Putting the African Back in to Black History with Anthony Browder

[Music] good evening everyone hopefully you're doing well um and um prayers to you and yours especially those of us who may have family members that are in texas in the midwest so on and so forth and even those of us in the great pacific northwest hopefully that you and yours are remaining safe um with this inclement weather and safe um with this pandemic going on um my name is dr lawrence rasheed i am the dsu advisor and i am the african-american black student coordinator about me we have a great we have a whole lot of

superstars on this stage here tonight that's what ron said but um this is not my house um but we want to make sure we get into it so um glad you all could join us um here at lane community college we celebrate black history can i get the word out of my black history 365 and we're going to tell that a little bit later uh with my brother who's going to speak a little bit about that curriculum so with that being said um let's go ahead and go into [Music] can we go into the um

intro video a little bit [Music] now [Music] [Music] now [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and thank you for that brother carter um always representing um just always representing um and everybody so thank you for that um it's a perfect entree and and interlude into what we're going to go into next so i get the chance to talk about one of a musician mc hip-hop icon um this next video you know people probably don't even may not even be familiar with krs but this song right here is a banger and if you're not if you don't know

now you know and i can't say the rest because nikki smalls will get me fired but if you don't know y'all know the rest check out this video it's fire i told y'all it was a banger i told you all and y'all slept on that get the whole album it's just wow man so with that being said we're gonna go to another brilliant brother who's a great colleague of mine i had the opportunity to work with him with rice basket or i had the opportunity to observe him with the rise of passage and he's just

brilliant he's doing a lot of great things over there at churchill high school just just great educator great father just the whole nine um show some love from brother gene chisholm good evening everyone i'm honored to be here um this is fantastic uh once again my name is gene chisholm i'm the ninth grade transition coordinator at churchill high school um this is year 19 in education next year's big two zero and i'm looking forward to that but tonight i get to share a fantastic resource with you call black history 365. um a colleague of mine

reached out to me this summer and said hey i have a game changer that potentially could change the framework of education and in this curriculum um it's written by it's written for us it shares our history unlike our other history books that we've encountered in our school time the curriculum is over 1200 pages it's 10 units with 30 plus chapters it starts in ancient africa it's engaging it has qr codes that brings out more engagement with students the curriculum right now was a 912 but it's really close to being a k-12 by the end of

the spring here um it's fascinating there is a each chapter has a mc wrapping what the chapter is about so it's really engaging uh the the chapters are produced the the music is produced by a grammy award-winning uh um producer as well so um once again it starts in ancient africa and it goes all the way to canada and talks about the great migration and and ending up with uh our people in canada also it talks about john lewis and the and uh george floyd so if you have any questions and would like to see

a more detailed uh presentation please reach out to dr rashid and he will share my info thank you for your time and enjoy the rest of your night thank you for that brother gene chisholm so yeah the black history 365 curriculum man so it's it's really on point um and i think that's an excellent segue into our local grill um who's been doing some of this type of work for many moves now and i need to mention he and his wife have been doing this work uh specifically here in the specific northwest in eugene area

around our history right and he's you know i'm really thankful that he is you know my digna right that term he's mentor but we don't use that term mentor all the time but and he's a friend and a colleague in the confidant and just pin his wife they're kind of taking me in um fed me not only nourishing but fed my my intellect and my spirit um professor harris is i mean we don't have enough time to give him all the accolades right but when we're talking about curriculum in history in particular we need to

mention his name around these parts um especially so without further ado um i want i give you our griot professor harris thank you brother rasheed my wife my wife sherry and i um were talking earlier today about uh the the interesting times we're situated in and i just got off a zoom call with the lane county medical society in which i use the powerpoint slide that basically has the caduceus and i introduced the caduceus as a symbol of ancient chemists and the subject was basically talking about racism within medicine and how is it that a

multi-racial highly technical society that actually trains multi-racial doctors can devolve into a practice of medicine that discriminates against the people that created the technology that's always a source of uh irony to me our keynote speaker anthony browder i've long admired his work and he definitely has inspired me in the class that i'm currently teaching and pioneered at lane community college along with uh rights of passage and our project i2m eugene a multicultural history project so not just black everybody that we've been on alliance farm and i start the class in 15 000 bc because i

got tired of the 1619 thing and we created a multicultural history project because our alliances with all those peoples starts way before 1619 and you need a context to talk about that and i've admired but anthony browder's work for a long time and it's been an integral part of my class so he's an author publisher cultural historian artist an educator he graduated from mecca oh did i say that howard university and uh has led extensive work throughout the united states and five continents he founded and directed ikg cultural resources and has devoted 43 years of

researching ancient egyptian comedian history science philosophy and culture he's traveled to egypt 60 times since 1980 and currently is director of the asa restoration project which i hope they'll talk about and kick some knowledge about that which is uh funding the excavation and restoration of three 25th dynasty tombs of cushite noblemen on the west bank of luxor egypt he's the first african american to fund and coordinate archaeological digs in egypt and has led more than 30 archaeological missions to egypt since 2009. so he's been an author co-author of 14 publications which are currently used in

classrooms definitely used in my classroom uh around the world and his three decades of study have led him to the conclusion that ancient africans were the architects of civilization and develop the rudiments of what has become the scientific religious and philosophical backbone of humankind so from this framework uh the ikg has concentrated its research and disseminate its findings i give you anthony browder professor harris thank you so much brother i appreciate the introduction i appreciate the fact that you are using my material in the classroom and together we are freeing minds that are prepared to

