Welcome everybody out there in in Zoom land and in Facebook land and YouTube land wherever you may be tonight is an awesome awesome and amazing evening um my name is brother ju representing peace we stand for please educate all children equally we have an awesome amazing guest
Tonight first of all first of all this series is centered on not just black history month but black history 365 every single day however we’re using this opportunity of this month to honor some history about our culture today Beyond Black History Month while you’re learning black history outside of school
Is a must my guest for this evening before I get there let me just take a moment of silence to recognize one of our panelists tonight who’s taking ill Baba Joe Baba Joe Foster everyone who knows him and if you don’t know him please send him a prayer
For speedy recovery but this evening this evening we have one of our panelists who’s jumping on tonight Dr Drew Brown good evening brother Brown how you doing sir doing great doing great doing great glad to see you on here Hey listen you have so many things on your resume
So many things and so many things we just talked about um tell the people a little bit about yourself what you want them to know there’s so many things there I want to read everything is there so you go ahead you tell them yeah so um originally I’m from from
Windsor Ontario Canada right outside Detroit Michigan so um Canadian born and bred came over here to play football so I played Collegiate football a little bit of professional football and then went to grad school at Clark Atlanta and Temple University where I got my masters and my PhD both in African-American
Studies um so this is a perfect platform for me I’m coming from um gamma new chapter in Middletown Delaware and uh gota gota represent my home chapter there um but I’m I’m H happy to be on here happy to talk to you about African civilization and about um black folks
And sort of our connection to the past and history and the significance of it more importantly I think that we have have many people here that um always ask me the question you know what makes us African and what is the value of actually understanding our African
Heritage and roots and so I’m happy to get into that stuff with you um not just the history of it but also the significance of why we should be understanding this stuff awesome amazing and wait a minute I believe I see brother Dr TI what’s up
My chck co what’s up my man how you doing good brother I am blessed brother just finishing up class here at Clark Atlanta University I know to be here with you all I know I know appreciate you brother we had a busy schedule but I’m glad you were able to jump in after
Class man so we just T talking a little glad glad to glad to see you at my my alada there yes sir all right with my with my with my mentor Dr black I should have known I should have known you were a panther brother and a member of the
Baldhead Brotherhood as well there we go there we go I’m actually kind of new kind of only a couple months only a couple months here all right you were well hey hey hey so hey so brother CH so I was basically just um you know introducing you know doc Dr Brown um and
Essentially like your resume tell the people what you want them to know about you because I could read a whole entire book about all the things that you’ve done so far brother well my background is actually as a Middle grades educator I was a language arts teacher and reading specialist for 14
Years um let me see 11 years as a language arts teacher three years as a reading specialist and um I am very passionate about the subject matter of tonight’s discussion because what I noticed in my teaching was that my students increased and improved their engagement and achievement when I infused African and africanamerican
History and culture into my language arts class it it made a not only did it make a dramatic impact in terms of their engagement and achievement it made a dramatic impact in terms of their behavior and so this is one of the reasons why I’m a firm believer um that
We have to make sure that we Infuse that teaching U into the curriculum because there’s so many um so much erroneous information out there I’m the author of 11 books um and I am the uh the co-convenor of the teacher transformation Institute where we use standards-based research driven Afrocentric and culturally relevant uh
Teaching strategies to increase black student engagement and achievement so we go into school districts uh educational conferences and we teach teachers how to bring out the Brilliance in black children and children of color so all of the professional development that we provide to Le leaders and teachers and all of
The curriculum that we’ve developed is for that purpose yes and I’ve been the benefactor of several of your works and some that are behind me some that I’ve given to teachers over the years as educator at various schools in the Philadelphia area so I’m gonna share my screen just for a
Few moments because I have to give a shout out to and everyone can see that you can hear me now yep so this particular series is being brought to you by my organization peace which stands for please educate all children equally but also the Middletown Odessa Town Zen chapter of NAACP which
I’ve partnered with them to create this series for the month of February so it’s in in recognition of black his street month but as we all know we celebrate being black 365 days per year so just a quick little statement looking at the fair youth state statement you the portions of this
Broadcast may be copyrighted material the use of was not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner I’ve determined this to be fair use of the copyrighted material as referen is provided for in section 107 of the copyright law for the United States so just putting that out there I do not own
All the content that’s being shared tonight but it’s being used for educational purposes so we’re fine so in looking at this particular image here Carter G Woodson Dr Carter G Woodson our frat brother Dr G Woodson those in Omega SII Fraternity Incorporated um you know it saddens me
Sometime when I get around this time of the year that does happen to walk in certain spaces and I wear a shirt with his face and every person white black brown most people 90s something perent don’t know who he is on site you know and it’s usually a lot of
Us and I’m talking about older people Elder elderly people who actually are Educators right and don’t know this and are task with teaching our children so you know I’m sharing this image right here now tonight because everybody on site in my humble opinion just as you see George Washington and recognize him
On site you know if you’re from diaspora you should see this brother right here and recognize him on site as well you guys any sh me about that a little bit at all there’s so much to say about yeah Carter G Woodson I mean his his work
Resonates with me so much because he was he was a scholar as well as a teacher and a businessman which is just the same as me so he was a publisher so it wasn’t enough for him to develop a scholarly critique and to conduct research he then
Took it upon himself to to build a business around that and to a Publishing Company because he couldn’t rely on other people to publish uh the powerful work that he was producing and I found the same to be true with uh with what I was doing and so I feel like a great
Deal of my work is a continuation um of his work absolutely and I know a lot of your work have like I said before several of the books here and and DVDs and things of that nature what not so here’s just a narrative on Dr C G Woodson those out
There you can screenshot these things that I show so you can come back to them later on here if you didn’t know anything about Dr Carter G Woodson and the fact that he ultimately created negro history week which later became blackish be month because of the unrest
That took place at Kink state in the early 70s and then after that you know I think the presidents um began to recognize you know our month you know um around 1976 and it’s been kind of recognized ever since then so real real quick real quickly real quickly um Dr
Witson writes writes this book miseducation the Negro I think it’s important to understand what kind of motivated him motivated him to write this book right um in the early 1900s like 1903 or so so he leaves America and goes to the Philippines and while he’s teaching in the Philippines he’s
Teaching this this curriculum and he’s realizing that um the people the people that are are um that are Filipino or whatnot in sorry in the Philippines are are learning a history and learning a curriculum that is not theirs they’re actually learning this sort of colonized version of this curriculum he’s saying
Yo you guys aren’t even really learning the stuff about you you’re learning stuff that other people want you to know and think about yourselves there’s like a education going on here then he’s like well hold on a minute that’s what’s going on with the Negroes back home
Right and so he comes back and he’s like no the same thing that I was doing over there trying to fight against is what’s happening here there’s a miseducation going on by this sort of colonial rule trying to teach black folks about themselves in a way that is detrimental
To themselves and that’s why he really writes this book and I I would add to that that um you know it started off as negro history week and evolved into black history month but the idea was not just to take a month or a week to study our history
That week and that month was supposed to be a culmination and a celebration of what you learning all year long so every year that I was a teacher my students would always ask me uh at that time Mr akua uh what is um why is Black History
Month the shortest month of the year and my response would always be well Black History Month is every month for you that’s you know for other for other folks so um and it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that it was a shortest month as you have in there um
He chose that the month of February or the week that he chose was because it was around the birthday of Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln but it’s important to know that it wasn’t just meant to study our history during that week it was a culmination of what you had been studying throughout the
