Black History: More than Dead Men, Trivia, or Black Firsts!

History is not just about the past; it's a compass that helps us navigate our present and future. In our latest episode, we engage in a thought-provoking discussion on Black history, urging listeners to reconsider the way it's traditionally presented and understood. Celebrating achievements is important, but do we place enough emphasis on how these narratives shape our identities and communities? 

We dive deep into how Black history should be understood as more than a collection of firsts or trivia; it must serve a purpose. Renowned voices like John Herrick Clark and Brother Malcolm X are central to our discussion as we explore their insights on history as a necessary root for cultural identity. We critique conventional approaches to historiography, calling attention to the pitfalls of simply validating humanity to those who might not value our contributions. 

Instead, we advocate for a richer understanding of history—one that is descriptive of our unique experiences, corrective of harmful anti-Black narratives, and prescriptive of actionable strategies for advancement. We reference influential works by historians such as W.E.B. Du Bois to highlight how historical narratives should empower us to confront current challenges.

Join us as we navigate through these compelling topics, providing listeners with an empowering context to engage more critically with history. Don't miss out on uncovering how the past can illuminate solutions for today’s pressing issues. Subscribe, share, and engage with us—let's keep the conversation going!

Transcript

Agyei Tyehimba 1: 0:00

I want to kind of talk about the importance of Black history, ways we can look at Black history how we typically use it and maybe more relevant and more powerful ways we can use our history. If we were to say what is history, how would we answer that? Now I can give you a very formal definition it's the systematic study and documentation of human activity, all human activity, and this covers several different areas political activity, social, economic, scientific, technological, medical, cultural, intellectual, religious and military. All of that is historical. History is very broad, right? So you can look at military history, you can look at medical. All of that is covered and is legitimate history. Medical, all of that is covered in his legitimate history. And when we say systematic, it's an order to it, it's a structure and it's based on certain methodology or a certain method, certain way that you take notes, certain way that you reference sources, or else it would be a hodgepodge of foolishness, it would be chaotic, there'd be no standard. We get absolute ridiculousness, which is what we see in YouTube and social media. Because there's no, what system to it? Anybody can come on and do whatever they want, right? Okay, but if we were to look at history in a broader, more organic way that doesn't come from a dictionary.

1:15

You can look at what a master teacher, John Herrik Clarke, said History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. That's beautiful, it's almost poetic the way he expresses this. It is also history that is a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. So he's telling us that history helps us locate who we are, identify who we are, identify where we are, identify what we need to do. So it's not just studying and documenting stuff. History when it's properly understood and properly rendered. And of course, one of Baba Clarke's students -we forget- is Brother Malcolm, who gives even more clarity. He says that "Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots is a dead people." A dead people, wow. So he's adding on to it that history is a necessity, history is a nurturer. History gives sustenance to us, like a root does a tree. You can't think of a tree being alive and vibrant with our roots. And he's making the analogy to history being the roots and us being a tree.

2:33

Now, historian Manning Marable, he noted our history should be three things. It should do three things. This is very important because this speaks to kind of what I'm going to be talking about in much of this. He said that our history should be descriptive, corrective and prescriptive. Descriptive it should tell our story, it should describe our experience, our journey, not just in the United States, North and South America, the Caribbean or so-called Latin America, Asia, Europe, everywhere. It should tell our story and it should tell it from our vantage point and our perspective. Two, that our history should be corrective, that it should counteract, challenge and correct anti-Black narratives, policies, anti-black practices. You see, this is a much different sort of concept of history than just did you know, the first black nurse was right Much deeper, descriptive corrective. Then the third thing he says our history should be prescriptive. It should offer theories, it should offer strategies, it should offer tactics, solutions, blueprints. It should be actively engaged in the struggle for Black advancement, protection and liberation.

 3:55

Now here's the problem Historiography. We talked about what history is. What's historiography? Historiography is the way that history is rendered, it's the way we do. How do you do history? You can have a Marxist historiography, you can have a socialist historiography. You can have a nationalist or integrationist historiography In the early 20th century in the United States.