be free so uh dr rashid thank you so much for creating this opportunity for me to to be on multiple coasts simultaneously i'm sitting in my home here in washington dc and speaking to you all in uh you're near eugene oregon is that is that correct eugene oregon and then we've got people all over the country who are tuning in so i'm so grateful for this opportunity to share my knowledge with you and what i'm going to do is to share my screen where i will use a powerpoint and we will jump into the presentation

and then professor harris will facilitate the q a afterwards and we will get everything set up we will jump into it so um tonight's topic is putting the african in black history month and the best way i feel we can facilitate this process is by restoring the memory of african people so tonight that's what i'm going to be zeroing on we're going to look at the restoration of african memory this process is so critically important because the memory the historical memory of african people has been erased and the erasure has been forgotten so we don't

know our past and many of us don't know that we don't know our past and so the process of memory restoration is crucial to us becoming the people that we were born to be uh john henry clark who was one of my teachers said that african history represents the missing pages of world history and i would like to suggest that if african history were a book of a thousand pages the story of our enslavement begins on page 996 and is only two pages long and so it's critically important for us to talk about the first

995 pages so that we have context for how we got into the situation that we currently find ourselves in because as some have said the past is prolonged and so i want to begin uh by looking at page 997 in this history book of a thousand pages and i want to reference the words of henry berry esquire who is a member of the virginia house of delegates he gave this presentation to other virginia enslavers on january the 20th 1832 and this statement helps us to understand why we are in the conditions that we find ourselves

in today mr berry said speaking to other enslavers sir we have so far as possible close every avenue through which light may enter the slaves mind if we could extinguish the capacity to see the light then they would be on the level of the beasts of the field our work would be completed and we would be safe now what he was talking about was using light as a metaphor to represent knowledge education and information so their mission was to close every door by which we could retain knowledge of ourselves and that they wanted to extinguish

our capacity to see the light so that we would live and function like animals that was their job and they were interested in performing their jobs for their own security so we have to begin to understand all the steps that have been taken in order to put us in physical prisons mental prisons and spiritual prisons and so it is through the process of reading it is through the process of understanding what we were not supposed to know that we can begin the process of freeing our minds and one of the most significant personalities in that

regards is an african puerto rican by the name of arturo schomburg who in 1925 wrote a very important essay entitled the negro digs up his past and in the very first paragraph of that article he says paraphrasing that the american negro must remake his past in order to make his future must replace that which slavery took away we have to think more collectively we have to think more retrospectively than others in this country and we must become the most enthusiastic antiquarian of them all we must restore what enslavement took away we are the ones who

should be reading and studying to restore our african memories now mr schomburg wrote this article in 1925 the following year 1926 carter g woodson established negro history week which ultimately became black history month now one thing that many people uh get wrong about black his negro history week and black history month or african heritage month is that they think that we have the shortest month of the year to remember the history of the longest living people on the planet but that is not the case dr woodson showcased specifically showcased one week in the month when

young african children could demonstrate to their teachers and their communities what they have been learning the other 11 months of the year so it's not a focus simply on february but february was the showcase it was the opportunity for you to show what you have learned show the knowledge that you have mastered and in 1933 dr woodson wrote his seminal work the miseducation of the negro in which he states that every person has two educations one that is given to him or her and the other which they must give themselves and he said that the

latter is by far more significant because everything that is important in a person's life is that which they must seek out for themselves because that constitutes your real education so it's about restoration of memory these concepts are repeated over and over and over again and so i have to acknowledge uh ivan van cernema for putting me on this path on february the 21st 1977 i heard dr van surgeon speak at georgetown law school and he had just written a book entitled they came before columbus the african presence in america now dr van certimer was thorough

he was brilliant and in his presentation he shared images of africans who not who navigated the nile river the mediterranean sea the atlantic ocean and had numerous exchanges with indigenous people in mexico between 1200 and 600 bc or 2500 years before christopher columbus was born and then he provided evidence and showed pictures of some of the statues of these africans who he described as wearing a nubian style hairdress and said that these africans were from the nile valley now my mind is blown my mind is blown i had the pleasure of traveling to mexico with

dr van surdamar twice in 1990 and 1991 to visit all of these olmec heads and some of the heads are seven feet high the largest is 15 feet in diameter these are the images of africans who were known as the olmecs who were part of the ruling class in mexico for hundreds of years and they left these images all throughout mexico they inspired the creation of the calendar architecture engineering cosmology and religion which helped to jumpstart civilization here in the americas but what really impressed me the most of all of the incredible things that van

sermouth said was when he said that these black men were egyptians and that the egyptians were black this was the first time in my life i ever heard anyone say that the egyptians were black and this information contradicted everything that i had read in every book prior to 1977 it contradicted every movie i'd seen on television specials and documentaries so my mind is racing now to begin to uncover what i now refer to as forbidden knowledge and so tonight i dedicate my presentation to four men who put me on this path dr ivan van sertima

dr joseph benjamin who i first traveled to egypt with in 1980 uh dr john henry clark who i met in 1981 who just taught me the value of world history and african history and dr acg hillyard who showed me how to synthesize all of this information and present it to my audience in such a manner that anyone can receive it these four men have served as the as the cornerstone of my cultural consciousness they are responsible for the person that you're looking at and listening to right now so i didn't get where i am by

myself i followed in the footsteps of giants and so what i would like to do is to share with you what's coming share with you information that will be in the second volume of african world history and this second volume is built on four foundational truths now one of the things that i learned from dr van sertima was that one should never talk about anything in public that you can't validate with at least four sources always have your sources and so the primary source for these four foundational truths that i'm going to share with you

