If you haven't read this book, and you think you know African history - you're probably wrong.
Chancellor Williams' work is an excellent, disturbing, must-read text for African Americans.
It details the glories, and discusses the mistakes in black cultures that led to their present status.
If you didn't know that African cultures have always been rather open, if you don't know how cultures that develop technology first end up being technologically backward, if you don't understand the real relationship among African, Arab, Semitic, and European cultures,
You need to read this book.
The Destruction of Black Civilization took Chancellor Williams sixteen
years of research and field study to compile. The book, which was to
serve as a reinterpretation of the history of the African race, was
intended to be ""a general rebellion against the subtle message from
even the most 'liberal' white authors (and their Negro disciples): 'You
belong to a race of nobodies. You have no worthwhile history to point to
with pride.'""
The book was written at a time when many black students,
educators, and scholars were starting to piece together the connection
between the way their history was taught and the way they were perceived
by others and by themselves. They began to question assumptions made
about their history and took it upon themselves to create a new body of
historical research.
The book is premised on the question: "If the
Blacks were among the very first builders of civilization and their land
the birthplace of civilization, what has happened to them that has left
them since then, at the bottom of world society, precisely what
happened? The Caucasian answer is simple and well-known: The Blacks have
always been at the bottom."
" Williams instead contends that many
elements--nature, imperialism, and stolen legacies-- have aided in the
destruction of the black civilization. The Destruction of Black
Civilization is revelatory and revolutionary because it offers a new
approach to the research, teaching, and study of African history by
shifting the main focus from the history of Arabs and Europeans in
Africa to the Africans themselves, offering instead "
"a history of
blacks that is a history of blacks. Because only from history can we
learn what our strengths were and, especially, in what particular aspect
we are weak and vulnerable. Our history can then become at once the
foundation and guiding light for united efforts in serious[ly] planning
what we should be about now."
" It was part of the evolution of the black
revolution that took place in the 1970s, as the focus shifted from
politics to matters of the mind."
- Paperback: 388 pages
- Publisher: Lulu.com (June 26, 2020)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1716802105
- ISBN-13: 978-1716802102
-
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds