“LIKE MOST people of my age group I grew up thinking there was no such thing as black history” the ‘Black History Man’ Robin Walker says candidly.
“We grew up watching things like Roots, and that more or less convinced us that we were jungle savages, then we became slaves, followed by the African American civil rights struggle. I didn’t realise Africa had a history and heritage before that.”
It’s a familiar tale that many of us will relate to.
Robin Walker – author of the celebrated When We Ruled book which edutainer Akala credits with his awakening about hidden African history – is quite simply a living breathing encyclopedia of black history. And we are lucky to have him. Some say Walker is one the most important black historians.
The Black History Man, as he is popularly and affectionately known, has been meticulously documenting and researching the finer points of ancient and medieval African history for decades, writing a number of books, and bringing the new, often mind blowing facts about our history to the community.
What was Walker’s starting point on his journey to become Britain’s leading African historian?
“In 1989, I moved into a household where the man was from Ghana and the wife was from Trinidad” Walker recalls. “And they had in their collection a book by Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilisation. That was my entry point into black history. From there I came across other scholars.”
Yosef Ben-Jochannan, who wrote the book Africa: Mother of Civilisation, and the work of John Coleman De Graft Johnson, were also major influences. These historians set him on a new path.
“Eventually I was introduced to a scholar in this country, Dr Femi Biko. Femi’s teaching changed my life, my outlook, everything. Eventually I began teaching his course. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. In 1999 I began to write books too.”
One of the many popular topics discussed by Walker is the potential presence and arrival of black communities in the Americas before Christopher Columbus.
Professor Ivan Van Sertima’s book, They Came Before Columbus is one of the books which set me on a path of discovery and so I can’t resist asking Walker for his take. The issue is hotly debated; some think Van Sertima’s work goes too far. Others argue that it reveals the tip of a much larger untapped iceberg.
Walker’s starting point is not the large Olmec heads of Mexico, thousands of years old with obvious African features.
While there might be legitimate questions about Van Sertima’s work, the central thesis that Africans had an established presence in America is in little doubt, Walker says. We were there. The question is when, and the earliest date?
What’s fascinating is that regardless of where one stands, the evidence pointing to an African footprint and presence in MesoAmerica is mounting, yet facts are met with a wall of resistance in mainstream academia.
Walker pulls no punches. “They see us as inferior” he says. “Eventually the whitewashed landscape of history will have to change. But, of course, power concedes nothing without demand.”
If the gatekeepers of historical narratives are resistant to the idea of black civilisations pre-dating Europe, then it’s up to us to keep challenging the status quo, especially for the sake of future generations.
Everything which challenges the Eurocentric view of history, is usually dismissed as Afrocentric, when in reality the arguments should long be established as mainstream knowledge.
If there is debate over the sticking points regarding Africans in pre-historical America, then there can be no doubting the colossal evidence of advanced mighty African civilisations and dynasties, thriving and existing with complex complicated histories long before Europe claimed to have ‘discovered’ the existence non-white faces in the ‘New World’ and beyond.
None of this of course should be controversial, because science teaches us that humanity began in Africa, and therefore at one time or another everyone on earth was black, despite the pushback.
We saw some of that pushback in recent years, when a reconstruction of ‘Cheddar Man’, the oldest skeleton in Britain revealed a black person with dark brown skin, wavy hair with blue eyes. For some, accepting their Black heritage was too much.
Robin Walker’s ground-breaking study course ‘The Black Secret’ is now available, and promises to “bring the best and latest historical information on Africa and the Black world to your fingertips, all in one convenient place.” Details of how to sign up to ‘The Black Secret’ can be found here: www.theblacksecret.co.uk
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Respect
Professor Robin Walker, present is England’s foremost African-Caribbean heritage historian; speaker and teacher, that is shockingly ignored by Oxbridge Universities, BBC Radio Four and the Left-wing Press.
Professor Walker is calm; level headed, enormously ambitious for His Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects.
I would like to see the Voice and England’s African heritage Subjects celebrate the work and knowledge of Professor Walker.