now are in the smithsonian museum of natural history they're part of a 20 million exhibition that tells the truth that our children's children will be learning and will become second nature to them and those fundamental truths are one three hundred thousand years ago africans were the only human beings on the planet two sixty thousand years ago africans populated east asia point three forty thousand years ago africans populated west asia now these ideas were expressed in what was uh referred to as the out of africa theory this theory is now accepted as a scientific and historical

fact that africans are the mothers and fathers of humanity and as we find out later the mothers and fathers of civilization and the fourth point is six thousand years ago civilization began in the nile valley so the reclamation of the nile valley as a part of african people african history african culture is essential to the restoration of the african mind and so we'll find that most of the names that we use to describe the country known as egypt are foreign names this pyramid that you see here pyramid is a greek word sphinx is a greek

word egypt is a greek word so this nation and the objects created by the indigenous people in this nation are now referred to by people who live over 3 000 years after indigenous african people created this culture and civilization so another crucial component in the restoration of african memory is to restore african names so the after name for the pyramid is mere a word that means place of ascension the african word for sphinx is hero marquette a word that describes the son of a soreness set the founding parents of kemet which is the original name

for the country that the greece renamed egypt and so when we look at the nile river valley we we're looking at the longest river in the world and the only river the only major river in the world which flows from south to north the nile river begins up south near tanzania in uganda flows through the water flows through the white now and then there's another tributary that begins in lake tana in ethiopia that leads to the blue now and these two nile rivers join in cartoon and form the singular nile valley which flows through lower

nubia a lower sudan into upper egypt and then lower egypt so the elevation goes from a higher elevation to a lower elevation so from the kinetic point of view from the african point of view from the nile valley point of view south was up and north is down so the way that we orient ourselves today has literally turned our world upside down africans the first human beings on the planet related to the land of their ancestors they used the nile river as the world's oldest cultural highway and so the gods originated in the south up

south all of the major components of culture and civilization began up south and migrated northward down the nile this is what the historical record shows very clearly and so for the past 40 years i've been studying this information and finding creative ways of making this information accessible to people with the greatest need to know and as was mentioned in my introduction i have been studying egyptian history for 44 years now and what has allowed me to be fully engaged in this process is the fact that i've been self-employed for 42 years i can create as

much money as i want in order to pursue the things that interest me and what has interested me for the last 44 years is learning my african history and culture i would buy books read books and then go to meet the scholars who wrote those books and cultivate and deepen my understanding of african history and culture i've made over 70 trips to africa 60 of those trips have been to egypt alone within the past 40 years i've authored a co-authored 14 books which are now being used in school systems throughout the united states and around

the world and we have been excavating tombs in egypt for 12 and a half years when we first began the acer restoration project in 2008 we had three tunes that we were excavating and restoring as of december of last year we now have eight tombs so the acer restoration project has taken on a life of its own i've been taking groups to to egypt since 1987 and we've probably taken well over um 600 people to egypt on these study tours and the purpose of the study tours is to help restore the memory of african people

by walking them through kemet in the nile valley and picking up the pieces of our historical memory so that we can understand who we were what we've done and what we have the capacity to do now my most important trip to egypt occurred in 1989 when i took my then seven-year-old daughter i saw that i was responsible as a parent as a single parent i assumed responsibility for teaching my daughter her african history i was not going to allow a school system which has a history of miseducation to miseducate my daughter so i took her

to egypt so that she can see why her father spends so much time talking about the nile valley traveling to the nile valley and traveling around the country talking to people about this information so we looked at the great temples she came to understand her history and her culture and more specifically she had an opportunity to meet the descendants of the people who created this grand history and culture she interacted with the nubians and in this picture here in the lower uh left-hand corner you'll be hard-pressed to distinguish my daughter from the indigenous people of

this ancient land and so the point that we have to understand is that egypt is in africa and the civilization of egypt is an extension of now valley culture and civilization it is our legacy it is our history and culture so upon returning from my daughter's first trip to africa we wrote a book about her experiences so that other children could have an opportunity to learn about their history through the eyes of a child and so every time my daughter travels to egypt with me and she's probably been about 15 years 15 times now every

time you go to abba symbol we take a picture of her standing in front of the temple of ramesses the second at abbott symbol so that we can document her growth since 1989 and you know her experiences have been extraordinary in that when the book was first published when she was eight years old she was at that time in 1991 the youngest published author in america so nationally national geographic for children did a story about atlantis and over the years she has traveled to africa other countries in africa and written books about her experiences so

again young african-american children who may never have the opportunity to travel to africa can learn about their heritage through the eyes of one of their contemporaries and one of the beautiful things about exposing children to african history at an early age is that it unlocks the genetic memory locked inside of them so as a child they begin to see their history right in front of their eyes my daughter was raised here in in washington dc and so when she saw the lincoln memorial she said dad that's similar to the temple of ramesses the second that

that was sembal and i said well yes daniel chester french the sculptor who carved the statue of abraham lincoln in his temple had traveled to egypt and had seen the temple ramesses ii and it always wanted to create something of that magnitude in the united states of america and he was given his chance and created this image of abraham lincoln that mirrored the image of ramesses ii in front of his temple which had been created around 1250 bc and then she looked at the washington monument and said dad you know the monument and the reflection