Year right absolutely let me get just go to the next slide real quick so why is learning black history outside of school is a must why why and and and and part of that I’mma show this graphic here as you look here there are approximately 12 States right now now if
You look at some of the names of some of those States Florida being included the one where I am right now you know Delaware and other states and so on and so forth these are that claim to have made passed legislation to say that you know black history must be taught now
How it’s being taught is it being taught with Fidelity are people just checking boxes I can say definitely that there’s um based on people that I’ve talked to in a couple of these states that in some cases boxes are just being checked right and you know and then in some cases you
Know it’s actually being trying to be removed now you know by different people that out there making their things making their movements about trying to you know erase us from the history you know through those kinds of things um what you to say about that yeah I’m gonna let doc jump in here
In a minute I just want to say some quick words I guess and I’ll let you kind of take it this is more um your area but you know there’s different ways to teach black history right we can teach black history and say that Europeans went over to Africa and saw
Uncivilized beings and decided they were going to help civilize them right that’s one way teach about black history right the thing is that obviously that’s a very oppressive and degrading perspective to have and so how we teach about black people is just as important as what we’re teaching right if not more
Important um and so this is this is why it’s important to un to uh to have the right type of perspective and curriculum in these K through2 black history or black studies um courses and curriculum I’ll also say that Malcolm X has a great quote that we always have to remember
When he says only a fool will let his oppressor teach his children I think it’s so important to hold on to that because I think it’s important for us to remember the history of our of of the way we’ve been oppressed and how we then entrust the education of our children in
Those same structures and institutions that were trying to destroy us and may Contin Contin to be doing so listen I can say this I’m G jump in for one second as a former principal Philadelphia and IED to do with a lot of observations of teachers there was this
One gentleman who was the social studies teacher had been one for 20 something years or whatever and every day and I think he did is to really get on my nerves he’ be teaching about the cotton gen like every lesson when I walked in he put this lesson about the cotton gen
And so you know it didn’t go well for him after a while because I you know the kids they were not engaged and then I would go in there and I would try to like you know try to fix what he was doing but he was doing it on purpose he
Definitely had some some issues I’ll just say it like that so yes to what you just said it’s not about just teaching things it’s what you’re teaching how you’re teaching are you inspiring are you uplifting and so on and so forth whatnot so I just had to get that out
Because you just kind of triggered me when you said that this dude with this cotton Jin every single time and I’m like yeah okay he has to go coach him up coach him out I coached him out what you what you just gave an example of is what the research literature calls Spirit
Murder Spirit murder of black children that are that our children’s their very essence and spirit is being murdered in so many classrooms that are not only not teaching about the truth about their history and culture but are actually teaching the exact opposite so when you ask why should we be teaching about our
History and culture at home um when you look at uh so well for example Dr Brown uh gave a quote from Malcolm which I I think is so profound and always must be uh lifted up uh Malcolm’s teacher The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said if a man won’t treat you right what makes you
Think he’ll teach you right so we have to bear those things in mind so if we go back to Dr Woodson Dr Woodson said there are two kinds of Education the kind that you’re given and the kind you must give yourself the kind we must give ourselves is what happens outside the classroom
And hopefully should be happening at home malef Sante says it this way he says uh that we have to take two sets of notes the first set of notes is the the notes that the the teacher or the professor assigns you the second set of notes are are the notes that that your
Ancestors require of you to go above and beyond so for example when I was working on my doctorate um you know I would do what the professors asked but then I had to consult our Scholars and they often times were not necessarily assigning the class to
Read the best of our Scholars so for every assignment I had to ask myself what does ASA Hillard have to say about this what does way Nobles have to say about this what does Naim Akbar have to say about this what does morba an and the Litany of black Scholars that I know
Know I feel like I earned two doctorates because I was doing that for almost every assignment and so our children must be rooted in grounded in our knowledge in our world view and our way of seeing things that way when they get in schools where their culture may not
Be elevated and celebrated they’ll still have enough of a sense of self to get what they need and keep it moving right absolutely and also and also I think that that raised a great point right that the way in the way which we’re teaching our children one has to do with
The the content and the subject matter and things like that but I also think we have to do it in a way that’s more that’s holistic right understand that we’re teaching subject matters and we’re teaching history but we’re also teaching love we’re also teaching uh having pride
In oneself and one’s ancestors and one’s Heritage we’re also teaching how to treat other people based on what our ancestors have taught us and based on the philosophies that have come out of out of out of civilizations that we’re connected with and are more harmonious with us right that another another a
Teacher in school can read a book and teach the the the words from that book to so that the students regurgitate that but are they teaching how this is harmonious with our way of life how this is harmonious with our community structures right these things are very
Much um a native to Our Heritage and that’s why it’s important for us to be able to do that work holistically 100% 100% education is Liberation let’s free their minds and you know the rest will follow um I think it came from a song I foret what song it
Came from but you know I just kind of spit that bar real quick listen Cherry Hill New Jersey and also follow off you have to shout them out a little bit because they’ve actually created you know a graduation requirement um where you have to take a course now again it
All depends on who’s teaching the course and you know Isel jimz couldn’t be here this evening he’s traveling his playing got caught up and everything I plan for him to be on next week but he is definitely doing some great work right now in the Philadelphia area I’m doing
The Saturday workshops I was a guest on one of those doing a lot of things in Philadelphia promoting the culture you know making sure and I call him in the philia school district I call him like a superhero of black history in the Philadelphia School District him man
Gotta shout out yasim mahamed who’s you know in administrator now but they both did some great work in Philadelphia so Philadelphia will be celebrating I think their 20th year next year that they’ve actually started black history as a graduation requirement um next year in 2025 so have to shout them out real
Quick so but all the things you know that we just talked about those who have no record of what their forbearers have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history what not so we must we must authentically make sure that in the hes
These things are happening and just like so many others I definitely didn’t get that you know I got from my grandmother much as I could which which he could give me and a couple of day camps shout out to the ancestors johnke and those that started the harambe day camp
Because when I go to harambe day camp I would get some more there but in terms of K to 12 school other than Martin Luther King that was pretty much it and even going to my university you know shout out to CH University the blueprint of HBCU the oldest HBCU in the country
Um the curriculum the D wasn’t geared towards that however the friends that I met you know and now we go to the different bookstores whether it be hake’s bookstore you know black and& Noble bookstore know thyself bookstore and collect these books and listening to people like you know
Ks1 py Tay you know when he would come to the university um also um Public Enemy and they inspired me to go get these books that said so similar to you thought Dr cool where I would like take my major but I was getting these other books and I was just sitting around
Building and ciphering and getting this knowledge of stuff what not which is very very important because I wasn’t getting it in the schools that I had attended so this is why learning black history outside of school was a must it definitely has to happen you can’t rely
On a school even though they’re pacing mandates to teach your children about themselves at home in the community it has to happen there and if the school does it great and then even challenge the information you’re getting in the school because like we said before you
Know if it’s not done with love and authenticity to make them a greater people it’s to do more harm than good at the end of the day yeah let me just let me just ask that about just speaking about Philadelphia School District sure um know there’s a lots of bureaucracy