 4:23

So we're talking about the 1900s. Black historiography was contributionist and vindicationist. What do you think we mean by that Contributionist and vindications? It meant that back then we looked at our history. We wrote books JAa rogers, many of the people that were going to actually show some of those books when they wrote those books it was written from the standpoint of we're somebody too. We're human beings too. We did important things too. We had civilization in africa. It's kind of coming from the vein of trying to prove to the world that we are not derelicts and ignorant people. It's trying to say we did some things of importance and that we should be valued. Black history was in its infancy and when things are just starting out they're never going to be obviously as polished as they are 50, 60, 100 years later. So whereas it was good that we talked about what we contributed to the world, what Africa did, the different civilizations as a matter of pride and to prove ourselves to other people, one of the downsides of that sort of vindicationist or contributionist history is it puts way too much focus on proving your humanity or decency or intelligence to other people who really don't give a damn. No matter what you write, they don't care what record you pull up. If they think you're a monkey, they think you're a monkey. These are examples of contributionist books.

5:59

One of the most famous authors in this sort of arena would be J Joel Augustus Rogers. J.A. Rogers, one of our greats. He wrote the Five Negro Presidents, 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, With Complete Proof,"  "World's Great Men of Color" volumes one and two. He wrote "From Superman to Man," where he got a brother on a train who's a porter. The brother's like a servant on a train. So there's some rich white dude and the rich white dude is being disrespectful to him and for this whole train ride the black porter schools him, and so the name of the book is From Superman to man. This black man who's a porter, who's supposedly doing this lowly job in comparison to the white passenger, doing this lowly job in comparison to the white passenger, schools him in his own history and schools him in African history, and breaks this white man down to help him understand you're not and your people are not as great as you think you are and to a degree you're great in many respects because you stole from our greatness and contributions.

6:57

You'll notice that what this, the contributionist type of historiography of our history tends to produce, is a kind of did you know this day in Black history the first Black so-and-so was born, that type of history. Now the problem with that... it's good, but if you compare it to elementary school versus grad school, in elementary school you know, you memorize your alphabet, you sing an alphabet, songs, you memorize the multiplication table. That's good for elementary school. But as you get older you're not still doing the stuff you do in elementary school, right, you're more evolved, more advanced, evolve and more advanced. So when I hear people take Black History Month and use it primarily as this kind of recitation of trivia facts or Black firsts, it kind of bothers me in the sense that I would like to just move past that. That's good for our children, though. For our children we definitely should know the first Black person that did this was this person. Did you know? The first Black school that was African-centered was created here. That's fine, but as we get older, history has to now be used in more progressive ways. So these will be examples of, as remember, ja Rogers and Carter G Woodson, who were both contributions historians were at the beginning stages. We do not disrespect them, we do not say that they were whack. We completely give them respect. They were the pioneers. But as time went on, what happened? Things improved, things got bigger and better.

8:38

So Du Bois now is writing Black Reconstruction in America, completely turning history on its head, because for all these years history had written that Black people were the reason why the Reconstruction failed, that Black people were the reason. But what his study and his facts and his history shows is that Black people recorded several victories. Black people created the first public schools in the United States. That Black people recorded several victories. Black people created the first public schools in the United States. Black people did. And he goes on to a list of things. So he uses the history to do what? To correct the narrative To the degree that the Reconstruction failed was because the white legislators, the president and many of the northern and southern politicians did not support efforts to support the newly freed black folk. But it was not because black people were anyway lazy, didn't work hard. The opposite is the case. He shows all these black businesses, black newspapers, black people on land, black people making money, black people in government. So he completely turns that on his head.

9:43

Black Awakening in Capitalist America. He (Robert L. Allen) really focuses a lot on the Ford Foundation- how they threw money to the Northern Black Power militants and the Southern Black Power integrationists off their path because now they had jobs, they go into nice parties and social places with white folk. It changed a lot of their politics. They actually funded us out of the movement. People forgot why they were there. Then you got, of course, dr Joy DeGry post-traumatic slave syndrome who breaks down many of the dysfunctional behaviors we see in our community and some of the things we do that are self-defeating, and she breaks it down why you see that, tracing it back to, of course, our enslavement. These are examples of historiography that is a lot more politically minded, a lot more liberation minded, a lot more analytical.