pool we saw that in egypt didn't we we saw that at carnac temple there were over 10 tekken new incarnate temple and every temple in kemet had tecunu which are now referred to by their greek names obelisk every temple had taken you and every temple had a sacred lake so the architecture of washington dc was inspired by the african architecture and engineering that began in the nile river valley so we claim we reclaim our store our memory by studying ourselves by becoming the greatest antiquarians in this country she even looked at the symbols on the

back of the dollar bill and said dad you know why is there a pyramid on the back of the dollar bill she knows that there are 118 pyramids or mayor but when she went to sudan with me in 2016 she learned that there are over 400 mere in sudan and so the pyramid that you see on the back of the dollar bill is not an egyptian pyramid it's a cushite pyramid and it speaks to the fact that when the great seal was created in 1776 george washington and his cohorts were attempting to recreate egypt in

america that's another lecture which we can maybe deal with maybe next next february even the front the symbols on the front of the dollar bill were inspired by the national symbol of ancient kemet one of the beautiful things about restoring your african memory is that once that memory has been restored you now can look anywhere in the world and find traces of your ancestry that have literally been hidden in plain sight so this idea of looking at your history 360 is what the restoration of our memory is all about even the oscar the highest award

given by the academy of motion picture arts and sciences was inspired by the statue of battar who is the patron saint of artists and craft persons in kemet people know us better than we know ourselves and they use that knowledge in order to lift themselves up so it's critically important now for us to reclaim that which was erased we claimed that which was illegal and begin to rebuild our legacy wherever we find ourselves that is the mission of every african person who knows who he or she is so professor harris in honor of your request

i want to talk about the acer restoration project i've come now to fully understand that this is the project this is the work for which i was born i'm doing my best work in my life working with the acer restoration project this project was named in honor of my dear friend ac hilliard who wrote the introduction to my very first book from the broader file 32 years ago dr hilliard was a true jugna and he died at a conference in egypt on august the 13th 2007. his sudden death came as a shock to everyone who

knew him and loved him and one of the things that i learned from from asia and and then jeffrey's and rosalind jeffries and and dr clark and so many of my heroes and she wrote is that africans understood that whenever someone becomes an ancestor we are obligated to name things after them so that as we call their name we give them life we give them life so that they can live through us and so that is the reason why you name streets and buildings and institutions after ancestors because you want to remember them you want

to keep their memories alive in your consciousness for future generations so in 2008 i had the opportunity to become involved in the most important work of my life and that is the excavation of what was then three tombs three cushite tombs three twenty seven hundred year old tombs on the west bank of luxor egypt and i decided to name this project the asa restoration project in honor of my colleagues so i want to share with you some of the highlights of my 12 and a half years of digging up our paths as arthur schomberg suggested

that we do i took him literally at his word so here is an image an aerial shot of two of the main sites that we have been restoring the tomb of caraca men and the tomb of karaboshkin these tombs are 2700 years old they represent noblemen of the 25th dynasty who lived in egypt who lived in luxor and governed that city and restored the temples and monuments there and also restored some of the most important rituals in the history of ancient kemin these tombs were built out of the living limestone bedrock some 20 feet underground

and in the instance of caraca men's tune the ceiling of the tomb collapsed in the 1990s so what we had to do as we excavated his site was to remove over [Music] 20 000 tons of debris and during that process we uncovered over 34 000 fragments which we are now using to rebuild this temple tomb of caraca men but 11 years ago in august 2010 we found caraca men's burial chamber which was some 60 feet underground here's a photograph taken of my daughter and i in this burial chamber which had already been robbed by its

contents but we spent a week just the two of us 60 feet underground excavating in this space and finding some incredible things having some very serious daddy daughter time and talking about why it was that the two of us are doing this work together and one of the things that i've always done every time we find a new tomb at this site i always make it a point for my daughter to enter the tune first so that history records that my daughter atlantis ty browder was the first african american inside of these tombs that is

how we are making history and this is the history that we're documenting in the tomb of of karaboshkin in 2016 we found his sarcophagus and as we took the measurements of this ecophagus we found that this object measured eight feet high five feet wide twelve feet long and weighed an estimated twenty thousand pounds it is made of rose granite which is a stone that is only quarried in as one about a hundred miles to the south and it is a stone rose granite is a stone that is only used for members of the world family

so while we don't know a lot about this man kara boshkin who was an architect who was the mayor of the city of wasset the city that we now know as luxor we don't know a lot about him but slowly but surely the more we find as we excavate in this area the more fragmented pieces of his historical narrative we can put together and as we put these fragments together we can begin to construct a historical memory and accurate historical memory of this man who lived and died over 2700 years ago we've also had the

pleasure of organizing two conferences in luxor where we brought together other archaeologists other egyptologists who are also working in luxor excavating tombs specifically tombs of the 25th dynasty so there is information that has been uncovered over the last 100 years that has never made its way into the history books and so we're about to change that now as we begin to publish information that releases these findings to the general public so i spoke at the last conference we held in on september the 25th in 2016 in luxor egypt and i talked about the significance of

the work that we're doing we are as professor harris said the only people of african descent who are funding and fully participating in an archaeological excavation in egypt in 2019 the egyptian government issued 240 permits for foreigners to excavate in egypt 239 of those permits went to non-african people so we are making history and i want to share with you some phenomenal things that occurred during this conference at the same moment at the precise moment that i was giving my address to the attendees at the conference six thousand miles away in washington dc at the

exact same hour history was being made when president barack hussein obama was opening the national museum of african american history and culture now there are some direct connections to this that i'm going to come back to a little bit later on but i also want to share with you an important element which changed my life forever three days after the opening of the conference on september the 28th 2016 i made a discovery in north ossissif that profoundly changed my life in that i visited two tombs in north isif two twenty seven hundred year old tombs

