[Music] so uh Mr Anthony T Browder welcome to the show today it's my pleasure and thank you for this opportunity to talk with you and share my information with your listeners appreciate absolutely absolutely I I must let you know um before we get started that this was a uh a personal request of mine I I was uh asked if I had like a wish list of people that I could have a conversation with um who would who would those people be and you were at the top of that very short list I've been very fortunate but one person I H haven't been able to like really pick your brain is you and uh so today is actually uh very meaningful for me I spent a lot of time programming radio stations you know just choosing songs and listening to your lectures you know playing in the background just kind of learning the history and and I I like to think that some of your words influence some of the playlist that uh you know my city ended up listening to uh in a in a positive and meaningful way so again uh the pleasure is mine today so let me ask you a question before we get started please I'm appreciative of the fact that you um saw fit to invite me to be on this podcast today um how old are you I'm 40 years old yes AB 40 years old 40 years old okay so um what interested you as a 40y old man what interested you in the things that I've been talking about since before you were born that's a great question I love I love that so um this is part of the reason why this conversation is is so meaningful for me I grew up in a uh in the in the Christian tradition my father was a minister his father was a minister um one of the things about my father was he was very educated his Doctorate was in Theology and something that I learned from him is that when you become more educated you tend to Harbor less prejudices and less ignorance and so by the time I was born my father was very old when I was born um my father did not teach uh any any prejudices any biases to me or to my uh brothers and sisters rather he taught us um from the Bible of course that's as you do in in that type of um household but it was more of this is the example after which we can model Our Lives to be the type of people that we want to be but this is no more right or wrong than any other Faith tradition this is the one that we do in this house right and so without having those prejudices Me growing up and getting out into the world I was able to travel go to other churches and worship with other people you know through through my own you know methods and using my own sort of aperture into into the spiritual realm um but uh I got to fellowship with people who were Muslim people who were sik people who were Jewish and so forth and I think that that sort of culminated into when I had my 40th birthday um a trip that I took to Egypt um my name is Ramses and I'm I'm sure you are well aware of the connection uh and so I've been very connected to uh Egypt Egypt ology the history of Egypt and and the history of Africa in Egypt as well my whole life and so for my 40th birthday my father passed when I was uh it was sort of right after I started listening to your lectures which was my early 30s um but my mid-30s my father passed so me making my way to Egypt for my 40th birthday was very significant and the the teachings and your lectures were kind of rumbling back and forth in my head we had a great tour guide and so forth but I had such a a strong framework and Foundation going over there to absorb the history the culture um the faith traditions and so forth um and then the the lineage of the stories which I hope that we'll get to um in today's conversation but uh today's conversation I I asked honestly for it because of those reasons and I'm sure many more all right another short question why did your father name you ramsy um my father felt that uh ramsis was a person that did a lot for Egypt um and he felt that the name really suited his son uh it means the the son of the god of the son um Loosely translated and uh he felt that that was appropriate for me he just kind of knew that before I was born and so I've I've loved my my name my whole life um and so your father obviously was wise Beyond his years because in the Christian tradition rames is considered to be the king of the Exodus exactly so for your father to name you name you rameses meant that he knew more than a lot of his fellow um uh pastors um so that's a very good sign it's a it's an honor and a pleasure to uh meet your acquaintance and have this interview with you I appreciate that so let's let's talk about you one of the things we do on the show here um is kind of very similar to what we've just done but this time let's make it about you so for our listeners who may not be as familiar uh share a bit about yourself U maybe some of your origin story your upbringings and ultimately what led you to your career path sure well I am a product of Chicago Illinois I was born 1951 71 years old and uh grew up on the west side of Chicago uh in a segregated Community uh my first um years of my life I I went to predominantly all black school had black teachers and this was during a time frame when black teachers were very concerned about the education of the black children in their classroom they understood that education is a pathway to empowerment to success um and and so they made sure that we appreciated the value of reading and writing and arithmetic and that established a love of learning in me early in life and I left Chicago after my freshman year in college and felt that it was it was time for me to to to get away you know Chicago Chicago then in in the I left Chicago in 1971 uh Chicago then as Chicago is now uh one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States uh the violence was just beginning to increase again in my community and I've been shot at a couple of times been jumped on by gangs of Black Folk jumped on by gangs of white folk and I felt the need to leave Chicago and go someplace El where I could pursue a life without all of these um racial distractions and I decided to come to Wasington DC to ATT Howard University so I've lived in in DC for 51 years now uh DC was was phenomenal for facilitating my growth into uh manhood I had the opportunity back in those days 71 through uh through the 70s and mid 80s DC was Chocolate City uh we had over 70% uh 71% African-Americans in the city uh the city council the Mayors were predominantly people of African ancestry Howard University we had a large International Community and I met Black Folk from all over the world uh with different uh religions different uh levels of understanding different perspectives and I grew to understand and appreciate what it meant to be a a person of African ancestry living in Washington DC living in the United States and ultimately living in the world and after graduation I met u a brother who was the first um person of African uh Caribbean descent in Washington to introduced the aan Traditions to the DC community and I took a a 7we class with him on African spirituality and that swe class uh changed my life it made me aware of some of the things some of the experiences and some of the knowledge that was missing in my upbringing and gave me a foundation upon which I could move forward into adulthood and that seven-week class LED to my meeting Dr Ivan van Sera on February the 21st 1977 Dr Van Sera had just published his Landmark book they came before Columbus the African presence in America uh where he documented the fact that Africans from the Nile Valley B built ships navigated the um Mediterranean Sea the Atlantic Ocean and made numerous Journeys to the Americas between 1200 and 600 BC and that these Africans were from Egypt and the Egyptians were black this is the first time in my life that any person had ever told me that the ancient Egyptians were black so my mind was blown because like most people I grew up having a fascination with Egypt and the pyramids and the temples and tombs but nowhere in my formal educational process nowhere in any of the books that I had read any of the movies I had seen was I told that the ancient Egyptians were in fact African that blew my mind and set me on the path to fire find out what else I didn't know so that meeting with Van Cera resulted in my discovering books by authors um John Henry Clark Yos yinan John Jackson uh and other Scholars who became um my teachers my facilitators who helped to re-educate me and as a result of reading their books and ultimately over time meeting them I had the occasion to travel to Egypt in 1980 with Dr ysep Ben yuin and one of the foremost egyptologist and Scholars at that time and that 13-day trip that I spent on the now changed my life because I had the opportunity to see with my own eyes monuments documents images that were thousands of years old of African people in control of Their Own Destiny and I realized then