Around changing curriculum right even when it comes to Delaware or Florida right that we can have all of these proposals and all these plans to be able to teach black history black culture black studies within K through 12 but that it has to go through all of the red
Tape and we see how when it reaches certain levels it gets shut down um I think that there’s a a great brother Reginal streer who’s a president of the Philadelphia school board right now and um he comes at a Temple University uh um and and and did African-American studies
Under malef Assan and all of that but understanding that even he can’t just push uh curriculum change right that it has to go through a process and that process can be tedious and there are a lot of hurdles and challenges that it’s going to face and so I think that um
Just kind of recognizing that period that point uh is is also a reason why we need to make sure that we’re doing it at home right so because at at home um there should be left tape and and bureaucracy that it may go through it may go through some right you got to
Check with the spouse and things like that but um you know I think that it’s a a way that we can ensure that our children are getting that type of work yeah absolutely and and definitely to um extend that you know parents that are out there that are watching and
Listening what not your children that have all these smartphones let’s actually use them within our culture to make our children smarter rather than all the other fun stuff that they do and the stuff that they shouldn’t be doing is use this opportunity to use the smart walking around with an encyclopedia in
Their hand a research device in their hand use it to become actually smarter especially when it comes to our culture so um we’re going to go with these these few points and we’ll just show a couple of the clips and talk about some things and we’ll just like you know speak what
We know about these things evolution of mankind the older civilization of Africa the most remarkable civil civilizations in West Africa and resources for parents and um this here particular segment is entitled Africans before European oppression so how do we know Africa is the creator of modern Humanity why is this important for
Everyone to know especially those that specifically identify as being in part of diaspora and what other thoughts do you have about the evolution of mankind so what I’m do right now just show a short clip a short clip Science magazine presents arpus I’m about five minutes most detailed picture
Of early homed life on the cover of science there is the partial skeleton of remarkable human ancester can you hear that fine this is arpus ramus and a team of international researchers introduced this hominid member of the Human family that lived 4.4 million years ago which
Is about a million years older than Lucy species and they flesh it out and what they are telling us in these 11 articles is that it doesn’t look just like us which is not surprised in you wouldn’t invite them to dinner but it doesn’t look just like a chimpanzee either which
Is a big surprise so instead of thinking of something in between a chimp and a human we have to think of this as really not a series of links in a chain as much as branches in a tree and our branch is a very peculiar Branch we have very
Strange feet and huge brains how how did that happen well we have to work our way back down our branch and and so we’re getting pretty close to the fork that was between the line that led off to the chimpanzees and the line that led off to
Us and Arius takes us pretty far back toward that branch and informs us that the node Point The Junction the last common ancestor was neither human nor a chimpanzee it was something entirely different it’s living on the ground walking upright like us spending a lot of time walking upright if you saw it
Walk by the walk would look a lot like ours but it can’t run like us the skeleton that we have is estimated to be around 4 feet tall and to weigh around 100 110 lbs and so that’s why skeletons are important they allow you to get at things like stature limb proportions and
And all of that and I think one of the one of the things that we would be most impressed by seeing seeing artyus in the in the flesh would be the very small size of her her face and brain brain case the very large size of her arms and
Hands and this grasping ability of her feet she had a foot with an opposable large toe it’s first time we’ve ever seen this in a fossil homonid all the rest of them even the Lucy species fairly early at 3.7 to 3.2 and even with footprints in the foot speed this up
Just a little bit because this one key point that I’m went to be know so about right there we have fossil wood fossil seeds we have fossil millipedes we have Birds we have very small mammals and all of these very sensitive environmental indicators build up to a picture of a woodland habitat
That’s now been sampled just by geological forces where the exposures of this ancient Horizon are present it’s it used to be very different from what it is today the traditional View for the past 50 years has been that our ancestors arose in the grassy savanas of Africa I’m just
Pausing it right there because ultimately you know um and well I’ll stop sharing the screen for right now so we can just have some conversation around that the evolution of mankind and how do we know Africa is the Cradle of modern Humanity um what do you have to add to that it’s
Been verified for years and for those that may not know that is the case what do you have to say to speak to that particular um fact either either one of you I’d like to share something that AA hilard talked about in his research and
He said um that what we know as a result of research is that the first woman in Man Came Out of Africa and the last woman and man came out of Africa and what he meant by that was was not only the the one that they were looking at
Before Australopithecus I forgot the name that they gave it but the first one going back 4.4 million years that that they came from Out of Africa but also the modern human being and the reason that it’s important to make that distinction is because somebody could say well okay the first people you know
That that that the first humans uh came out of Africa but they were apik or ch ch chimpanzee like what until they got into Asia or Europe that they became like humans as we know it and that’s not true as I said the first woman and man
As well as the last human and man woman and man modern woman and man came out of Africa as well so it’s important to understand that distinction absolutely absolutely and then the video actually goes into that a little bit just kind of Link these I want have our feedback have our
Conversation on that but definitely it’s important to make that distinction um Dr Brown anything you like to add Dr Brown yeah I don’t want to get I don’t want to jump the gun here but you know just looking at when it comes to not just the
Last human uh the last human being or last mankind um but also the civilizations that begin in Africa right that the civilizations begin in in 3800 BC right in we don’t we don’t really get we don’t really get to uh um we don’t really get those civilizations
In Greece until like 750 BC we’re talking about 3,000 years right of civilizations in Africa before Greece starts to become this big Powerhouse civilization and of course we can draw the the uh the connections at and and see how ancient chemet has certainly had an influence a heavy influence I would
Say on the civilization of Greece if we’re saying that Greece um civilized the world well we can we can most likely say that that uh that Greece was heavily influenced by ancient chem which takes us to our next our next point right actually takes us to our
Next point so let me share that screen while you’re bringing that up consider the fact what what Dr Brown just mentioned when he talks about how Kemet was at least 3,000 years older than ancient Greece consider the fact that America isn’t even 300 years old yet right just kind of put that in
Perspective in your mind and you’re talking about a civilization that was politically active for 3,000 years again AA Hiller makes a distinction between political Kemet and cultural Kemet which even extended back thousands of years prior to uh to to that 3,000 years we were talking about absolutely so I think I think I
Think that I think I think that’s an important point to make also because when we talk about black history right the black history here in America is such a small piece of the larger history that goes back thousands of years right and so when we’re talking about how are
We connected to our heritage we’re talking about this being a significant piece right uh a relevant piece but a small piece of our longer history Abol they don’t even teach us the truth about what happened here Dr David imotep has a book called the first Americans were Africans and he demonstrates with archaeological
Evidence that African people were here 53,000 years ago and so people considered to be Native Americans in large measure were Africans that were already here so that’s but that’s a whole another story we’ll I I we stick to Kim right now listen he’s dropping listen but drop
Them seeds though brother listen so here right here you have the master keys for understanding ancient Kevin and I know Dr Co just based on what I’ve read on things that you’ve studied that you’re definitely a a student of all those P people that you mentioned and
Specifically in this case um looking at Dr ASA hiler right and the master keys introduction so I’m just gonna play a little bit of this here for the people out there who may not have seen this before I’m sure you could probably be spit it verbatim but I’m going share if
Everyone out there just viewing right now a small clip and you can tell me to stop anytime you like we should use the term kimet rather than the term Egypt because that is the name that the kitic people used to refer to themselves the name Egypt was used by
Greek people and is therefore a foreign name not a native African or a native Egyptian name lelt Middleton one of the leading educational television producers on African history why is ancient chemets so important to the world and to black people African people in particular ancient Kemet is important because it’s humankind’s oldest