and is one of only two african americans who were walking inside of these tombs i observed something that nobody else saw and the only reason i recognized it was because dr clark and and dr jeffries dr hilliard and others had restored my memory so that i could recognize what was hidden in plain sight what i saw painted on the ceiling of two tombs was this symbol now this image is not crystal clear but here is a recreation of that image some of you who are familiar with the history and culture of ghana will recognize this

symbol as one of several a khan symbols that represent the phrase the concept of sankofa sankofa and a khan word which means that it is not forbidden to go back and to reclaim the knowledge of your past now i was flawed seeing this tomb suggested to me that somehow africans in the nile valley had carried their cargo of knowledge from the nile river valley to the niger river valley and so i found in as as i'm doing research now on this very important discovery i found that there were many ancient lakes and rivers that linked

the east coast of africa to the west coast of africa and if the nile was a cultural highway which allowed africans to navigate from the south down north then we see that these ancient africans were also able to navigate using water systems from the east to the west now if africans could literally walk out of africa into asia and around the world out of africa into europe they certainly could have built created boats and navigated from the nile to the niger as a matter of fact there's a very important book written by a colleague of

of shake out this job a book entitled paths from the nile written by abubakar lamb in which he documents the work of several senegalese scholars who documented this historical fact there are africans in senegal in gambia nigeria ghana mali who say categorically that their ancestors came to the niger river valley from the nile river valley and brought aspects of architecture of spiritual traditions of astronomy of philosophy and medicine to the west coast of africa so this has opened up a whole new field of study which hopefully over the course of the next decade or two

we'll have dozens of scholars expanding on this work this is brand new a brand new field of study that we have to begin to examine and so what this new information does is open new horizons for us so we have to pave the way for the scholars who will build on this research the scholars who will begin to trace the path from the nile to the niger and then also trace the flow of african people from the niger to the potomac to the hudson to the mississippi to all of the river valleys in the united

states of america where our people worked enslaved so this then becomes an important component to helping reconnect us to west africa and to east africa and see the cultural unity of africa shaken dejoke wrote about in the 1950s and so this symbol the sankofa symbol that i found on the ceiling of tombs in egypt the sankofa symbol that is still being used in ghana today is a symbol that is also used by conscious people of african ancestry in the united states do you all recognize that the photograph of this man professor harris do you know

who this brother is not sure uh dr rasheed you're in the music you're in the hip-hop do you recognize this brother yeah i think it's brother quest love it is quest love of the roots who is the director of the house band for the tonight show you see that emblem on his jacket it is the senkofa symbol and that is the symbol that graces the african burial ground in new york city that is the logo for the african burial ground right so we're making connections now that we can now trace back to west africa to

ghana and ivory coast and then take it all the way back to the nile valley for i have found that this symbol originated the oldest examples of of this symbol which is called a running spiral pattern has been found on a piece of pottery that was created in cush in the 17th century bc all right so this is an important part of our story so moving forward coming into page 90 in this book of african history at the national museum of african american history and culture this symbol is inside of this museum and it reminds

us what kwame nkrumah reminded us of that we are african not because we were born in africa we are african because africa was born in us africa is in our dna we carry within us the dna of africans homo sapiens sapiens who lived over 300 000 years ago we carry their genetic memory within us inside of the national museum of african american history and culture they have a display which talks about the addictive symbols which are used in in ghana and the ivory coast adhinkara means saying goodbye a farewell to the dead adinkra implies a

philosophical message that one conveys for mourning during a funeral or post burial memorial so to find the same symbol that is used to honor the dead painted on the ceiling of two 2700 year old tombs in egypt says something about the migration of african people african knowledge and african traditions from the nile to the niger now to the americas we are remembering we are reconnecting with our ancestors and so when you come into this museum and i would encourage you all to come but you have to come with knowledge because what this museum does is

drop you down into the beginning of our story beginning with enslavement it doesn't say anything at all about who we were before our world was turned upside down it doesn't talk about the uh the earlier 992 pages of our story so without that backdrop background you may be lost or you may be angry upon learning for the first time how our people were oppressed and abused but anger is not what gets us through it is knowledge which inspires us knowledge which transforms our consciousness one of the most significant areas in this museum is an exhibition

that is referred to as the paradox of liberty where you will see the words of thomas jefferson inscribed on the declaration of independence thomas jefferson who is standing on the pedestal and greets you when you step into this hall he says that all men are created equal and die by their creator with certain inalienable rights but whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends of of issuing inalienable rights it becomes your responsibility to alter or to abolish that government that should be our mental declaration of independence but this exhibition also speaks to the

paradox of liberty all men are created equal in the united states except black men and women that's a paradox how do we deal with that paradox we address that paradox with knowledge of our past accurate and complete knowledge of our past so in this exhibition they tell you that 12 of the first 18 presidents of the united states of america enslaved africans they tell you in this exhibition that the 609 blocks that you see behind thomas jefferson contains the names or are inscribed with the names of the 609 africans that thomas jefferson the third president

of the united states owned including six of the children by he uh that he fathered was sally hemings this is the paradox of liberty that we have been dealing with for 401 years they also go on to say this exhibition that the importation of enslaved africans ended on january the 1st 1880 so january the 1st excuse me 1808 january the 1st 1808 the united states of america stopped importing africans but the enslavement of africans continued until 1865. and so there's a crucial understanding that we must achieve what happened to african people in america between 1808

