The Black Commentator - January 10, 2008

We Should Listen to the Wisdom of our Ancestors - Worrill's World By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, BC Columnist

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African people throughout the world are uniformly under the yoke of white supremacy. This has created tremendous problems for us as a people. Two of the solutions to these problems are the growing demand for Reparations by African people in America and throughout the world and the fortification of the Black Liberation Movement. Our ancestors have given us a historical framework out of which, at this moment in history, and through their wisdom, we can liberate ourselves and pursue the Reparations Demand with a clear and concise understanding of our history.

Our thinkers and activists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have set forth many of the solutions to the problems and crises of African people. From time to time, movements have unfolded that have picked up on the ideas of these thinkers and activists. Such is the case with the Black Liberation and Reparations Movements. Both Movements seek to challenge and break the yoke of white supremacy that dominates all aspects of the lives of African people in America.

We must learn from the past and not allow our internal differences and external manipulations to derail us. As African people in the twenty-first century, it is imperative that we collectively join and participate in the Black Liberation and Reparations Movements, as we seek to dismantle white supremacy.

Let us briefly examine some of the ideas our leaders presented in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that should be the foundation for establishing the framework for the growing Reparations Movement and strengthen the Black Liberation Movement at this critical juncture in the history of African people:

Jean Jacques Dessalines, one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries said, “Never again shall a colonist, or European, set his foot upon this territory with the title of master or proprietor. This resolution shall henceforward form the basis of our constitution.”
Henry Highland Garnet, a mid-nineteenth-century Black Nationalist thinker and organizer explained in the following statement that African people need “…a grand center of Negro nationality, from which shall flow the streams of commercial, intellectual, and political power which shall make colored people respected everywhere.”
Martin Robeson Delany, Harvard trained physician of the mid-nineteenth century and leading Black Nationalist espoused, “We must act for ourselves. We are a nation within a nation; as the Poles in Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the Welsh, Irish, and Scots in the British dominions. But we have been, by our oppressor, despoiled of our purity, and corrupted in our native characteristics, so that we have inherited their vices and but few of their virtues, leaving us really a broken people.”
Edward Wilmot Blyden, a leading educator and Pan Africanist of the mid and late nineteenth centuries said, “We need some African power, some great center of the race where our physical, pecuniary, and intellectual strength may be collected. We need some spot where such an influence may go forth in behalf of the race as shall be felt by the nations. We are now so scattered and divided that we can do nothing… So long as we remain thus divided, we may expect imposition… An African nationality is our great need… We must build up Negro States; we must establish and maintain the various institutions.”
One of the greatest Pan Africanist and Black Nationalist leaders of the twentieth century, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, succinctly states, “Africa for the Africans at home and abroad.”
Another great Black Nationalist leader of the twentieth century, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, challenged that “we must do for self.”
Professor Joseph Harris, in commenting on the work of William Leo Hansberry, one of our leading authorities on African History in the twentieth century said, “Hansberry realized that the African students not only had to contend with life in this racist country, but that they also had the obligation to return to their countries with both the skills acquired at Howard and an Afrocentric perspective of their heritage.”
Finally, the editorial commentary in the Afrocentric World Review, Vol. I, No. I, Winter, 1973, explained, “In this crucial world wide scramble for Africa, African minds and African bodies, we must proclaim in our own right African interest first… Blacks must cease becoming a vest pocket people for other national interests and world pursuits, and hasten to revive the age old traditional quest for a World African Center that will make us once again masters in our own house.”

In this spirit, let us listen to the wisdom of our ancestors as we continue to forge ahead in strengthening our Black Liberation and Reparations Movements. Our challenge is to study our history, listen to the wisdom of our ancestors, and take appropriate action. Long live the Spirit and Wisdom of our Ancestors!

BlackCommentator.com columnist Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

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