Civilization it’s the development of the best effort of a group of people to organize themselves and for Africa that’s especially important since African people have been so defamed even to the extent that some have said that African people had no civilization in fact African people developed the first
Civiliz ation which was Kemet it is as important to African people as Greece is to European people what did these Africans develop in the way of Science and well of course in the development of civilization we would refer to Kemet as a high technical civilization uh The Sciences as we know
Them were well advanced in Kemet uh thousands of years before they had that kind of development before the art of writing uh astronomy uh the uh mu music any area that we now consider to be an important academic area already had its uh beginning in Kemet and it was very welldeveloped now you
Know a lot of African-Americans watching this will say now what do the descendants of African slaves in the United States have to do with these ancient Africans in Kemet or Egypt well it’s important for any group of people to have a sense of or to have the ability to answer three questions about
Themselves and these questions are Booker T Washington Coleman Washington DC historians questions that he uses in organizing his Ed educational experiences for children he says every human being ought to be able to answer the question who am I where in the world am I how in the
World did I get here now most well-developed Nations spend Millions maybe billions of dollars answering those questions for themselves that’s why you have Smithsonian Institution for the United States uh that’s why you have libraries that’s why you have universities that invest in history departments and so forth uh African people have almost
Forgotten because we haven’t had the resources to take care of that part of our existence it is the knowledge of one’s history that gives a strong sense of belonging and identity which provides the basis for group Unity which provides the basis for political and economic power mhm what is the the connection the
Genetic connection the cultural connection uh between the the Africans who are now in in the United States and those of ancient Kemet or Egypt well it’s fairly clear that the pattern of movement of people on the African continent and it moves from uh it’ll go to the map it moves from uh Beginnings
Here in the Nile Valley begin okay where the Nile River actually starts right here and it will go down here joined by another Nile the white the Blue Nile coming from Ethiopia the White Nile coming from here joining here and coming this way so the M migration
Pattern of human beings was down this River into Egypt and then there were migration patterns over into West Africa many times and some of the time the migration actually went from from Egypt into across the top of the Sahara and into these parts and we believe there
Are people here now who are quite similar and probably as was said in the book uh by Felix du boy timbuk to the mysterious they’re probably both the culture and the genetic descendants of the people of Egypt and they’re the Doan people here in mly let me ask you to go
Over that again just to make sure that that we that we uh get all of it okay we be early man begins here in this area some and we’re talking about the cultural we’re connection the genetic connection we’re talking about the people first the genetic connection and
Then of course they carry their culture down the river these were black people here they car their man I can listen to Dr hilard all day but I know you can I want you do your thing I want to point out what he’s talking about right now because when we
Start talking about Kemet which today people know as Egypt people would say well that you know that’s fine Dr COA but you know you’re African-Americans were taken from West Africa so you don’t have a connection ancient Kemet well that’s not true uh it is true that we were that our
Ancestors were captured from West Africa but it is not true that we don’t have a connection to Kemet what Dr hilard is calling our attention to here um and and he found out later in his research because this video is from the 1980s but what they discovered was that
There were six documented mass migrations out of the Nile Valley of Africa and those migrations happened as a result of Invaders and colonizers the Assyrians the Persians the Greeks and the Romans and when they inundated the Nile Valley there were six mass migrations from out of kimet and the
Nile Valley to West Africa but when the people left the Nile Valley they took their culture with them and they built the Great Empires of Ghana and Mali and Sanai so Dr hasimi maiga Who hails from Mali he says West Africans are not really West Africans they’re really East
Africans who traveled West I’m G say that again because that could be kind of confusing West Africans are not really West Africans they’re really East Africans who traveled West and so when you go to West Africa you can see the cultural retentions of ancient kimet as
A matter of fact uh you have um the Dogan people as he mentioned who have very similar language Customs sciences and so forth um I was La in 2022 I was inst stooled as a chief in Ghana and one of the reasons they did that is because
In the Assa region of Ghana where I was installed uh they know their history of being the descendants of the ancient kemites uh but they were also in need of other Scholars and researchers to help them continue to piece together that history so I just wanted to point out those couple of
Things yeah absolutely and and that’s all first of all congratulations I I think I just just learned that now about them being installing you over there in Ghana that’s an awesome achievement and you know West Africans were actually East Africans and I think about I don’t
Want to jump too ahead too far ahead but I think about Mana for example and a lot of trade that he did you know and going back and forth you know to that region and whatnot at that time so I think that has a large plays a large large part in
That what you just said correct absolutely absolutely there’s definitely that connection there’s a linguistic connection a spiritual and Theological connection a scientific connection it’s it’s all there for those that take the time uh to learn it absolutely yeah and and I think that I think it’s clear as
To where the connections are like you said if you take the time to learn it right there’s a connection from um ancient Kemet a connection to West Africa and a connection from West Africa obviously to the Americas if you take the time to learn that we’re we’re very
Much connected now I I always think of the story that uh my dissertation chair mfia Santi starts out with in one of his books talking about the crow um the baby crow that falls into the chicken coupe right and does that does that Crow ever become a chicken right the other
Chickens can teach it to you know clck like a chicken to do what chickens do but at the end of the day when that when that uh when that eagle realizes that there are other eagles that can fly unlike the chickens then all of a sudden
It can start to fly if we take the time to understand that we come from a long Heritage and long history of greatness we can tap into that we can continue that we can honor that and and hopefully work to stand on the shoulders of our
Ancestors and work to work uh try to work with our ancestors and try um create a path forward I think I want to make sure we don’t miss the greatness of Kemet right Kemet is where mathematics was developed it was where books were written on existence and
Spirituality it was written on um Tech sorry the the the architectural Innovation and Technology mfti says Greece and Rome combined can match the architectural Legacy of K we’re talk talking about we’re talking about pyramids here that they still don’t know how they built them today they look back at these pyramids and
They’re so uh uh technologically sound they’re almost perfect when it comes to um when it comes to the degrees and angles that this thing is built on they they literally cannot figure out how they built it some people will say uh these folks they must had the aliens
Helped them literally that is the argument right the aliens must have helped them right but um but we also can’t forget to acknowledge the fact that the people of ancient Kemet were black I hate that I gotta say it but when you look at movies like like
Cleopatra and all of that these old school movies I got it I I I have to acknowledge that these um these folks of ancient Kemet were black folks right even even you know the great Greek philosopher Herodotus goes there and says yeah they’re they’re they’re black people these are black folks right
Kmt Kemet uh is is interpreted as the land of the blacks and so when we look at Kem we look at the greatness of it we have to also acknowledge these are black folks that were doing this what I hate is that throughout history and this is why it’s important to understand this
Stuff this narrative has been changed and and I would say whitewashed if you will to say that well the people of ancient Kemet H maybe they weren’t black or it’ll say the people Kemet helped by aliens to create these great Monumental you know pyramids and sinks and all that
Stuff right so we see how the how the the the narrative then starts to get distorted um the reason why this narrative gets distorted I would say is because folks don’t want folks can’t justify levels of white supremacy while also acknowledging how great black folks were during the uh ancient civilizations
Of K thousands of years before Greece yes right that that’s a problem that’s a problem for white supremacy right and so when we when we see that we see that um if we continue to allow these things to go unnoticed UNH forgotten and unacknowledged what we’re doing is we’re
Allowing this agenda of white supremacy to continue to do that and erase the very history and Heritage that that really is ours absolutely and and and brother C so help help me out with this here as well so I believe that one of the reasons that many of the uh The Monuments the