and when we were freed in 1865 and there is another exhibition that simply states that the domestic breeding of africans as an enslaved population exceeds the number of african stolen africans who are brought to america i want you all to understand that i want you to grasp that reality more africans were bred like cattle in the united states of america after 1808 they were brought over here from the continent of africa and less than a hundred miles from where i sit this evening on the eastern shore of maryland and just north of richmond virginia you

will find two of the largest slave breeding farms in the world where millions of african men women and children were bred like cattle that is part of the american story that is part of american history that must be told in order for us to resolve this paradox of liberty we've got to free our minds with the truth and not become angry but become empowered to begin to restore our historical and cultural memory restore that which was illegal and then do what we've always had the capacity to do to build a new world we understand now

that america has become the wealthiest nation on the face of this planet because of the forced enslavement of african people that is the debt that randall robinson was talking about that is the debt that members of in cobra who are advocating for reparations have been talking about for decades and so if you were to go outside of this building you'll find symbolism embedded in the architecture in the corona or the the brass like metal which covers the exterior of the national museum of african american history and culture you will find symbolism that connects africans in

america to africans in the niger river valley and africans in the nile river valley the architect david jay who designed this building this ghanaian architect who designed this building created the exterior after being inspired by a nigerian shrine post a yoruba shrine post and so you see these three tiered trapezoidal shapes were the inspiration for the top of the national museum of african american history and culture he's making a direct connection between africans in america and africans on the west coast of africa where many of our ancestors were taken you will also find that the

upper that the angle of the corona was designed to an angle of 17 degrees in order to match the 73 degree angle of the pyramidion atop the washington monument the symbol that represents asar the founding father of ancient kemet so for those with eyes to see and those with a restored memory you now can look at this structure and see that the architect this canaan architect is making a direct parallel between africans in america and africans in the nile valley as a matter of fact david j referred to washington dc as carnac on the potomac

and he went on to say that at its best architecture is the physical manifestation of a culture's highest ideals and those highest ideals were ideals that sprang for the minds of african men and women who lived in the nile valley and developed the oldest documented civilization known to mankind i documented this story in my book published in 2005 egypt on the potomac where i show all of the parallels that led to the creation of the united states of america in which these men were inspired by the best of the architecture symbolism and mythology that have

been developed in the nile river valley and so as i wind down i want to refer to my teacher john henry clark who talked about the importance of history who said that history is the clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day who reminded us that history is the compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography who told us that history tells the people where they have been and what they've been what they are and where they are but the most important role the reclamation of

history is to remind the people where they still must go and what they still must do because all history is a current event and dr clark reminded us that if you begin your history in slavery then everything since then looks like progress so we have to go back to the source reclaim our african mind and restore those things that were illegal so i want you all to take a screenshot of this photograph we're currently working on a display at the thurgood marshall center in washington dc where the ikg offices are and this display is going

to be dedicated to the legacy of john henry clark and one of these displays will document um essential reading for africans of the 21st century who want to actively be engaged in the restoration of their historical and cultural memory we've got 10 books by some some of our greatest scholars dr clark dr hilliard drucilla dungey houston george gm james john jackson dr ben van serdimer francis wilson chancellor williams carter g woodson's i've got books here that should be in your library books here that should be studied and not just read books that are essential tools

for the restoration of your african consciousness these are some of my books which should be in your library three of these books were co-authored by my daughter so that we have information for young children your children are never too young to begin to know who they are they're never too young for you to instill a sense of pride and that pride is a pride that helps them understand that you cannot teach three thousand years of african history in one month that prize should remind them that every month is african heritage month and that we celebrate

our history using curriculums that teach us to be african 365 days of the year so with that i'm going to bring my presentation to a close by reminding you that we are the vessels to which our ancestors breathe speak and do their best work i am tony browder i restore tombs i revive ancestors and i restore the memories of their african descendants so with that i'll stop the screen the screen share and i'll turn the mic over to you professor harris so that we can do a q a 300 000 years of african history is

almost too much to do in 11 weeks but that's what i'm doing now so i think i'm glad that uh most of the books actually all the books that you have portrayed are in my 150 volume book list for the class so thank you for that validation i have um i have a question about um if you're going to begin with one book what would that be my favorite book one of the first books that i read my african history bible is john g jackson's introduction to african civilization okay jackson yeah i mean he is

he is a brilliant man uh and he has the ability to convey complex ideas in a very simple easy to digest manner i love him i love his work i love that analogy about if uh african history is a thousand page book that slavery starts on 997 i got six i really get tired of the 1619 thing oh yeah well you know what i've done is i flipped it um i said if folk want 1619 they can have it give me 16 uh 1619 bc 1619 bc the pyramids were already a thousand years old we

had already built uh great temples and monuments africans had already established a colony on greece you know so perspective is everything man context is everything so we have to assume responsibility for forgiving our people what the largest society is not prepared to let them have well the first question um is can you please go over the four fundamental truths one more time okay uh real simple um one now on this exhibition which is located in um the um charles koch hall of the smithsonian museum of natural history this is uh charles koch of the koch

brothers right uh yeah even the broken clock twice a day right um this exhibition was financed to the tune of 15 million dollars it's an incredible exhibition that shows you the evolution of man and so in the original exhibition which is about um maybe 12 years old now the data says that 250 000 years ago africans were the only human beings on the planet well since that exhibition was open new data has come out which has pushed that time frame back to 300 000 years ago they also have a timeline which says that 60 000

