THE BLACK PANTHERS SPEAK

[drawing of a clenched fist]

N.A.B.P.P. - PG

S/N
O.E.L.II
Komrad B.A.B.O.

*****

[collage of news clippings]

4Strugglemag.org

SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Panthers roll

The Police Assassination of Carl Hampton

Botham Jean shooting

Petition seeks murder count

Protesters give DA list, demand that Guyger's charge be upgraded

By Loyd Brumfield
Staff Writer
lbrumfield@dallasnews.com

Tom Fox/Staff Photographer

Clarise McCants of Philadelphia, criminal justice campaigner for Color of Change, led Friday's rally outside the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas.

Industrial Workers World
One Big Union
Greater Kansas City Branch

RACE RELATIONS

BLACK AMERICA

Makibaka! Huwag Matakot! Si Se Puede!

*****

Komrad B.A.B.O.
S/N O.L. II

[collage of clippings, pictures and cartoons]

COMRADES

4strugglemag.org

The Assassination of Fred Hampton
How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther

Industrial Workers of the World
Post Office Box 180195
Chicago, IL 60618

Dare to Struggle! Dare to Win! All Power to the People!

CALL OF DUTY

Organization for Black Unity, Inc.
646 Holmgreen Rd.
San Antonio, TX 78220

The Community
for Self Respect, Self-Defense & Self Determination

New Afrikan Service Organization
P.O. Box 4362
Allentown, PA 18105

BLACK OPS

Panthers line up at a Free Huey rally in west Oakland on July 28, 1968. In August 1970, Huey Newton listens to a Bob Dylan record in his house after his release from prison. Newton got used to being cold in prison. He feels too hot in the house so he takes off his shirt.