that I've been lied to um and oftentimes lied to by people who look like me which reinforce the fact that we only know what we know and it begs the question who's responsible for teaching you what you know and if your teachers are miseducated it means that the students that they teach will also be miseducated so I established um ikg in 1982 as an organization that would facilitate the re-education of of people of African descent my primary interest then was to make sure that that my colleagues my friends my people uh would not be as miseducated as I was and then that started my four decades uh long journey into uh researching traveling and then sharing my research and my findings with the wider Community which ultimately led to you discovering me and me being here um to do this podcast with you so that's um in summary uh my life I love it I love it it makes it makes a lot of sense um so you you mentioned you know your research and and uh the things that you managed to uncover um I want to kind of connect that with sort of your uh how you describe the work that you do um so let's let's explain to our listeners what a cultural memory specialist is culture memory specialist is a person you know historians study history history is literally his story so whenever someone tells their story they're telling you what they want you to know and often times eliminating information that they don't want you to know so um as one of my teachers John Henry Clark said that all history is a current event and if you understand the purpose of History which is to tell you who you were who you are and who you can become if we've been fed false history um and and history is nothing but memories of the past so false history um creates false memories and false memories are our reference points to understand what happened in the past so my job my responsibility is to reinterpret the historical memory of the past and present this information such that it will create new memories in uh the people that I'm reaching out to so that these new memories that show The Glory uh the power the the length and bread of the presence of African people on the planet then becomes a mental emotional and psychological reference point that others can use to understand how they got where they are at this present moment have a great understanding of the world that we have to that we all have to move around in and make conscious choices on what you can do given all of those factors to create the world that you plan to to move into a year from now a decade from now um you know two decades from now and to leave a path for the generations who are coming behind you so I take a very holistic approach uh to my understanding my interpretation and the practical application of historical historical uh information so um I think I answered your question yeah yeah yeah I love it I love it you know there's um I always felt like you know with with my name um with a lot of the the friends teachers you know in my life growing up that I had a pretty accurate view um or at least a more in-depth uh view of what Egypt was who ancient Egyptians were um and I realized that even I had been miseducated um when I got to Egypt I like you I saw some of the hieroglyphs that were 5,000 years old and still very much intact and legible um but there's something that I learned and and I'd like to um kind of get your thoughts on this but it's something I learned and hopefully I'm uh telling the story right uh the the black history in Egypt is more pronounced than we are taught and this is something that I had to learn when I was there I learned that uh ancient Egypt was um effectively it was two tribes coming together and one of those tribes was in fact the Nubian tribe and the legacy of that uh the joining of those two tribes resulted in uh the the the um uh I'm forgetting the name what's the name of the headdress that the Pharaoh would wear uh it's like a the N headress right right and then it there would be a a a raven I believe and a and a snake or serpent uh next to each other and that would represent the two tribes CRA Cobra okay well okay so so I may not have it right but i' I'd love to uh to expound upon that the the the black skin tradition because it's whitewashed in movies and and you know you go to Vegas you see the Luxor and then you see these at at best medium tone people but there is indeed a black skinned tradition uh and history in Egypt uh rames you're you're really proving my point everybody has been miseducated every and I can say based on my own personal experiences having studied this this this field of of history for uh over 40 years after having made um 65 trips to Egypt over the past 42 years after having spent 14 and a half years financing and participating in an archaeological excavation on the West Bank of luxa Egypt I can say that I have a a a decent understanding of of this ancient history and I can say from personal experiences that at least 90% of what we've been talked to this very day is wrong yeah you throw it out the window it's wrong okay um first of all most of what we know about Egypt has been written by the conquerors of Egypt okay the non-african conquerors of Egypt and as I said when people write history they tell you their story and they leave out other people's story or they uh present those other people in an unflattering untruthful light that has been the case with the history of Egypt Egypt is a Greek word pyramid is a Greek word Sphinx is a Greek word right uh hieroglyphics is a Greek word so if you cannot call those objects or those places by their original names you've been miseducated you don't know what you're dealing with and you don't know what you're talking about okay so so that's that's that's the that's the bottom line uh Egypt was the Greek name for one temple in the northern part of the country haap haap the Temple of the K of the spirit of who was the the nature associated with the creation of the world his Temple was the name of his Temple was bastardized by the Greeks they couldn't say hak and and that became aapas which eventually became Egypt so the name of the entire country is named after the Greeks inability to articulate the name of one Temple wow Sphinx is a Greek word which means means to strangle or to hold and the story of the Sphinx that we have been given comes from the Greek playwright sofles which is associated with um uh King edus so if you are relying on the Greek version of Egyptian history to Define Egyptian history you don't know Egypt pyramid is a Greek word which means little flat cake wow right uh so the first thing that one has to do is deal with um chronology to know what Egypt was before the Greeks came in and renamed it Egypt chronology who were the original founders of this an ancient civilization you have to understand terminology right you have to to know the difference between Greek words you have to know the difference between Egypt and kimet kimet is the original name of that country right you have to know the difference between um Sphinx and her M IAT which is the original name for the statue that the Greeks called the Sphinx you have to know the difference between pyramid and Mir if you don't know those differences you don't know Squad and so since most of us have been fed the the Greek the Roman the French the German the British and now the Arab interpretation of African history we don't know what's been eliminated what's been distorted and to make matters worse we don't know that we don't know so we speak from an air of uh with an air of confidence and Authority about things that we know nothing about so when you know I had this discussion with my Egyptian friends who've lived there all their lived in in Egypt all their lives and they telling me their history I just sit back and smile and then I lay out the chronology I showed them when Arabs came into Egypt 648 I showed them when Romans came into Egypt 30 BC I showed them when Greeks came to Egypt in 332 BC and then I take them back to the very beginning of that history and culture when there were no Greeks no Romans no Arabs just African people and then lay out the story of the beginnings of that culture from an African perspective and it changes everything that they thought they knew really I love that hell yeah I love it so let's talk about um ikg and let's talk about you know there's some some of the other uh Endeavors um that you have going on that will help us reconnect with uh our actual history so uh ikg was the second company that I founded uh my first company I founded in 1979 um and it was called um EKG East Coast Graphics my my my degree my background is in graphic design and advertising I'm an artist at heart I'm trained as an artist and as a result of that training I have cultivated an artist's eye artists whether they're visual artists or performing artists artists are primarily uh