years ago africans in east africa which is where we find the oldest skeletal remains of homo sapien sapiens begin walking out of east africa into eastern asia and began populating asia walked across the bering strait and began to walk into canada north america central america south america and and and populated the caribbean they also went on to say that 40 000 years ago another group of these same africans in east africa walked westward into western asia the land mass that we now refer to as europe so if you process just those three pieces of information

what it means is the first people in asia were african the first people in europe were also african another important piece of information which is not in this exhibition but what came to light about three years ago when a group of geneticists identified when the genes of africans the melanin of africans in europe mutated and they became non-africans the people that we now classify as europeans and these geneticists white geneticists said that this gene mutated somewhere between seven to eight thousand years ago so that is our place marker then what it means is africans as

homo sapien sapiens have been living breathing creating on this planet for at least three hundred thousand years and europeans have only been here for seven to eight thousand years which means that africans have a 292 000 year head start on europeans so that's where our focus should be documenting that history the oldest history known to mankind and as you said uh professor harris uh it is from that history that multicultural history emerges because as john jackson says in the introduction to african civilization he dedicates that book to the human race which began in africa and

there is no such thing as race race was a false construct that was created by races in order to divide people by color and to assign the lowest classification of intelligence to the people who had the greatest amount of melanin in their skin so that lie has to be turned upside down has to be abolished and we have to restore um the memory and the legacy of our ancestors to its rightful place john jackson's uh book again to african civilization and the introduction to introduction to african civilization was written by john henry clark and here's

an interesting aside john jackson taught john heavy clark john henry clark and john jackson taught dr ben and in september of 1989 i had the pleasure of hosting these three giants at a two-day symposium in washington dc uh that was entitled uh the elder symposium which was a mind-freeing two-day experience there's a question uh in the q a they want to know how they can participate in the archaeological work sure a couple of things that they can do is uh they can go to my website as a matter of fact give me a second and

i can pull up that information that they could either take a screenshot of or copy here are our social media handles if you're interested in supporting the acer restoration project we are a 501c3 a nonprofit organization so that all contributions to the acer restoration project are tax deductible uh our budget has has grown from forty thousand dollars a year in 2008 to last december uh was our most successful season to date we found four new tunes and our budget last year was 150 000 so one of the ways people can support the acer restoration project

is by making a tax deductible contribution uh we are at the point now where we have finished most of the um the excavations and we're in the restoration phase where we have a greater need now for technocrats architects and engineers who can help us build a roof on the ceiling of caraca men's tomb and to help us uh build up the um the superstructure of these tombs so that when we open this site and our projected opening date is in 2025 uh people will be able to travel to egypt and they will be able to

see uh the first cushite tombs who that were excavated and restored by african-americans so this is what the uh the asa restoration project is doing in real time and anyone who wants to be a part of this history making endeavor can go to our website which is ikg info.com and see details on how they can become involved with the project or how they can travel to egypt with us on one of our study tours people are curious about uh one of your favorite books on the bookshelf behind you assuming that's not a set piece but

i know it didn't look like yours it ain't they ain't there by accident uh they're curious about the books what's what's uh what did they call it what that one book they said uh what book is that did they oh they didn't say oh they just see a bunch of books there you know it's like right i've got ivan's you know on my bookshelf uh and francis's uh isis papers uh a bunch of black psychologists well here's his two books here is a a hard back copy of introduction to african civilization which john jackson gave

me himself when i visited him uh he was living in chicago at that time but here's another important book that came out i think in around 2012 it is uh one of the most complete books on ancient nubia so the work that i've been doing um since 2008 restoring these cushite tombs uh is allowing us to restore one of the least documented epochs of now valley history and culture that is the 25th dynasty which most egyptologists refer to as the negro dynasty which is the furthest thing from the truth but this book is entitled ancient

nubia african kingdoms on the nile it um it has some of the most current information about ancient kush and the discoveries there and you'll find in that book maps that indicate that there are over 400 pyramids in cush there are more pyramids and cush than there are in egypt a question from my nephew in l.a all right um he's uh referring to chancellor's destruction of black civilization indicating that our history predates ancient chemist by thousands of years can you speak on this sure chapter 2 of i think it's chapter 2 an introduction in um destruction

of black civilization uh refers to egypt as ethiopia's oldest daughter so what i know i've been to ethiopia twice i've been to sudan once what i know is that that civilization the civilization of kemet began in cush and cushite civilization began in ethiopia abyssinia uh and there needs to be archaeological work done in kenya in tanzania in uganda which are the sources of the white now and i guarantee you will find elements of this ancient civilization up there so uh and i also had a good friend of mine um uh holly garima who lives and

worked in washington dc he created sankofa absolutely a genius film uh he said that um you know he he kind of pulled me aside one day and this was about i don't know maybe 15 years ago and he said tony you and asa you all need to stop talking about about egypt so much you got to go to ethiopia because that is where all of this started and i i kind of laughed him off until he shared with me information about the ireche ireche ritual which is conducted every september in ethiopia the retchey rich festival

is the festival which is for all intents and purposes the story the ethiopian story of the asarian drama where the ethiopian version of a set go searching for the missing parts of her husband's body to restore her husband and that story has been practiced in ethiopia for over 10 000 years so the true source of nile valley civilization can only be found up south and that's where we have to begin to start digging we've got to raise at least three generations of of african archaeologists who would do that work question from the chat definitely jermaine