The images the statues had their noses like removed or or shot off I guess is because they didn’t want it to resemble the African that’s what I’ve been taught anyway is that through your research as well have you heard that as well or it’s it’s two aspects to that that is part of
It and then also um oftentimes by the ktic people themselves a way of defacing or defaming somebody’s memory was to cut off the nose but we know that most of it was done by Invaders who came uh much much later uh they would uh blast off the nose the lips these were the
Telltale signs that these were clearly African people and a couple of things to kind of demonstrate that like for example when Dr Brown talks about the magnificence of the pyramids and and as I go around the country and talk about these things when I ask people you know
Who built the pyramids and what what are the myths that are out there about it it always comes up the notion of aliens right so I always have to debunk that myth because if you go into the amamos mathematics Papyrus which is the oldest math textbook in the world you can see
Where they are uh determining the slope of a pyramid you can see what later people will call the Pythagorean theorem uh uh attributed to Pythagoras although motep who designed the first pyramid came 2,000 years before Pythagoras uh but in the amelos mathematics Papyrus you see examples of algebra trigonometry s cosine cotangent
Areas square root circumference volume and you see them working on uh calculations about developing a pyramid we also know that they made mistakes this is how we know it wasn’t done by aliens also we know their mistakes they started off with the step pyramid then they wanted to build a true pyramid
Uh ceru who wanted to build a true pyramid made a mistake mismeasured his angles and you have What’s called the bent pyramid the angles are off but then he goes back rasures and they’re able to create a true pyramid and then you have the Great Pyramid of kufu and so on so
We know the development over time that it took for them to do that in terms of their Blackness shikan Diop had 12 areas 12 areas of empirical evidence to demonstrate that the ancient uh kdic people were black one of those areas of evidence was the famed melanin dosage
Test and he said if you’ll give me a uh uh if you give me access to the Royal mummies of Kemet because the Royal mummies were stolen and kept in the lver museum in France if you give me access to the Royal mummies I will take a skin
Sample and I will put that skin sample into a solution of ethyl benzoid and when you shine a fluorescent light on it the melanocytes which are the cells that hold the melanin the skin pigment they begin to become floresent well and you can count and determine the skin tone of
The person that you’re uh that you’re analyzing for two years they wouldn’t even give him access to the mummies but when they finally did something amazing happened all of the mummies that he tested in his words and he’s a darkskinned African from synagog he said they were black black more black than I
These are the words of Dr shik but that’s not the Deep part the Deep part is he said that he had found that other people had performed the same experiment before them and he knew because some of the mummies had had their skin scraped off it didn’t just fall off because of
Age it happened because other people had already done that research come to the same conclusion but didn’t publish their findings and and that’s why they didn’t want to give him access to the Royal mummies so you’ll be amazed at the Great Lengths people will go to to make sure
That we don’t know the truth about our history and culture wow I hope people out there are listening and obviously this is being recorded and it’s being recorded on YouTube and you guys are getting some some uh some free some free game right now getting some free game that
Hopefully inspire you to want to go ahead and do some other things too as well that we’ll talk about at the end because brother brother K has a large catalog of materials like I said I have some he can talk about that kind of stuff at the end but you get some free
Game right now and also do your own research do your research as well okay I’m GNA skip the rest of this video Because unless you have anything else to say about this clip just I I was taught that knowledge ain’t free you gotta pay attention that’s right that’s right 100%
100% so the most remarkable Civ izations of West Africa right and we talked a little bit um we mentioned them earlier I’ll just start this clip but then I’ll pull up the next slide which we’ll go and we’ll just have a conversation around those things here unknown to most people hundreds of
Smaller kingdoms have popped out through Africa’s history with some eventually growing into powerful Empires these we going to start Gold Mine we start with Ghana the Kingdom of Ghana of Ghana ancient Ghana which sat on an immense gold mine was so rich that even its dogs wore collars made of the precious metal
With strategic planning powerful leaders and an abundance of Natural Resources Ghana soon became another big African influence trading with Europeans and North Africans Ghana imported books cloth and horses in exchange for gold and ivory salt was also in high demand Arab businessmen often struggled for months to reach the kingdom and trade if
Someone was accused of breaking the law in Ghana that person was forced to drink an acrid blend of wood and water if he threw up the mixture he was considered innocent otherwise he was considered guilty and punished by the king despite holding off many invasions Ghana eventually collapsed in 1240
Isolated from trade and weakened by its Rivals the kingdom was absorbed into the growing Mali Empire number seven so I’mma pause right there I have not been I’m looking forward to going here’s my book back here you know 169 project in the year of return and da da and I’ve been doing a
Lot of you know youtubing and things in the nature and I know you’ve been a couple of times either of you like to add anything to what they said regarding Ghana I just would encourage you to go um I think um for several reasons not only for the historical and for the
Cultural but because I believe that all African-Americans should examine International options I believe we all have to um you know things are very volatile in America 100% brother and uh while I believe that America belongs to us I still think it’s it’s still best to have international options and to forge relationships with
Our brothers and sisters on the continent because they’re sitting on top of the wealth of the world and they’re waiting for us to return and when you return uh it will be not like nothing else that you’ve ever experienced because you’ll be embraced uh by your
Own people but you’re also going to see some very disturbing things when I went um our guide and one of my elders he he said you’re looking through a dual lens on the one hand you’re seeing what the British Colonials left behind so when Ghana gained its independence in
1957 the British took out all the infrastructure and and and they’re still uh in control of a great deal of resources in Ghana but the second part of that lens is you’re seeing the Beauty and the resilience of the people to survive and persist Des fite those oppressive
Conditions so I don’t want to romanticize about it so much that you you know think that it’s that it’s all good because it’s not all good right but it is a beautiful and wonderful experience and I think all all of us should experience it at some point or
Another on our journey yeah but then the next year so I’m definitely making that trip go ahead brother Dr Brown you have something yeah yeah I I I uh I’m definitely gonna go on the the more cultural side right the cultural Foundation side and um I want to kind of
Say story I think about me growing up you know I grew up in Canada so I wasn’t really exposed to a lot of um movies and things like that but uh when I was 21 I actually saw the movie Scarface and with all of the hip-hop
That I knew of up to that point I finally saw the movie and so much of hip-hop samples and lyrics and all of that came from that movie I couldn’t believe how much I already knew about a movie that I’d never even seen that’s what it’s like going to Ghana
It’s like going back and seeing the foundation of so much of what we already have here when we talk about the rhythms and we talk about the drums and we talk about the uh the patterns and we talk about the uh all of these different cultural elements so much of that
Exists in Africa and in West Africa and in Ghana right I think it’s going to be it’s going to amaze a lot of people to realize how much uh how many connections there are and how much of that culture is built into the foundation of a African-American culture um but like was
Said let’s not romanticize this right that there um that there were some flaws and there were some shortcomings and there were all of these things that exist but I think it’s also important to um value it and still honor it because it’s ours because it’s ours 100% all right show the next small
Clip on Molly the Mali Empire the Mali Empire was a major African civilization that thrived between the 13th and 16th centuries founded by a man named suata K AKA The Lion King the empire was located near present day West Africa while The Lion King was an impressive ruler the Empire
Flourished the most under mansam Musa who holds the title of the richest man in history his Fortune was worth a whooping $400 billion an amount that puts Bill Gates to shame Musa also made timbuk to the Mali Capital the main Center for education and culture in Africa allowing Scholars from all over
The continent to come and study like Benin Mali was successful in trade because of its location by the Niger River however it was planted by Invaders from Morocco in 1593 absolutely this weekend if you could go back like five seconds not even five seconds where it was showing that map where he’s holding
The gold nugget right there right that map was drawn by Europeans and it shows manam Musa holding a gold nugget and while that’s a Monumental part of our history and culture and the magnificence of mansam mus and everything it call there’s a lesson that we can learn from that and that is uh
