John Henrik Clarke Interview (1973)

[Music] [Music] the subject of black history is in dispute in some quarters a man named j.a rogers who was laughed at 20 30 years ago not taken seriously at all is being taken very seriously these days a new book called great black men of color has been edited by our guest tonight professor john henry clark professor clark there are some rather startling to put it mildly relevations made um in the book about uh certain presumed facts of history that i'm certain will not stick with the general white historical community well i'll tell you it became almost necessary for the europeans to whiten up a part of black history when they began to take over the world in the 15th and the 16th century and what rogers has done is gone back and taken hold out of the white away and showed you the original black faces of certain people in history um in this two-volume work world's great men of color volume one is devoted to the old world and volume two is devoted to the new world the first thing he does is to put egypt in proper context and to show egypt and the great personalities of ancient egypt as black people and it might be startling but he reveals that cleopatra did not look like elizabeth taylor and wasn't a white woman at all and i think his book starts in egypt with the other great characters in egypt imhotef the real father of medicine father of architecture bill of the step pyramids forerunner astronomer a man who was accepted as a god in europe long before the birth of christ imhotep lived about five thousand years ago and early europe accepted quite a few africans as as deities and imhotef was uh was one of them he opens the book actually with um this great african who was the world's first multi-genius you said that rogers put egypt in its proper perspective what did you mean by that i mean if european historians acknowledge that ancient egypt was a black nation then they would have thrown all western history out of celta because western historiography is based on the mistaken concept that if egypt wasn't european it was at least oriental it was neither because roger's trace as many competent historians black and white have already done the southern origins of egypt and that the people who would later be called egyptians came from deep within africa maybe ethiopia and somaliland and they kept good relationships good and bad like all families with the people to the south all of this time and the proof is positive and do not think that rogers is out on a black thing or that most black historians are out on a solid black thing most of us got our most radical information from white writers that other white historians do not read such as gerald massey and his six volume classic work called egypt light of the world which proved positively that ancient egyptians were black count voraes and his runs of empires gustav hearns in a six volume work researches in the ancient uh history the early work of the american egyptologists breasted uh so well as budge and so we are going to radical historians especially massey and his natural genesis and um the book of the beginning established behind them the black perspectives in history and if white historians accept the black prospectus in in history they would have to admit that the white prospectus in history is wrong and i'm afraid they're not quite equal to that right now well what is the uh if there is a black perspective in history there is a white perspective in history and i you're saying i i'm i'm assuming that history is being manipulated for an end in itself in itself uh history the the europeans began to manipulate history when they rose and began to expand into the broader world in the 15th and the 16th century um because they had to justify the slave trade and they had to justify the colonial system that followed and modern racism has its incubator incubation in that period you cannot enslave a man and say he's a human being that he has humanity he asked that uh and that he was one of the forerunners of the world's religion you cannot enslave an african and say this about him because if you say he's a human being then you're saying he's an extension of you then you cannot sell an african christianity and call him a heathen and acknowledge the african contribution toward the creation of christianity so it's a contradiction in acknowledging that a man created christianity then come back and say that uh you are selling him christianity because he is a heathen so the european had to literally stripped history of the contributions of non-european people uh to certain extent they did this in asia now what rogers has done in these two books is to go back and set history in some kind of prospectus based on this information and all of the information did not come from black historians it came from the best records available from all of them now speaking of information rogers has alleged some very startling things and we're using that word because i think in the context of having had only white history anything black is startling and so i'm saying it in a positive way that some of his information has said that there were a number of american presidents who actually were black that there were a number of prominent americans that history has treated as whites who by his criterion or criteria of who is black and white according to society's definition we're black well now not according to rogers is definition now understand and this is the irony of it all and this is the trap black people have never written any definitions of race any definitions of what a people mean uh uh has been i mean they have never said that these people with these kind of traits belong here because modern racism had its development in the pseudoscientific development of intellectual europe after the 15th century and they began to say that certain kind of people belong to certain kind of race and they created the concept of race and racism itself now according to the laws it's still on the statute book of united states and some other parts of the world one drop of us makes you a whole now uh this ridiculous law and stipulation and measurement has given black people a lot of white people according to that law now it has given us beethoven uh who was called a dark moor now he was probably one of the many olive complected europeans that you see in the millions throughout europe but in the states in the united states they say that if you have one drop of blood of a black person you're a whole black person now by this stupid law we have a whole lot of white people there's a whole lot of people that think they're white that belong to us we might claim all of south america because the spaniards were mulattos when they got there having been mixed with the mars for nearly 800 years and they were even before the moorish conquest mediterranean europe was highly mixed with uh with africans nobody thought anything of it because uh um there were a mixture of power and influence and and trade and and they got along fairly well together for hundreds of years before they turned on each other and i don't say it did the europeans any harm because uh the handsomest people in europe are the olive complected people who mix with the africans you're saying in in essence uh