for our times how do you all navigate as an archaeological nonprofit non-profit organization and the adaptation of having to work under covered regulations in your current and future projects especially under the extreme conditions of a different land environment well um truth be told excavations in egypt is not that hard the hardest thing about the excavation is raising the money to do the work we've got over 125 men working for us they get paid every thursday and these men these um egyptian men many of whom have lived their lives on the west bank of luxor these

men regard us as family and as a person of as an african-american male born in chicago living in washington dc i can tell you that i am safer in egypt today than i am in my own country uh and that covert protocols were in place this past season we give mass out to the workers every day there is a greater degree of social distancing as they're working at the site we take their temperatures and we do the best we can to manage this and um and that is what we will continue to do until this

work is done we worked in egypt uh throughout three revolutions that began um ten years ago uh and on on two occasions we were the only foreign mission excavating in egypt we were one of only three missions who excavated in luxury this season everybody else dropped out because of kobe so the egyptian people know what's in our hearts they know that we are serious they support us they protect us and i might also add that the ancestors are also there to protect us as well because they know that we're there doing good work the chat

is getting deeper and deeper my brother now we're getting into environmental racism as uh an educational art project um jason wallace is an artist currently interested in the subject of water as a possibility of trauma for black and brown diasporic people in america originally started investigating flint michigan the natural resource of water relating to access resource and class please share any books that might point me in the right direction uh unfortunately i don't have any information i don't know everything and if i don't know something i would tell you i don't know but i have

i have been working in flint for over 20 years i go there regularly to conduct workshops to to teach uh certain segments of the community african history and flint is still devastated by the cry of uh diverting water from the fen river to um to the to the people of flint and that's that's a crime and those people need to be held accountable uh for their crime but i would refer him to a documentary uh called happy hapi it came out last year it's a film that looks at the nile river which is also known

as happy happy was the name for the nile river when it flood and they look at they look at the economy the economics in the happy river valley which influenced the economy of the world so i would um refer the the student to to look up that film they can type happy film on youtube they have a host of of interviews and programs that they've done so he may find a source there that may lead him to some answers to the question that he posed to me the uh electronic gig we had uh last month

with dr bullard who uh has also been doing seminal work for the last 40 years in environmental racism uh if you send me send an email to harris m at lanecc.edu i can send you the link to that talk because we recorded that as well so we're dealing with water land all kinds of environmental racism pollution and solutions so that can work too the african article the african artifacts found in mexico are they from the land migration or from the navigation across the atlantic they are primary from um the navigation across the um um the

atlantic ocean but there's also evidence of um cultural exchanges cultural influences there is a phenomenal museum uh in in jalapa mexico an incredible museum and inside of that museum they have one of the largest collection of the ole mic heads and they openly acknowledge the role that these africans played in jump-starting civilization in um in in mexico what we now call mexico as a matter of fact in i think it's chapter eight of my book now valley contributions to civilization i have um a couple of pages dedicated to van sertima and uh some of the

findings that he has brought to light as a result of his work in mexico there was a request for you to give a shout outs to someone who's currently studying your nile contributions niela iman the request first request for a shout out well listen i i send an invitation to you to participate in a master class that i will be conducting uh beginning in um next month you can go to our website ikg info.com i'm going to be doing three courses examining now valley contributions to civilization going over that content and adding supplemental information new

information that book is 29 years old so there is a ton of new information that i want to to share with the participants of that class so that we can have a deeper understanding of the nile valley and begin to reclaim the legacy of kemet there's so much inaccurate information about ancient egypt which is one of the reasons why many many african-americans uh aren't interested in egypt they believe the misinformation so we have to supplement that information with historical truths that are documented so that we can free the minds of everyone who is ready to

be free that's a good place to stop take us out dr rasheed wow wow wow wow um you know i i've witnessed this brother like about three this is my third time and familiar with the scholarship but he always seems to impress you know so i'm always learning something new um for those of you who were here you got a treat um just phenomenal thank you brother browder for blessing us with your just your wisdom i mean it's just off the charts um definitely want to thank you know professor harris for facilitating the q a

um brother gene chisholm for you know enlighten us about the black history 365. um our bsu i want to thank everybody behind the scenes you know randy deonte rory i mean everybody um you know that made this possible it was just phenomenal um i wanna shout out to you one thing because i want to get you in trouble we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge deborah watkins no no no no no no sir not only am i going to acknowledge my maternal dignity i'm also going to reference you all to visit a bin

another black educational network make sure you go to that website um just phenomenal resource so much information and soon as the flyer is available for the stanford institute i'm going to make that available to us because it's such a great resource um you have the likes of you know tony browder and other rock stars who are participatory in that you know stanford institute i mean it's phenomenal so you know deborah you know i love you this deborah rockin is phenomenal and i couldn't i wouldn't be the person who i am it was for her i

mean she's that impactful and she's you know i'm indebted to her um just so much so i want to make sure you all know a couple events we have coming up real quickly so we have our tiny titan summit where we're going to have our special host author doc by the name of dr khalid white his work is phenomenal um make sure you tune into that the information should be on our mcc website if not you know i'll make sure i get that to you um that's going to be phenomenal we had a great event

last year looking forward to doing it this year virtually and then market calendars march the 12th dr tommy j curry is going to be in our midst so you definitely want to be there um he's going to be doing a talk on the stratification of racialized males during covet and importance of black male studies and yours truly is going to be teaching the black male studies course um next term so definitely register for that i mean it is it's going to fill up quickly so thank you all thank you for spending your time you could

have been any place else this evening i know you want to watch a laker in this game so but thank you for being here and giving us knowledge um god bless good night thank you brother take care thank you we'll be in touch all right