right brain oriented and and that right brain is that creative faculty it's that intuitive faculty so a a properly trained artist can look at something can look at a building or look at a a u an object and see things that someone who's not trained in art can't see you know shapes uh spaces negative space positive the space uh symbolism that's embedded in the work of art says something different to an artist than it does to someone who's not training that art and so my um the purpose of my creating my my design studio was because I learned early in my life I learned early in my career that as long as I worked for someone they would never truly appreciate my value and I decided I didn't want to work for anybody else so I created my own business so having my own Design Studio afforded me the opportunity to work as hard as I wanted to work to make as much money that I wanted to make in order to do the things that I wanted to do and at that point in time in my life in 1979 I was interested in learning as much as I could about the history of ancient Egypt so I was buying books I was reading books I was traveling to conferences to meet the authors of the books that I love I was able to have conversations with them and cultivate relationships with them thus when I traveled to Egypt in 1980 I I was in a position now to to synthesize all that I've been reading and studying on my own so that I could get a deeper understanding of what it was I was experiencing and when I returned to to Washington DC where I was living at that time I decided to then use my graphic design marketing and advertising skills to create my second business ikg in order to facilitate the means by which I could produce information that would be um appealing to people who've been socialized to not have an interest in reading and not have an interest in history so if I can take this information that I had learned and distill it into you know bite-sized morsels of information that would make people uh cultivated an interest in what they were reading and and and steer them to want to read more or learn more about a subject than I've got an audience that I can that I can work with so that's what I've been doing through ikg for the past be 41 years uh next month so I write like an artist in other words I use my words in order to create images in the mind of the reader so that they can see what I'm talking about and I'm also detailing information about the positive portrayal of the worldwide African experience that buts against the negative images that every person who's been educated in America has been brainwashed to believe that African people have uh have made no contributions to culture and civilization and that we are the lowest of the low so when you um present a Counterpoint to that based on factual information here's the truth here's the evidence to back up that truth then what that does is create it it changes the neurop pathways of a person they start thinking differently and as a result of thinking differently they it changes their body chemistry and they start feeling differently and it moves them in a different place so you know because of you know my the time that I have spent throughout my career uh associated with some of the most brilliant black psychi psychologists in the world ACA hilard Naim Akbar uh way Nobles uh because of my affiliations with some of the most brilliant psychiatrists in the world Dr Francis Chris wisy Richard King um Patricia Newton I've gained a deep understanding of how the mind works and how to present information to shift the thinking of a person who internalizes this information such they become a different people right so uh that's what ikg has been doing uh that's what our work is about and I'm sure since this interview is taking place in January of 2023 I'm sure anybody listening to this interview uh will realize that we're still we still have wayss to go you know Governor D Santos in Florida has banned a um a an African education curriculum yeah for high schools in Florida simply because he doesn't agree with that information so we're still fighting yeah Wars against miseducation to this very day we still have a long ways to go and the work that I'm doing is probably more relevant now than it was at any point in time in our history so I I I I don't want to gloss over this um but I do want to talk about the uh the curriculum in schools particularly with uh the uh D Santos um headlines that are making the news right now but before we move on um I believe it's pronounced the ASA restoration project is that is that do I have that right thank you for getting that right yes the as of restoration project I want you to touch on that as well please sure uh well I mentioned uh previously um a psychologist uh who had a profound impact in my life and that was ASA G hilot III um ASA wrote the introduction to my very first book from the brile which was published in 1989 uh ASA was one of the founding members of The Association of black psychologists an organization that I was affiliated with uh from the 1980s to the present and uh this was a group of black psychologists who realized early in their careers uh that they have been miseducated and that they have been taught white psychology and they knew nothing about black psychology uh so they began to study um the mind of black people from the perspective of black people and our white folk and they came up with a an entirely different interpretation of black psychology as a matter of fact um it was uh way nobl another psychologist also a founding member of abide the association of black psychologist who did his research and found that even the word psychology which deres from the Greek word psyche and the Greek word logos a knowledge of psyche that is word that word psyche is dered from an ancient African word Saku which means spirit so psychology is really the knowledge of the spirit the human spirit that aspect of your being that animates you that connects you with the Creator and everything on Earth so African people have a holistic approach to life and everything that um that encompasses life both the scen and the Unseen the visible and the invisible the physical and the spiritual so this is a more comprehensive understanding so ASA was one of the uh principal uh players in this new field of study and was just a wonderful human being a wonderful brother who kind of took me um under his wing and was accessible to me ASA was also doing lectures in um on Egyptian history and leading Study Tours to Egypt so um a lot of what I do a lot of what I have done is modeled after what I learned from from watching and being in the presence of of Asa hilard and so when he died uh rather suddenly in um August August 13th um 2007 uh his death literally left a hold of my soul left left a void in my life and one of the things that I've learned from Dr hilard and some of the other Scholars that I referenced earlier is that African people understand that that that the power of spirit the power of our ancestors and one of the things that one knows is that when an ancest when a person dies and becomes an ancestor it is the responsibility of the living to remember that person to name streets after them uh to name buildings and projects after them um to pour libation to them to call their name because it's in the calling of their name it's in the thinking of them that their Spirit uh is drawn to you that they continue to live through you so as a result of uh the sudden passing of Asa I was presented with an opportunity um uh uh less than a year after his death to become involved in helping to uh support and ultimately finance an archaeological excavation in Egypt an excavation of what was then three 25th Dynasty tombs three kushai tombs so I established the ASA restoration project in order to um in order to uh uncover the history of the kushite presence in ancient kimet the people that the Romans refer to as Nubians were kushites and kimet is the original name for the country that the Greeks called Egypt so I'm I'm following asa's mandate and going back to the source so we want to be able to substantiate the kushite presence in kimet as well as to honor the legacy of ACG hilot III so that organization has been in existence for 14 and a half years now and 14 and a half years into this project we started off in 2008 with three tombs we ended our season last November with 35 tomes so we have uncovered a plethora of information which is literally allowing us to rewrite the history of the kushai presence in kimet and ultimately rewrite the history of kimet based on actual historical information and not feel-good information that we're just pulling out a thin air simply because we're trying to find a home for black people uh among the history of the people of the world you know I I think that this you're making you know there's a lot of people who are