10:58

These works are not concerned with who the first Black so-and-so was. They're not really concerned with did you know? They're not. No, they're looking at something, trying to correct it, trying to describe it and trying to prescribe, trying to give us a prescription. What's the prescription? It's the remedy. History is supposed to be like that good doctor they analyze the situation, they're able to tell you, in a way you understand what your situation is and then, if you have a problem, they're able to tell you you know what? These are some things you can do to reverse this. That's what history can be when it's understood properly and when it's used properly. More examples we're not going to go through all of them Ella Baker, angela Davis these are books now dealing with liberation, with actual community organizing and social movements.

11:49

This is what I'm trying to see when I deal with history. I'm not going to deal with it in terms of Black First and Did you Know's and trivia, unless I'm speaking to whom? Children. That's perfect for children because at their developmental cognitive level, that type of teaching is just what they need. It gets them interested. It gets them interested and gets their attention and then, as they get older, they're going to want more. They want more. They want to get more analytical.

12:16

Some people only look at our history in the month of February, so for them, we do them a disservice when it's just a bunch of Black trivia and facts. Get our people thinking, Get our people questioning, get our people doing research, so that we're not living our lives based on old wives' tales, anecdotes and assumptions. History takes away all assumptions. You don't have to assume because you can go study who's voting, who's not, what money people making, what jobs people got, who's in prison. You can go, look at the actual facts and now your politics now comes from being in an informed place. That's what history can be for us family and that's what I'm going to strongly suggest it should be.

12:59

So if we were to conclude, if you looked at it this way, very basic and, I would say, elementary uses of Black history Uncover heroes, sheroes, events, develop pride basic and elementary uses of history. Or it's focused on trivia, or ancient history that's disconnected from that. That's great, but if it's not connected to right now, it loses potential power. Because we talk about great mathematicians and engineers and lawyers and medical people then and we need those same people today. So how do we use the knowledge of ancient times to speak to the pressing problems and issues of today? Or we have discussions and celebrations to great usually great men, famous people, celebrities, or we look at popular cities, big cities, urban areas. I'm saying that we need to have a critical history that is more concerned with identifying problems and solving them. Secondly, that our history identifies, promotes and helps us to apply and implement what I call liberation templates.

14:19

We're crying about the educational system. We don't like it. Our kids are dropping out, our kids are failing out, our kids are going to prison school, to prison pipeline. What can we do to have better schools? What can we do to have better schools? What can we do to train African-centered teachers that can go into the public schools that exist already? What can we do to create our own independent schools? That's what history should do.

14:39

History is not supposed to be a dead social science. It's supposed to be an active social science. Especially when you couple, as I have done, couple history with sociology and political economy, then you can really do a lot, because now you're looking at, this is why it happened, this is who was responsible, this is why they did it. These are things that people in the past did to overcome it. These, this is what was successful. This is what we can try today.

15:04

That's how I want to see history, you know, or narratives. If we're going to tell stories, the stories should be more expansive and more inclusive. It shouldn't just be great men. It should be narratives about sisters, and it shouldn't just be famous sisters. It should be sisters and it shouldn't just be entertainment sisters or brothers. It should be narratives about men, women, children that nobody knows about. It should be narratives about important movements that nobody knows about and things that go against the grain, not just integrationist stuff, not just patriotic stuff.

15:42

Chris Rosales was the first Black man to die in the Boston Massacre. Who was the first black man to say black power, and what did he mean by that? Who was the catalyst for the black power and the black arts and consciousness movements? What was the key amendment around which civil rights activists protested and organized, and what was their main argument when they appealed to government agencies? This is the type of history we need.

16:09

How come all of these countries around the world have coup d'etats where the military takes over the government, but it never happens in the United States? Why is that? What is it about the United States that guards against that? That's a good question, isn't it? Because there's a lot of discontented American citizens, but none of them have a coup d'etat. Probably the closest we came to that was, uh, january 6th.

16:36

These are the type things history is supposed to be for. No wonder our kids ain't going to history classes because they're associated with dead men. Trivia and a bunch of that don't help us, but if no history can get your mind right, history can turn you on fire. We've tried to understand. Why is it that the people that look like me, no matter where you go in the world, or on the bottom economically, on the bottom politically, on the bottom socially. Why is that? Is that accidental? And if it's not accidental, what causes that? And if something causes that, what can we do to challenge that? History should be very exciting, if you ask me. Peace, black Power family. See you next time.