Don’t always show what you have and I’m not neily suggesting that he did but I think wealth was just so abundant in mly at that time you couldn’t not notice it especially if you came from scarcity like they did in Europe right and so when they saw that so they literally
Made a map saying we have to go to this place to get their resources when we build the lesson for us is that when we build sometimes we have to build in silence until what we’ve built has such a strong Foundation that it doesn’t matter who tries to
Attack it when they find out it’s already strong enough that it can stand on its own so that’s just something that came to mind uh that always comes to mind whenever I see that map that they built they were intent on finding a gold and they’re still intent on finding the
Gold in our communities and in us the gold that we don’t even see in ourselves everybody knows how powerful we are we’re the only ones who don’t recognize it in ourselves yeah yeah and I I also think that when it comes to you know make a great point about him holding the Nugget
In this picture and I think that when we look at it through a sort of um European lens and the priorities and values that European culture has on money starts to become primary I think it it it it it discounts all of the other non sort of
Gold non uh uh Financial stuff that’s valuable in Africa that’s valuable in Ghana when you talk about spiritual systems systems of maturation when you talk about Community structures and and and Community um philosophies right around building around coming together and families and things like that all of
That is Rich culture it wasn’t just the gold to be honest with you I think it’s interesting the way you know we we often times want to recognize the fact that we had kings and queens in our lineage or in our in our heritage I’ll say but I
Think we have to be really honest that we don’t over romanticize this thing most of us come from Farmers right most of us and that doesn’t make us any less valuable that just because we have kings and queens in Africa to recognize that I think what we’re trying to do I
Understand that I get it we’re trying to show that we were not the uh uncivilized people that European folks will claim and try to depict us as I get it I get it you know we were great people but understand we were great for a number of
Reasons not just because we wore crowns not just because we had gold nuggets we were great because of the way we moved the way we treated each other the way we connected with spirituality and the way we connected with ourselves the uh great the philosophies that we had in in understanding our
Existence the connections we had to our ancestors the way we honored our elders that’s what made us great there is a question in the in the Box are are you able to see the Q&A box on your end gentlemen either of you I can’t hear you Dr C must me on
Mute I there’s no in the chat box from what I can see okay so there’s a question I’m I’ll read it oh go ahead you want to read it no go ahead go right ahead go right ahead okay can you discuss this is by uh Dr Mark L can you
Discuss some of the principles of the transition of manhood in African culture and what are your thoughts of the current state uh of healthy masculinity regardless of sexuality um yeah so I mean I guess I can start with some with some of that and folks can jump in but um they had
What called these rights of Passage rituals right um it was a process of maturation it wasn’t just once turn 18 you’re a man you’re a woman that’s not how they did it you had to go through a process to learn things and it wasn’t until you completed that process that
You were looked at as a man or a woman in particular communities some of this had to do with a number of things of knowing about your own community and the history of it uh some of it had to do with going out into the Wilderness and learning things about yourself
Overcoming challenges being comfortable with who you were learning about different philosophies and learning about different ideas of right and wrong and all of these things were entailed into this these sort of rights of Passage rituals um today when we talking talking about being a man or being a
Woman um part of the sensitivity that that black folks have is that we were not looked at as men and not looked at as as grown women no matter how old you were that certain periods of time you know we were called boy no matter how
Old you were as a black man as a black man and so we come become very sensitive around that to where uh at every turn we want to sort of claim this manhood but that’s not necessarily how it went in African pre-colonial African culture um
There was a process and it was a process for a particular reason because once you became a man um you were expect Ed to contribute to the progress and and the advancement of a community and the maintenance of a community yeah and that that is so important uh what Dr Brown has mentioned
Because when you think about what is the rights of Passage into adulthood for us in America or just for America in general people on their 18th or 21st birthday they may get drunk they may get high they may have illicit sex and and this is their passage into
Manhood or Womanhood that is so far so distant from what our original rights of Passage was the understanding was that you you you may have been born as a male or female but you had to evolve into manhood and Womanhood and that didn’t just happen by chance it was a
Structured process so you left the community as a boy or a girl to go through your rights of Pastor Mage and you were you returned to the community and were represented to the community as a man or a woman because during your rights of and you were treated as such
Because during your rights of Passage you you learned the knowledge of of of yourself and of your people and of the world and of nature you learned how to protect and provide for yourself your family and your community none of these things were were were uh by chance
But all of these things now today are left to Chance in our communities because many of the structures of socialization that are going on are out of our control or we haven’t uh retaken control of those sorts of things so yeah I’m very concerned about um uh the lack
Of functional black men that we have in our communities families and schools and further you have Generations of children and women who have never seen a functional healthy black man both mentally emotionally and spiritually and you have generations of young people who have never seen a functional marriage loving functional supportive
Relationship that’s deeply problematic and that is not by chance but it all goes back to the disruption of our rights of Passage uh systems yeah yeah and and and and and and Dr L real quick Dr Lada um he also mentioned in there sort of like outside
Of sexuality and I think it’s important to kind of recognize this this idea of masculinity and femininity and things like that that a lot of times these rights of Passage uh rituals go well beyond that right we’re talking about learning um things like uh how to how to be humble right
Learning about humility and the value and importance of humility learning about when and how to apologize and make amends for things like these are the ritual practices that were going on right how to use your how to use your privilege or your power when you do have it for good especially when there’s
Other folks around you who don’t have that privilege and Power right this ain’t got nothing to do whether you can hit a baseball or not and it has everything to do with how how you are valued not how you valued the value that you have and that you bring to a
Community it’s understanding that each of us are different and it’s the differences that actually make us a better Community because without you we wouldn’t have it and so we need you because what you bring is something different something new something that we don’t necessarily have and as long as we can all come
Together with our differences with our likenesses and get on the same Rhythm we gonna be all right we gonna be all right it’s like music right I’m think hipop I’m thinking hip-hop I’m I’m just listening you know you got these you got these rhythms and poly rhythms
You’ got the bass guitar you got the um you know the saxophone you got the drums you got five different types of drums you got all of these things you got the vocals right you got the all these things the poly rhythms going on as long
As we can all get on the same Rhythm it benefits us to have different sounds different uh instruments different approaches and things like that as long as we get on the same on the same Rhythm it actually makes our community makes our sound better there’s another question in the
Box right here it says it’s from Mark Wilson I this that’s my brother Mark Wilson who may have gone to lafayett as well actually and Coach the little football against me he was a coach at uh Otep years ago and we used to battle and we’re colleagues from from Philadelphia
But not uh if you could just read that question real quick brother because do you see that question oh I can’t see it on my end yeah yeah yeah help me understand how this help me help me understand how other civilizations were able to come to
Al Alan uh and ra and ravage the country Aon and ravage the countries uh um I think it says with us so Advanced so advanced in math science how did they develop weapons such uh that defeated us so I’m gonna first say that I think we have to also recognize the type of
People that were in West Africa at that time were they people who could develop uh defense systems absolutely when it comes to even European colonization do we think that sorry did the African people at that time believe that there was going to be a group of people so
Inhumane that they were going to come in and do what they did to African civilizations absolutely not think in fact they actually embraced many Europeans I don’t think people understand that they allowed Europeans into these communities right and then the Europeans learned their Styles learned their secrets learned their