in support of educating Our Youth and you're making as good a case as anyone I've ever seen um and and I I realized this is why I kind of went into my own experience humbly knowing that there are a lot of things that I've learned um that may not be true right they may like you said be feel-good you know things and this is why I was like you know you know better than me of course um but of course that thirst for knowledge that that thirst for just the basic understanding that there may be something else to the story that was profound uh and again something that I found very early on um just kind of you know coming across your your conversations with you know rock Newman and you know just the many the many works that you've done and that were available to me online um so that brings me to you know a point that you were making earlier about what we're doing about our youth so I definitely want to get your thoughts you know um I believe it was stated by DeSantis and the uh the governing educational body in Florida that um the AP African African-American studies class lacked significant educational value I believe that's exactly what they said um I want to get your thoughts on why African and africanamerican education is important uh and why you think there's such a push um back when we're trying to educate ourselves when there's not as profound of an attack on Holocaust Education or you know the eradication of indigenous tribes it's whitewash stories but it's not completely you know gone from the curriculum I as an educator and as a person with with such you know um Monumental Insight I want to get your thoughts well I I would say let's go to the words of Dr cter Woodson who wrote the book on this process of M education as a matter of fact that book um is 90 years old now the book is entitled The miseducation of the Negro and the whole purpose behind miseducation is to paraphrase Woodson if you control a person's thinking through the process of miseducation you don't have to worry about their actions you don't have to worry about what they do if you control a person's thinking through miseducation you won't have to to tell that person to stand here or to go there because they will find their proper place and they will stay in it a person who has been miseducated will not have to be ordered to go to the back door of any society because they will find their proper if there is no back door they will create one for their special purposes that's the purp purpose of Education to instill in the minds of people a sense of superiority or inferiority and when it comes to people of African uh descent here in America people who were forcefully dragged from their Homeland in Chains and enslaved for over 250 years in this country and then subjected to uh Jim Crow segregation and lynching for almost aund years and then went through 13 years of a civil rights movement before they were given the basic rights uh freedom justice and equality and then once that legislation was introduced in the 1960s and blacks integrated into American society that integration as Dr King uh correctly theorized that integration was the integration into a burning house and as a consequence people of African descent today in 2023 are in worst shape educational and we've been in the last 100 years because we no longer have those black schools that I was telling you that I had grown up in where there were teachers who looked like me who had a vested interest in making sure that I understood the value of education and that I learned to read to write and to reason that's not happening in school systems anymore if you talk to any educator or any administrator they would tell you that schools now have been preoccupied with teaching to the test so there's certain core information that they are mandated by law to make sure that a significant number of teachers within their classroom within their school or their District must pass uh a test in order for them to continue to get funding from the state or the federal government so there's no education going on anymore is preparing students to remember certain lessons so that they can pass the test so the school districts can get money to continue the process of miseducation that's what's been happening and it's happening now on steroids and and so as a consequence um people like the Santos and other right-wing Republicans are fearful of the type of information that my colleagues and I have dedicated Our Lives to researching documenting and making accessible to school systems because they know that this information runs contrary to the acceptable narrative and if you recall last year as this debate was going on in school districts throughout the country particularly in the South one of their justifications for limiting this so-called African centered information is because it would make the white students in the classro feel bad they didn't want to hurt their feelings so essentially what that says is they don't give a damn about how black and brown people feel in the classrooms uh learning that Christopher colus discovered America learning that uh slavery was referred to by some folk as involuntary servitude yeah right so they don't care about our feelings that's clear that's obvious and given that reality then what should we care about H how should we care about that and and so my position has always been to look after our family first so if if you are not actively involved in going to the school board meetings in your community uh if you're not actively involved in holding schools accountable to ensure that your tax dollars are used to make sure that in your child's classroom there's information that that uplifts the the the psyche of your child and makes them feel good about themselves and the school is more than just feeling good but when when a black child is in a classroom and hears about uh the fact that Africans had traveled to the Americas 25 200 years before Christopher Columbus was born and they see the physical evidence of the 20 some OD uh statues in Mexico of the people who were classified as the omx who brought technology who brought art architecture who brought engineering who brought a knowledge of of Theology and the calendar to the indigenous Americans and see how the indigenous Americans acknowledge their presence that's though those are real historical facts that everybody needs to know not just black children or or brown children but everybody in every classroom needs to know this information and they need to know this information not just during February Black History Month this is world history okay so one of the things that I've been concerned about is raising the awareness of young people like you and Elders like me so that we can become responsible advocates for our children and for those who yet to be born so that we can insist that our tax dollars be used to educate everybody in the classroom so that they can have a different understanding of themselves and their potential and and and trust me brother none of this information has anything to do with making white folk feel bad bad I know is about telling and teaching historical truths and teaching uh the young folk in the classroom how to be objective in internalizing that truth yeah right and how they can use those truths to ower themselves and assume responsibility for making sure that this nation lives up to its Creed that all people are created equal and all people have a right to freedom justice and equality that's what's at stake so helping students become good civil servants right responsible citizens of society is really what this this this this movement if you will is all about and that only happens when you know the truth and you can bind yourself to that truth which is such a transformative entity you know there's um something I was going to say I I came across recently um a meme on you know my social media feed and it was a photo of David Banner uh who's in MC okay you're familiar um and David Banner was it was like a like an artistic photograph you know an aesthetic photograph of him just kind of with that powerful frame of his and he was reading a book it was one of your books right um beautiful photograph very powerful image and uh you know as you were speaking right now it brought me the thought and I I I hope I don't get this wrong but I believe that um there was a group of people maybe you were involved maybe not but they were trying to get your book um in involved to a degree or or something like that in in some sort of curriculum right for students to be able to read and there was some push back against that so um before we get too far uh from this point in the conversation I would love for you to help us circumvent those traditional Avenues and uh educate our children by ourselves so please plug you know any any books anything like that that you've written that you feel