that there's no such thing as a race well i've i've maintained that race is the phoniest issue ever invented by the mind of man the european invented and developed the concept of race there's really no such thing as nate as a race because nature created no races the whole race is a man-made thing you know how do people get to be french in english well uh different uh climatic conditions and migrations and my and and amalgams of of different people and migrations of people into your country migrations of people out all right now this this is an ethnic grouping as against what we call race if you go back and you look at an old dictionary you won't even find a definition for a raise race grew out of the pseudo-scientific development of europe and this is what rogers was addressing himself to and and saying that according to your rule which is ridiculous a lot of you belong to us well in another context if race is arbitrary then could we say that being called black was a political term it's a political term and a term which indicates our self-awareness at this juncture in history and i think we really need uh we really need it we need to really bathe in blackness for a while but i wish we'd get the bath over with and go on to something a little more important because black black in itself is not an ethnic term black tells you how you look but it don't tell you who you are we are essentially an african people wherever we live on this earth we're essentially an african people and we relate to the millions of african people throughout the world including the uncounted millions of africans in in asia uh the word afro-american or african-american would probably be more appropriate and more honest and more in keeping with what we actually are because all of us are not positively physically you know real jet black and so the argument now sometimes is between the supernaturalness and the mild naturals and blacker than thou when blackness is a state of mind a state of attitude a state of approach to things that can exist in almost any of us uh including from the blonde black person to the to the jet black and the jet black can be traitors and they can be patriarchs they can hold out of see we we've been everything in history from saint to bathrooms we are complete people and we need to start looking at ourselves as a as a complete people and i think that once we uh convinced ourselves that we're black and beautiful we'll stop saying it and just go ahead and be black and beautiful and release a whole lot of energy for more important things all right since you said that uh j.a rogers was a chronicler that related events what is there in these two volumes in terms of facts that would be beneficial to black americans in the regaining of our lost heritage um in terms of facts is that j rogers goes through history and places in proper perspectives with documents the role of the black personality in history beginning from the origin of man in africa to the present time and i'm saying that black people need a measurement of the role that they have played or in in history and rogers was the pioneer in the such fall the black personality in history and his role and this is important because through rogers in his first volume on the old world you can see what the africans achieved and what the africans not only achieved within africa but the conflicts among african and african and how these conflicts were settled egypt was invaded from within africa which began the decline that was the cushite invasion led by that magnificent trio of black generals caster um pianki and tahaka and the interesting thing about these men especially to harker the last of the trio is that he not only control what is cush was part of ethiopia in the sudan of today in egypt but he invaded libya and practically all of the middle east saudi arabia iraq and iran all in in those areas and in those areas he found both friends and uh friends and and and fours now if he found friends and enemies if he found people in the middle east willing to fight with him he a black journal this tells you that uh color wasn't such a major factor but the power the rise and fall of power uh rogers tells us some other interesting things in volume one actually i wish we had time just to deal with volume one alone because it tells you all the early european invasion vaders of africa after he finished telling you about ochnaten and the great queens of egypt and that woman the first truly great woman in history uh hatch of sioux about the black generals who served in white armies cletus who was one of the commanding generals in the army of alexander and he deals with the romance around alexander which shocked the hell out of some people because alexander not only did not um die worrying about um no worlds to conquer he died in a drunken stupor and all this is documented he threw a dagger at cletus the black general who differed with him in front of his uh high command and he died in several approach uh after this act not worrying about no more worlds to conquer it's another thing and another aspect of alexander which i call that i call the so-called great that we need to take into consideration this alexander was a magnificent diplomat probably one of the most brilliant diplomats ever he really wasn't much of a warrior in fact one of the main reasons why cletus niagara could kid him because he had saved his life on the battlefield a number of times and alexander after he got into asia minor was ridiculing greek soldiers and claire to sniger the black general told him you wasn't as for greek soldiers you really in effect not so hard yourself and he reminded him of the time that he um saved his life and alexander was a little bit embarrassed and insulted by having this mention in front of his high command and uh and he was drinking too much at the time anyway now that takes a whole lot of romance out of history to treat alexander that way and but it's documented truth well what are the some of the statements facts allegations that rogers makes specifically about who prominent white americans were who he now says were black well he um he said that five of our presidents were black and considering the fact that the ones that were black seem to be about the poorest presidents we had i'd rather not bother about getting into names but advise you to read the small book by j rogers call our five negro presidents and argue with someone else but are there any of the families of these presidents alive who acknowledge that one of their ancestors who was a president well i'll name one which because there's been so much writing about it and so much proof and because some of the families are still alive and uh someone want to run this down president harding had black blood at some of what we call negro blood how where is this documented um there were several articles on it uh alan morrison uh the late allen morrison used to be new york editor of ebony they just did an article on it in the first or negro digest years ago but i'll tell you another one which is why the documents are a little clearer that's alexander hamilton he wasn't a president but he was very from alexander hamilton whose mother is a black woman from the from the west indies are there any other prominent uh americans