Vulnerabilities and then came in with the guns and the brutality but I think that when we when we think about African people West African people at that time um they weren’t necessarily thinking of some of these things in terms of colonization I think that’s kind of where we’re going where we’re getting
Out with this but um correct me if I’m wrong or or certainly add in what you will that’s that’s sort of kind of you know might have been mindset you know in terms of us being more of a peace get it wrong we can go to war too but being
More scholarly and being more peaceful allowing people to come in and learn from us and then like you just said see what we got now they want to go ah and get that so um but Dr yeah we saw the same thing with Native Americans they just had never been exposed to that
Level of of barbarity I never forget I was 15 years old when uh when I saw the first uh iteration of the movie The Color Purple and I didn’t know what I was going to I was just going with my parents but when the character of Mister
Was portrayed I was stunned I just I had never seen a person a black man or any I had never seen a person be that evil and vile to so I had no point of reference for it I think the same can be said when when the Europeans came into Africa we
Were uh shadab describes it as this he said we were xenophilic meaning we embraced people who had uh difference but in European culture they tend to be xenophobic they have a fear of people who are different so we Embrace people hey come on in we got plenty to eat come
On in we got we got plenty you know share with us the Native Americans did the same thing but that became our demise John henck Clark said our our greatest Humanity uh became our greatest liability and so it’s kind of like uh it’s kind of like somebody you know
Wandering into the community who’s not Street Smart you’re going to get taken advantage of and and we just we didn’t have that orientation so we have to learn from that as a people now to be mindful because some some of our people get to a point where they’re they’re in
Search of allies outside of our community and if you’re not careful you can be inviting the enemy in I’m not saying that strategic alliances aren’t good and helpful but I’m always wary of those that feel that they have to find somebody you know outside of our community so these are these are things
That we have to be mindful of yeah awesome awesome awesome commentary um the next slide was going to be on song high does anyone want to share anything on S High I mean you know as I you know look at the transition between you know mly and then into song High and
How essentially um many of the universities correct me if I’m wrong with my timetable but many of the universities pretty much began to be more prominence um and during that transition is that pretty accurate Dr did you make that statement again what what became more prominent the universities and so University tbck to
And so on and so forth became more prominent between the transition between Miley and then sonai it’s funny brother because when I was growing up we had a saying man I would knock you all the way to to timbuck to and I never knew that
That was a real place uh so yeah I I think that you’re right about that but I want to talk for just a moment about the language because embedded in our languages was so much that we can learn about ourselves let me take it back to
Kem for just a second then I’m gonna bring it to sonai okay uh in Kemet the language was called medu which means word of God or sacred utterances well think about the the quality of the Consciousness and the culture of a people that would name their language word of God or sacred utterances
In the s High language there were certain Concepts that were related to our Blackness I’ll give you a quick example and this is coming out of the research of Dr Joyce King and hasimi maiga who’s who’s from Mali everything associated with black in the English language is negative but in
Our original languages everything associated with black is related to goodness greatness and Divinity so for example in the sonai language um if you wanted there’s a term called Hari Bibi which means black water so if you’re going to give me some water don’t get me some water by the edge of the river
Where people have been washing their bathing themselves and washing their clothes and stuff go out a little further into the middle of the river and get me that har BBE that black water that the most refreshing water was referred to as black water laubi was Black Earth the most fertile ground that
You could plant your crops in was called labu BBI which was Black Earth and then uh when the sun was on high and the most uh at its hottest it was called way B black Sun so everything was associated with Blackness was that which was potent I think the most powerful
Example is chinii BBI which means black word in the beginning was the black word and the black word has the power to make things move and transform so the powerful word was the black word so even our languages uh you you have this sense of sacredness that we don’t find in the
English language or or other European languages and this is one of the problems with the fact that our languages were taken from us so that’s what makes me think of when I think of uh s nice Dr Brown want to add anything to that no no I think that’s good I think
That you know talking about sonai and and um I I think the different Empires take turns right kind of becoming the main Empire whatnot but I think what’s interesting and what’s important to know is that these were high trade areas these were where so many people from
Around not just Africa but all over other places as well were coming to kind of figure out um what they could get and how they could do trade um they mentioned in one of the video that sometimes it would take months for people to get there just so they could
Do trade and so it became this Hub of trade and this very vibrant place in itself um those different kingdoms those different those different areas and so when we think of ancient Africa when we think of you know the the earlier years of Western of of West African
Civilization a lot of times people will get these myths that they were somehow you know living in trees right and I think that we have to acknowledge that it was actually the opposite that they were were they were the center of trade and the center of
All of this the these these this gold that was going on at that time um just kind of wanted to add that piece nice earlier in the clip it mentioned Mansa Musa I me just go through right now because you know stay we can do this all night but I know you
Guys have things to do such as I do in the panel you know and and the the viewers out there in their evenings as well but man Musa and one of the things I always ask the children that I still work with to this day I
Who’s the richest man of all time you they’ll say Jeff Bezos or now they say Elon Musk you know so that gives me a nice segue into talking about Mansa Musa and essentially the wealth he had I think they said about 400 billion versus what Elon mus has which is still nothing
To you know squint at um 200 billion right but still 400 to 200 you know it’s double that um any comments that you have about manam Musa and his wealth I don’t think recognize how I don’t think we recognize how much money that actually was he would go to certain
Communities and just drop donations and his donations would throw off the whole economy of that of that area right right like he was dropping so much just in his just giving giving stuff away that now it it would it would throw off the economic value of gold at
That time um so I think that we we really don’t even recognize how much money I probably still can’t even recognize exactly how much money that is and I think too the message that we carry forth from that today is that in many of our communities I’ve notic that we have
People who have Capital but not the Consciousness so the cap they got the capital they got the money uh but don’t have the the the social and cultural Consciousness or mindset that should go with it and and then in other places in our community you have people who have the
Consciousness but no capital and typically these two groups tend to butt heads like people with the Consciousness look at the people with the capital say hey you should be building black schools and you should build black businesses and you should be rooted in the community the people with the capital
Say hey you need to stop complaining you need to save your money get a job invest your money America’s the best place in the world and what I’ve discovered over the years is that the people with the capital and the Consciousness are are in two camps butting heads I
Realized uh early on that I needed to be that brother who could raise capital and Consciousness to do the work that’s necessary to be done in our communities and and here’s the other thing that I noticed young people are not attracted to struggle and one of the reasons is
Because many of them are already struggling and I think our people in general are not attracted to struggle and so it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that we teach our people ways of of making money and living abundantly by empowering your people rather than exploiting your people and I like to
Think that that’s part of the message that uh that that Mana Musa brings us is that you know he he he had wealth not just personal wealth but it his wealth as a result of an Empire that he was over and that the people shared in that
Wealth so in our next segment and I appreciate both of you for being on here this evening you’ve been dropping science dropping knowledge everything all night long um is to talk about sharing your resources so Dr AA if you want you can share um you can share some
Information if you have some ready to share because you’re actually listed as one of the resources for parents um so if you want to just share from your browser feel right ahead but I can definitely talk about yourself to as well so oh okay sure sh you can share
You can share the screen if you like okay um it’ll take me a minute to bring it up so uh Dr Brown can go first and then I’d be glad to share some of the resources that I can provide not a problem you want to talk about what we