like we need to know right now we're we're certainly going to circle back but I'd love to make sure that we touch on that while we're here sure um the picture that you're talking about is uh is this picture that's it that's it Banner uh reading uh the brow file and about oh gosh I guess about eight or nine years ago I received a call from from David uh called me up out the blue and and just said how much reading that book as a teenager I think he was a sophomore in high school how much reading that book changed his life he said it was the first book he ever read from cover to cover I think he said he was a sophomore in high school uh going to high school in Mississippi and so he has made it a point to to buy cases of that book to give to sophomore students in his former high school so that some of these students could have the same transformative um experience that he had upon reading that book so Banner is is is a dear friend Banner is a brother who uh understood how people in his his line of work have been socialized to focus on and expand the worst of African people uh the criminality uh the the abuse of women and once he learned something about who he was as a p person of African descent he shifted he said I can't can't do that anymore and and so what we're looking at is creating um a a movement among people whose Consciousness has been awakened and I don't particularly like the term woke because um you know anyway so what we have been doing is through ikg specifically uh writing books publishing books disseminating books uh so that people can study on their own uh and begin to understand uh the real history that is associated with them and then to show them how to use this information to advocate for uh children in your household the children in your community so I'm a firm believer of the fact that education begins at home yes and more specifically education begins in the womb education begins in the womb and that if you have uh more video games and more televisions in your home than you have books there's going to be problems in your household if you spend more time playing video games watching television than you do reading there's going to be problems in your communities and in the classrooms in your communities so uh I'm an advocate of working within and uh outside of the system and that knowledge specifically knowledge of self is the best is the best means by which a people can know who they are and live up to their potential and change how they move through what is still a racist and self-destructive society and if we want to save ourselves we're going to have to assume responsibility for saving ourselves because nobody else would do it uh our so-called belief system the god of our belief system is not going to save us uh if that were true then we probably would not have been enslaved in the very in the first place we wouldn't have been lynched in the first place as a whole another subject matter uh but the reality is um politicians are not going to save us any civil rights legislation can be undone just like the Supreme Court is in the process of undoing some um important um educational rulings that have stood for several decades so we see the rug is being pulled out from under black folk right now um as I mentioned I'm 71 years old and this racial climate that that we've been experiencing here in America particularly over the past seven years has been the worst I've ever seen in my life and I've seen some pretty hor horrific things um and so something is coming and if you don't know what's coming if you don't know how to prepare for what's coming you'll be like the victims of krina who didn't have the resources to get out and you'll be standing on top of a roof the sign that says help me but there'll be no one to come to your assistance so history can teach us uh cycles of the past how those same Cycles are manifesting themselves today and those people who are good stewards of History can then use that knowledge to prepare themselves for what they know is coming based on the ccal nature of History so I'm I'm I've been advocating for years through through ikg that black people study black history and more specifically our relationship with white people so that we can better determine who is for us and who is against us and use our time our talent and our treasure to ensure that we not only survive what is coming but we Thrive because of specific decisions that we made and specific information that we have passed down to our children so that they're able to benefit from this knowledge and continue to perpetuate information that will ensure our continued um success and our continued ability to thrive in the United States of America which is based on my study United States of America is the wealthiest most powerful nation in human history uh if you can't make it in America there's something wrong with you right and that's real despite the racism despite the prejudice despite all the obstacles we have a better chance of making it here in this in this country than any place in the world and they with the knowledge of how this country works and how the world works and our place in the world we can use that knowledge to not only survive in America but to thrive in this country and be of benefit to other African people all over the world who look to African-Americans for models of how to live you know folk not only follow our music they not only follow our our cultural Traditions they admire us because we've been able to accomplish what no other oppressed people on the planet have been able to accomplish and once uh a significant number of of young African-Americans such as yourself understand what's at stake and shift your thinking to commit yourself to something bigger than your own individual lives then we will find ourselves in a position to adequately direct the future of this country and ultimately the future of this world based on how we've shifted our thinking how we've shifted our action and how those actions are now Shifting the course of the world that's what that state that's why people like the Santos and others don't want this information to be taught in the classrooms because it changes how you see yourself it changes how you think it changes how you act it changes everything and they are literally fighting for their survival because they know that they they they know that um the time of rule is rapidly coming to an end yeah they're holding on to power for as long as they can and they are they are in their minds Justified to do whatever they have to do to hold on to power for as long as they can that's a it's a very scary thing to witness you're absolutely right and and I want to add to that because there's a so wait so wait let let me let me just let me just check you on that right one of the things that um the Christians would teach you is that fear is the absence of God so it's not about being scared it's not about being afraid it's about knowing and that knowledge cancels out fear right the knowledge empowers you to do the things that you've always had the capacity to do and that you were born to do by virtue of the fact that You' have taken a breath on this planet so I my suggestion brother is to don't look at it as um something to be fearful of look at it as an opportunity for you to step into the full Glory as to why you were born here on this Earth first place I'll take that and that's actually where I wanted to go with with the uh the next um question you mentioned something earlier about uh the word psychology being connected to an African word right and you know because I've I'm familiar with a lot of your talks I I realize that there is a lot of connections African Connections in Christianity and indeed a lot of the abrahamic religions around the world and I think that making those connection connections live for people is significant because indeed you know how I grew up um our reward was always in heaven we were to turn a blind eye and just endure our suffering BEC suffering because at the end of our life great would be our reward this sort of thinking and um that can be very problematic in my view because it it kind of allows us to kind of accept our reality um and not really move it doesn't really move us to change things in a way that um perhaps a different U religious outcome might right um our our job is to let go and let God our job is to you know whatever and I I believe if people knew the connections to the African Traditions uh and i' I'd love for you to tell the story of the the virgin birth and and any others that that come to mind but I know that when I heard those connections I recognized wow okay there's something deeper here so please uh we can start with the the the Virgin uh birth um narrative that made its way to Christianity but I know that there there are many others okay well before I do that let me just