that you can think of that are named and this would be the second volume no this is no that that would be the second volume in which he names permanent americans who obviously had what we refer to as negro blood um robert browning the englishman and he documents that too you know who would late quote to elizabeth barrett and um i think alexander dumas was one of the people he named oh alexander dumas there's no question about alexander dumas he was brown skinned man with a bush i mean we don't argue about the dumas but there were three dumases understand that not not just alexander dumas we talk about grandfather father and son now one alexander dumas black general uh western descent was uh second in command to napoleon in fact he was napoleon's artillery commander in the egyptian campaign and when the french were voting for someone to take over the french army napoleon won by one vote in other words the french were liberal enough at that time to accept the black man as commander-in-chief of of the armies i'm sorry they didn't um elect alexander dumas it would have saved them a lot and a whole lot of things napoleon did was useless and nothing but the washing of french ego and costing a whole lot of french money the one thing i don't think alexander dumas would have done is to going into that ice box called russia and the dead winter time you wouldn't have played no fool like that now the other two alexander dumas you need to under you need to separate because most people merge them now the father of french adventure literature uh the three musketeers in the lag that's one alexander two parts now the um the author of camille and the romantic tradition in french literature that's his son now all the father and son did not get along but they stemmed from the same um from the same club so there was actually three alexander dumasses one was a military man served under napoleon who lost some command of the french army to napoleon by one vote the other one who began the adventure literature and the other one who began the romantic literature and um he was somewhat of a prince of paris a devil with the ladies but there's there's no argument about these people well how do you how do you suspect that these statements and beliefs are going to be accepted by white america and by the white historical community well they're not going to accept them readily but if they read the documents is not much of an argument well they can always show you their documents can't they but they can show me that documents but one cannot ex cannot outbalance the other i mean i've seen there's a whole lot of things that white historians say it has nothing to do with documents at all they just open their mouth and say it like christopher columbus discovered america now he's discovered people here he discovered a whole lot of people already in america so he discovered america okay now uh and they just arbitrarily say that uh the europeans brought natural civilization and actually the europeans destroyed more civilization than they brought and i can go to white documents and prove this i don't have to go to my documents according to their documents i can prove that they destroyed more people and more civilization than um than they bear all right another thing which rogers brings up in another one of his books called africa's give to america is the pre-columbian presence of africans in the so-called new world that africans were here not only before columbus but according to professor weiner in a three-volume work called african the discovery of america he may have been here before the indians now the original documentation on this came from white historians and so many times when a white historian is arguing with a black historian the one thing you will probably have to do is to go back and argue with the white historian from which the black historian got the original base information and he extended that research further than the uh than the white historian now the white star is in a bad fix right now because he's hung up with a lie and because he used to open his mouth and say something and people believe it without question now they are questioning it i can snow him under with documents and mostly documents written by other white people repudiating him so i'm not worried about the document whoa i know i can win that one professor clark how do you distinguish between the words negro and black i i don't distinguish i mean i i distinguish between the word way i held the word negro is by dismissing it and i'm dismissing it because i dismiss it because there's no such thing as a negro because there's no negro people and no negro land this is an adjective that somebody made a noun out of and slapped on a people against their will and i dismiss the word negro um the word black uh can relate to a whole lot of people and it can become con confusing you see people must relate to land history and culture and this is what limits the word black because if you limit if you say black and what is the black lamb let me show you what i'm talking if you say english an image comes before your eyes good or bad the changing of the gods bucketham palace you know stout the bingo lances you know if you say french you know good cooking great lovers napoleon all that all immediately you got an image but you say negro what comes before you no images really a condition and a people is not a condition a people must have a land a name that relates them to land history and culture and so therefore the name of a people if it's going to be authentic cannot be black that can refer to how the people look the name of the people have to relate to the land of origin now no one is having any difficulty saying italian american greek american french american i don't think they should have any difficulty saying african-american or afro-american as the as the case may be now these are people who are black in the main but let's get something straight all africans are not black that black is the prevailing color in africa there are africans who have been not been mixed with any white people at all who are like brown and they've always been that way and they're just as african as the blackest of the africans so if we got hung up on a narrow definition like black without explaining that it has elasticity that extends beyond a person being jet black then um we get ourselves into another trap we get out of one trap and get into two so now let's qualify what we're talking about when black but when we're speaking over people on a world basis then let's relate them to land history and culture so we'll know what we're talking about until someone creates a nation called black uh from which we emulate uh black land or black oreo or black boro then uh i'm afraid that the word black is rather limited right i'd like to thank you very much you've certainly said quite a few things uh the book the world's great men of color is undoubtedly going to cause quite a stir and be of amazing educational value thank you very much professor clark thank you you

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Keywords: Socialism, Communism, John Henrik Clarke

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Length: 27min 0sec (1620 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021