Talked about earlier Dr Brown is that that too much information right now up front or you wanna do like a like a save the date type thing or are we there yet you you’re on mute you’re on mute you’re on mute okay cool that was awesome I want the world to know about
It oh are you talking about the book yes yes yeah so I’m in the middle I’m in the middle of completing uh my manuscript I have one book out it’s sitting right up there um Sports and africanamerican history and culture uh and you can grab that book it’s edited volume but I’m
Also working on my sole authored manuscript that looks at um black sporting culture of the 90s and 2000s um it’s called baller culture and it really looks at not just um it doesn’t just look at Allen Iverson although Allen Iverson certainly embodies is probably the the strongest embodiment of baller
Culture but it looks at the way black folks were able to through cultural sort of activism and resistance able to show their creativity that is really based in in their African Heritage of Rhythm and Callum response and and spontaneity with them with the pro sorry uh um Rhythm and
Call response and repetition with font um but it also looks at the way they’re able to resist cultural assimilation right um Alan Iverson not refusing refusing to cut off his hair or talk a certain way um it also allows black folks to develop a certain identity that they maybe couldn’t do in
Other platforms but Sports they have the leverage to be able to develop their identity goals the way they want to as well and so the book goes through different things historical stuff contemporary things when it comes to culture when it comes to style of play and fashion and attitudes and language
And all of that stuff um it runs the gam when it comes to cultural characteristics that it covers looking forward to that book man like I said I was a huge AI fan that’s probably the only time I had season tickets to the Sixers is when he played for him because
I was such a Georgetown fan I just followed him from Georgetown to the Sixers so looking forward to that as well as everyone else you mentioned so Dr Co you should have sharing rights now you should be able to share yeah so I can share my screen unfortunately it’s
Not allowing me to share sound but I will share the screen one of our uh best um resources is reading Revolution online and you can access it at reading revolution. org I’m showing you behind the scenes basically it is a collection of 90 reading selections that are set up
Uh with four activities to go with each one okay and so um since since we heard about cnada in one of the videos and we’ve been talking about Mansa Musa click on this one and what you’ll see see is that for each one we have our vocabulary activities we call it B we
Call it bab vocabulary because in African tradition the bbab tree it’s called The Tree of Life um and so we believe that doing these activities will bring life to our children’s vocabulary development reading comprehension critical thinking and communication skills so these are the words that the student the student will encounter in
The reading selection down here is the reading selection with the vocabulary words underlined for easy access and then we have a captioned video to go with each of the reading selections and each caption video is right around 3 minutes because we know um that un unfortunately our our children’s
Attention span is not as long as we would like for it to be but it offers our children and teachers uh and parents an opportunity to get a snapshot of who this person was and it’s a caption video so that our children are learning to read more fluently and with better
Comprehension as they’re seeing the words across the screen with the video images beautiful images of people who look like them so there is a comprehension activity a vocabulary development activity a grammar and writing activity to go with each of the 90 reading selections I want to encourage everybody to go to reading
Revolution. org and you can get a free demo again reading revolution. org and you can get a free demo but in addition to that when you go to reading revolution. org and I need to make sure that you can see what I can see are you seeing
Reading revolution in a picture of an elder holding a book in front of a youth yeah yes okay so when you go to this website and then you click on parents you can get reading Revolution online at a significant discount okay so I want to encourage everybody to check that out
And not only check it out for yourself but please share it with your school your your child’s teacher and principal because uh reading Revolution online is being used in a number of schools and school districts around the country but certainly we want to reach our goal is to reach a million black
Children to close these literacy gaps that are a result of persistent access and opportunity gaps we know our children can read we know our children are brilliant uh but a lot of times they don’t have the right teaching and the right content we we decided we didn’t
Want to just talk about the problem we wanted to create the solution and that’s what we did it’s called reading Revolution online there are a lot of districts who have resources to purchase materials like this but in some places and they may not know that it exists so
Please let your child’s teacher and principal know about reading Revolution online uh we’re changing a lot of lives and just to give you an idea of the impact that it’s having I’m going to scroll down and show you what some administrators are saying about reading Revolution these are a few of the black
Heroes and shos ancient and modern that our young people are reading about and reading Revolution but let’s look at what sister Jacqueline Harriet has to say she’s up in Canada she said we’ve been using reading Revolution online to provide supplemental literacy instruction to our students in our after school cultural
Academic enrichment programs across the province in Nova Scotia since 2021 our teachers site coordinators and support staff have reported increased engagement growth in reading and achievement using this unique resource and then Dr Marcus Jackson who’s just outside of Dallas Texas and Lancaster Independent School District he says as Educators our goal
Is to ignite a flame that burns for knowledge for years reading revolution has been able to ignite that flame for many of my students by improving reading Levels by one to 2.5 grade levels in a year I strongly recommend this resource and lastly we have Mr S Stevens and
Assistant principal at iner prep just outside of Detroit who reports similar findings that their grou their uh students grew an average of 1.7 years growth in reading and she says at the bottom it’s highlighted we truly believe that reading Revolution was an integral part of this growth for the next year we
Order most of the materials offered by Dr akua and his teacher transformation team so I share all this to say we don’t just talk about problems we’ve developed solutions for those that are interested and I want to encourage everyone to go to reading revolution. org and take advantage of that absolutely
Man man listen listen a as you would always say a man ever since my days at uh you know at Haram Bay years ago when we first met or whatever I’ve always supported your your work in and your business so I appreciate the work you do
Like I said you’re the new um you know to me the new ace ofilia the new um what’s my got Jan gadu all those guys all those guys to all the books I have over here right you’re definitely doing your thing out there brother so I
Appreciate you for doing what you do out there for our culture for our people um any other announcements you guys want to make any any other plans anything you want to you know drop on the people we get out of here I just want to say thank you for
Hosting this there’s a select group of people that that when they call or text um that I respond and uh and you’re one of them brother um I appreciate you you know let class out a couple minutes earlier I said I got to be on for brother Damon because he’s always on the
Case for the race appreciate you brother appreciate you yeah I want to thank both of you all um both youall for great great discussion uh necessary always relevant and um want to make sure we just be able to honor the the spirit and the legacy of our ancestors um Dr
Woodson oh absolutely absolutely so I’m just going to share screen real quick because again you know it’s not just about you know me obviously like to shout out the Middletown chapter Middletown that’s the Townson chapter of NAACP for allowing me to partner with them on this initiative you know for
This series for this month and we’ll be back um next week um next Monday we’re going to talk about overcoming chadow enslavement Brothers if you’re free please come back you know I would love to see you hopefully brother ishmail will join us as well so we can dig into
That topic and then we have two other weeks after that I know you have classes and things of that nature you might not be able to be here but if you can I greatly appreciate you um the other thing is for those out there that are
Still with us you know just my little plug here you know around peace and here’s my QR code here you can go to my website my contct information if any of you out there that are watching want to copy these slides I’ll send them to you
You know just connect with me there with the QR code also have a t-shirt this out right now EQ over IQ equals a better youu I’m wearing right now this is the purple and gold version that’s sort of an exclusive version but I can you know make different colors for anybody out
There and essentially it’s saying that your EQ your emotional quotient is just as important if not more important than your IQ if you can’t handle yourself and know I deal with other people it doesn’t matter how much you know so I have those you go to my website and let me know
What you need out there so um pretty much that’s it for the evening and again Brothers I appreciate appreciate you for coming on here tonight those that been hanging on there on Zoom all night long on face Facebook and and YouTube We Appreciate You All um thank you for
Coming out God bless you all good night hold on for a second Brothers
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