say that you have accurately described the purpose of Christianity here in the Americans yeah yeah the purpose of I'm a Christian too I grew up Christian I want to make sure I said I'm not I don't hate anybody I'm not but go ahead please I grew up in a Christian environment as well okay uh by virtue of the fact that our parents our grandparents were Christians We inherited their their belief and and so without without going into a long history of that uh the purpose of religion as it has been presented to us here in America by the very same people who stole us enslaved us lynched us raped us they taught us how to cultivate a relationship with God now if they were true Christians true followers of the faith uh and had not violated one of the 10 commandments Thou shalt not steal we'd be having this conversation under the mango tree somewhere in the west coast of Africa right so religion has been used as a tool to subjugate the subject at that there's no question about that and to make you believe in the pie in the sky slaves obey your master was part of the religious doctrine that was given to enslave people only after white slave owners in the South specifically in Georgia became fearful of uh the the uh seeds of the Haitian revolution in 1804 spreading throughout the Americas they decided then that it was time to introduce African people to slavery prior to that it was illegal for for Africans to be Christians they didn't believe first they didn't believe that Africans had a sold Pope eus I 4 in the 15th century issued a paper bull which gave Portuguese and then uh Spain permission to steal Africans because the pope said that Africans had no soul they're not human beings so we have to understand first and foremost the role that religion has played in the establishment of the slave trade which lasted for 444 years as a matter of fact just recently the Church of England has issued um a paper apologizing for their role in uh expanding the slave trade the British were the most financially successful enslavers on the planet they made more money than any other European nation selling African flesh and the Church of England has just recently acknowledged that and said that they're going to pay some form of of of reparations right so the reality is um the religions of the abrahamic faith Judaism Christianity and Islam were derived from spiritual Traditions that originated in the N Valley at least 2,000 years before Abraham was born so you asked me to tell the story of the assarian drama once you understand foundational African history it shifts your understanding of everything else and either your your mind becomes open and you begin to pursue more of this information or you suffer from uh cognitive dissidence and the information that you're hearing conflicts with what you have been um socialize to believe in and you shut down and reject that information because it makes you psychologically emotionally and maybe even physically uncomfortable so the story that I'm I'm going to share with you is the foundational story of kimet ancient Egypt it is a story that is at least 6,000 years old and just recently about a decade or so ago I found out talking with an Ethiopian colleague of mine that the story actually originated in Ethiopia and is more likely 10,000 years old but the short version of the story is this uh the civilization that we know of kimet I.E ancient Egypt was founded by a man by the name of assar who United the two lands established the first government he introduced agriculture he introduced writing um and also established uh the first theology first religion if you will assar married a Woman by the name of asset and we're talking about two African people indigenous African people and if the story of the Ethiopian origins of the story are true we know that they came from Northeast Africa which is the region where um paleoanthropologists have determined the first humans lived right so assar after he established the nation of kimet which is is the original name for the country We Now call Egypt decided to travel to other areas of Africa and share this knowledge share this technology with them to bring them into the light uh and left his wife to run their nation which means that he his wife asset was not subservient to him she was his co-equal co-equal and she had enough bandwidth mental bandwidth to carry on the operations of this nation now according to the story there's multiple versions of the story uh assar was murdered by his brother set and in one version of the story set dismembered assar cut his body into 14 pieces and Scattered them throughout the land AET was forced to flee for her life and she went searching for the missing parts of her husband's body she found 13 of the 14 parts of aar's body and she found each body part she washed it she anointed it with oils and then literally a set remembered her husband she reassembled his body and then wrapped his body in bandages thus creating the first mummy in recorded history and she then proceeded to bury her husband it took a set 70 days to find the missing pieces of her husband's body and to prepare his body for burial so in kimet in Egypt for the next 3,000 years uh the process of mummification lasted for 70 days so that's how important this story which I I I have to share with you and your listeners this story is a myth it is not true but it contains truth right it is a myth so according to this myth this documented myth a set as she was about to bury her her husband grieved because she was still a virgin she and her husband had never consummated their marriage before he left to go on his journey and was murdered so the spirit of assar visited his wife asset and impregnated her and if you you said you had gone to Egypt on your 40th birthday so if you went to did you go to the Temple of abidos on that trip uh I'm not sure I can't remember the name I went to the temple where the Sphinx is I know that no that's that's in that's in Giza abidos is South about uh 200 miles south is that by Lu before you get to luxur okay no I didn't meidos is is where the oldest existing temple in Egypt still is it was a temple that was started by seti the first the father of rames II the father of the man that you were named after it's one of the most remarkable temples uh in Egypt it was built around U 13 say 1350 BCE and in that Temple is an image of a set being impregnated by her deceased husband so this story this myth becomes the first story in recorded history of what Christians refer to as an Immaculate Conception yeah and then nine months later the Virgin asset gave birth to her son heru heru was born of a virgin heru was born on the same birth date as his father assar December the 25th heru was born to avenge the murder of his father and his responsibility was to reclaim his father's Throne ultimately if you went to on that trip to Egypt if you went to the Temple of Fu then that is a temple on the way to Aswan that is dedicated to heru the son of assar and AET and in that Temple you will see carved on the walls images that depict the story of heru as an adult battling his uncle set the man who murdered his father and defeating set and then becoming the legitimate heir to the throne of his father and his part part of that story is part of that narrative when heru ascended to the throne and became the king of kimet his father assar was resurrected from the dead and took his place in the ancestor realm on the throne of judgment so assar then became uh the person who judged The Souls of all the dead all the deceased people who came before him on Judgment Day now these El Els essential elements of this myth this African myth which is at least 2,000 years older than Genesis in the Torah serve as the foundation for Judaism Christianity and Islam and this story these faiths were derived from an African myth which is had the African Essence stripped away from it and has been reinterpreted first by people who classifi themselves as Hebrews and then later reinterpreted Again by people who classify themselves as Christians and then later still reinterpreted by people who classified themselves as Muslims so what what I know based on my study of history is that through an interpretation of historical events you can find the African seed the African DNA in many aspects of lives or Traditions cultural Traditions that have been uh uh attributed to other people and that's one of the reasons why this information is suppressed because if you find out that the story of Jesus Christ is a reinterpretation of the story story of an African family then that will cause you to look at religion differently and ask yourself what else has been coopted from African stories that we've never been taught yeah and if Europeans were responsible for teaching you the story of Christianity you have to ask yourself what other information African information have they not told you that if you were aware of and applied in your life could radically alter your trajectory through life here in the United States of America so people our controllers as said people are controlled not So Much by what they know but by why they don't know which is why you know for me um acquisition of this information and dissemination of this information is so critical to me because I understand its ability to dramatically alter the thinking of millions of people throughout the world and ultimately change the trajectory of the world that's what's at stake sure sure and I I think that that's that's kind of uh what I was trying to um suggest when we first started talking you know my father uh would share a lot of the histories of the stories that were found in the Bible the the sources I remember just off the top of my head one where he um the the story of like Noah's Ark uh the roots of that story were um they they come from ancient Sumeria something like that and then they made their way into the Bible and be- because of the fact that folks don't know that um and they take you know the Bible literally which is what we're taught to do we take this this literally happened these are the actual words and these are this is actually what happened and any conflict that we you know come about on our own just based on our own reasoning or any conflict that we see from this chapter CH to the next chapter or this book to the next book in the Bible itself um we're not supposed to question God you know the you know these things we the responsibility never squ sits squarely in our lap for our lives and the trajectory of Our Lives the responsibility always lies elsewhere in the universe it could be with other people the devil God who who knows and so um the uh you tying the story of Jesus himself or the roots um of that that virgin birth that Immaculate Conception story to um this African myth uh in that um uh conversation that I saw many years ago that was pivotal for me because I'm like that's it there's the that's the missing key because the Sumerian story you know that's obviously that's Old Testament you know you know people get tricky about that sort of stuff and everyone has a way to make to make it work for them but once you get to that that one pivotal moment the the Immaculate Conception upon which everything else is based the entire religion in fact um and you can draw very clear connections to this African story not only does it put African people at the center of this religion which is necessary but it also kind of allows us to now put the responsibility of this faith that we have for so long taken to be absolutely true um and start to again pull back some of the responsibility for where we stand politically what what actions we take and don't take and and you know how we reason and make sense of the world in which we live so again I appreciate you um sharing that story and I and I recognize there's there's more ways for people to get involved and get this knowledge firsthand I I know for a time and I'm not sure if it's still true that you would invite folks on these um trips or pilgrimages to um to uh Kim it um and perhaps there are still many ways at ikg to get involved with the proactive rediscovery of ancient African history and culture uh and perhaps even to assist in the organization's efforts to help other folks do the same so let's talk about that how can folks get involved if they want to themselves experience all okay well before I do that let me comment on what you just said please please share a couple of facts that I think will be Illuminating for for those of your listeners who are willing to receive this this information uh one fact is that the letter J wasn't introduced until the 16th century the letter J was not introduced into the English language until the 16th century which means that Jesus's name wasn't Jesus so all of these years folk have been calling on Jesus it's like dialing the wrong number and expecting to to get the party that you're trying to call it doesn't work but but your former enslaver never told you that um the other uh important issue is this idea of the Immaculate Conception now Catholics would tell you that people's use of the term Immaculate Conception is erroneous uh because Immaculate Conception refers to Mary being born of a virgin not Mary the Virgin giving birth to Jesus so there's so much about religion uh that we've never been taught and as a consequence we don't have a a real understanding of of this system and how it really works another point I want to make is that you find in the raic Faith Judaism Christianity and Islam the story of a fall from grace now if you were to ever do uh read books on comparative religion you'll find that that is not the dominant point of view of other religions throughout the world that is a minority view in other religions there never was a fall from grace there never was a separation from the Creator from God if you will okay so if you look at African spiritual Traditions from that perspective human beings were born as instruments of the Creator and let's just use the word god it's inappropriate to describe this process but I'll just use it because it's a word that everybody's familiar with that we were never separated from God we are the vessels human beings are the vessels through which the energy of God the presence of God works through and once you understand that and are socialized to know that you have a direct connection to the Creator then it's the role of society to train you how to use that connection for the benefit of your Society right so you learn how to think you learn how to to reason so that you as an instrument of the Creator can create heaven on Earth how about that and that's what you see when you travel to Egypt today to study the history of ancient kimet you travel there to see monuments temples and structures that were built three four 5,000 years ago by human beings who knew that they were instruments through which the Creator can express itself so that they could create heaven on Earth that's the essence of of kimet uh that's that's that's the most simple explanation that I can give you for what kimet really is it's the longest documented example of what human beings who just happen to be Africans in Africa were able to do when they lived their lives expressing their connection to Divinity they were never separated from God so they had the capacity to create heav heaven on Earth and that when they died then their Spirit would Ascend into heaven and connect with assar who was the Lord of Resurrection who would evaluate how you lived your life on Earth and that evaluation would prepare you for your next return to Earth Now understand it process that man and it's in all the texts it's in all the text so in ancient they had this concept of the reimu reimu means the repetition of the birth or what we call in Western vernacular reincarnation so in other words they knew that we come back and that we have always come back and the quality of life you will live in a future life is determined by the quality of life that you lived in your previous life that's why Kings named their sons not after themselves but after their grandfathers because it was the belief that the spirit of the grandfather the spirit of their ancestor was going to express itself in the body of that child right so so that's African spirituality right Spirit Never Dies the body is temporary but Spirit Never Dies and so what you have with religion is this separate separation of human beings from their creator you were born in sin you fell from Grace so you now have to uh submit yourself to to these rules and these laws so that if you live a righteous if you live a righteous life on Earth you will get your reward in heaven and if you don't do this uh you will live eternity in hell for me I interpret that because of what I know that's spiritual abuse and manipulation sure it's manipulation and and and and so so that is my interpretation of of the world in which we live now but you can find as many have found by returning to the source you'll find that much of this information is still available and still accessible but you have to pretty much make your own way because this knowledge has not been institutionalized in the society which we live and you'll be considered you know oh here he comes talking that African stuff again talking that African Voodoo again that African spirituality because folk don't know and don't know that they don't know it's the blind leading the blind yeah so uh the importance of the work that that we do at ikg is about presenting alternative truths and I don't believe in PR izing everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe if you want to believe in in the Jewish story or uh the Islamic Story the Christian story that is your right and I'm not trying to deprive you of your right to believe what you want to believe right uh what I know is that belief is something you accept without proof and when I'm making uh accessible to people is documented proof of who we were and what we did when we were in control of our own lives and that information is accessible to anyone who's willing to invest the time and read and study and apply this knowledge apply these principles in their lives and if you are aware enough to and comfortable enough to internalize this information and to apply this information in your life and see that it adds value to your life and the life of the people in your household your your your mate your children your other relatives then that gives you the tools to be able to live your life as a Creator you're not God but you have the essence of the Creator within you you have the capacity to create things marvelous things that can improve your quality of life and you don't have to beg anybody for anything you don't have to pray for this you don't have to pray for that you have the capacity to bring into existence those things that will benefit you and your family and and that's the truth as I have come to know it that's wonderful you know there's um there's something really interesting about this and and I don't I don't want to like you I don't want to upset anyone but a question that I've always had that I believe you know I kind of uncovered some some deeper truths within my own journey in that regard um the question was always if if God the the Christian God that I grew up knowing was all powerful and all perfect which you know that's what we accept then why would God intentionally create imperfect beings and then demand that those beings be perfect or else face damnation um because that felt cruel and then uh on top of that if God can do anything and God wanted to make an army of people just to cultivate a relationship with him or her and just worship then why would God and all of God's might not just make it that way why do we need to eat and go to the bathroom and wash our hair these sorts of things you know if God wanted it a certain way why and then you know whenever I would ask folks you know outside of you know my my home life uh those questions often times I would run into these roadblocks and again those roadblocks were often you know who are we to question God and you know to have reason and then to have logic and then not be able to use it to have truth ancient truths like um the the truths that you uncover and have uncovered throughout your career and then turn the blind Blind Eye to them um it feels very um uh it's it's saddening in a lot of ways uh that I was not educated and still have a long way to go I never professed to know enough uh in this lifetime but um I I just I think I'm saying that to say that I appreciate the work that you've done there are people who um are on our own Journey folks that may never ever get to have these type of conversations with you that you've absolutely inspired um and those people are grateful for the work that you've done because you certainly have given us an aperture into these sort of areas where information is sort of siloed that allows us to connect and funnily enough remember um who we are and who we were always intended to be um and so uh before we let you I know I've taken up way too much of your time any last thoughts and then naturally I'd love for you to plug again your books social media website all that sort of stuff sure uh one of the things that I like to to reference um share with audiences is a quote from James Madison James Madison um was a fourth president of the United States he's a man who is considered the author of the US Constitution James Madison was an enslaver and there is a building on Capitol Hill that is part of the Library of Congress complex that is is named in honor of James Madison and as you walk into this uh before you walk into the building at the entrance to the building there is a quote from Madison to the left of the entrance way and I want to share that quote with your listeners please and it says knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives this this is James Madison right knowledge will for every govern ignorance and the people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives so knowledge is power James Madison the the the writer of the US Constitution knew the power of knowledge Madison also wrote in the Constitution Article 163 of the Constitution he referred to enslaved Africans as three fifths of a human being that we were not human beings it was illegal during the time that the constitution was written it was illegal for enslaved Africans to read or write in other words they did everything within their power to limit our access to knowledge why because knowledge were forever govern ignorance we were intentionally um kept away from this information so that we would remain ignorant and remain under their control so the purpose of of ikg is to remove the blinders to obscure remove all traces of ignorance so that we can become literate people conscious people and as a consequence of being literate and conscious we then could use the knowledge that we've gained to become the masters of our destiny and that is the greatest expression of Freedom if you don't have the freedom if you don't have the right to know who you are and to use that knowledge to make life better for your children for your community then you are not free and uh freedom is something that can never be given to you can never be legislated so we have an opportunity to study to read and to change the trajectory of our lives and I can share you share with you I can share with your listeners that 99% of our folk are not going to do it because they don't believe it or they lack the capacity to read and study for themselves so in every instance and I close on this in every instance it's always been a handful of people who carried the light kept the flame of knowledge uh lit so that it could be preserved and passed down to Future generations and it's always a handful of people who initiate actions which change the trajectory of human history that has always been the case and it's not going to be any different in the 21st Century so we're going to be approaching a time of dramatic shift within our society a shift within our Consciousness and it's that shift that will determine how quickly we can move into a future that will allow us to save society and ultimately save the planet um you know there is no question beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is real right politicians business people who created this climate crisis have known this for over 25 30 years they've known this and they've denied this why because they were interested in making money but now we've reached a point where it can no longer be denied and the future of all life on this planet is at stake so people will have opportun unities now to free themselves from those psychological emotional and spiritual chains that have bound them for countless generations and create or work with other people other like-minded people to create a new world for for us to live in in order to sustain the human race and be able to preserve knowledge for the benefit of those who have not been born and that's probably one of the greatest expressions of Freedom that any person living in the United States could participate in and if you do that uh that will make your life truly worth living uh and allow you to be to become an ancestor whom future Generations a hundred years from now thousand years from now will celebrate you will remember your name because of the changes that you've made in their lives and that's this whole process is all about so ikg uh our website ikg-info docomo that are available to purchase downloads of of lectures that deal with a discussions similar that similar to the ones that we've had um in this past 90 minutes uh you can also find information about our regular Study Tours to Egypt so that you can if you have the resources coming and participate in a life transforming experience and become the person that I would like to think you were born here on Earth to become and not just be someone who follows uh the rules of miseducation designed to limit Your Capacity to grow as a human being uh Mr Browder you are absolutely a hero of mine and I can't thank you enough for coming on the show so you know I appreciate you sharing your Insight and of course I appreciate your commitment to the successful informed and inspired future of the black community uh once again ladies and gentlemen our guest is author publisher historian artist and educational consultant director of the ASA restoration project and founder and director of ikg cultural resource center the cultural memory specialist Mr Anthony T Browder thank you brother it's been my pleasure
