coverer.” When we forget that
Imhotep of Ancient Egypt, the real
father of medicine, and the archi
tect of time as we know it, hved
around 2300 B.C. (2,000 years
before Hippocrates) and was wor
shipped by Romans as the Prince
of Peace, we forget the scientific
contributions of Africans. But this
is not a trivia lesson; history is
much more analytical, much more
politicized, so I’ll move on.
But the important point is this:
without an acknowledgment of the
influences of Africans, we tend to
forget that Africans did not start in
slavery. More importantly, we
“forget when we could not” verbal
ize our discontent with the histori
cal teachings of African existence.
We forget the powerful psychologi
cal impact of seeing just three
pages of history in American text
books. Three pages which usually
began...’’Africa was a barren land,
where savages roamed scantly clad,
killing each other without remorse
or authority structure.” Three
pages which include a huge
description of the psychological
and cultural benefits of slavery to
the African or African American,
then move on to discuss the after-
math of Reconstruction, the 1920s,
the Civil Rights Movement and
paint a picture of everything being
fine by the 1970s. They forget the
1619 legal statutes in Virginia that
legalized white servitude, the
arrival of Africans to this world not
as slaves but as indentured ser
vants. We allow them to exclude
the linguistic and psychological
creation of the word “white” dur
ing the 17th century to slot for
words like “Englishmen and/or
Christians” as a response to the
explicit humanity of words like
Blackamoors, Moors, Ethiopian,
Negro. We forget when we could
not be anything more than Nigger,
Negro, Colored, Afro-
American...we forget to remind
them that these terms were manu
factured by racist ideologies. And
yes, we forget when we could not
do the most important thing to the
psychological development of a
people...name ourselves or our
children...to speak and spell the
word “Revolution.”
When we forget the injustices
of slavery, we forget the slave
codes preventing Africans from
learning how to read or learning
how to speak beyond grunts and
sounds. When we forget when we
could not read, we forget to read.
We deny the power of “The Bluest
Eye” (Toni Morrison), the insight
of “The Souls of Black Folk”
(W.E.B. DuBois), the powerftil
message in the pages of “The Mis-
Education of the Negro” (Carter G.
Woodson), the explosive analysis
of living by the Constitution in
“Three-Fifths of a Man” (Floyd
McKissick, Sr.), the revolutionary
dialogue in “A Time to Acf’
(Julian Bond) or “Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl” (Harriet
Jacobs); the struggle against gen
der, race and color oppression in
“The Color Purple” (Alice Walker)
or “Message to the Black Man”
(Elijah Muhammad). In fact, when
we forget we could not read, we
forget the names of the authors -
we consume only John Grisham,
John Steinbeck, Ernest
Hemmingway, Thomas Jefferson,
Gertrude Stein, Arthur Miller and
Shakespeare. At worst, we con
sume only comic strips that tickle
our stupid bone and bring us the
bliss of ignorance to the plight of
your people.
But now my Brothers and
Sisters you can read and we can
speak and spell the word
Revolution. It happens every time
you decide to stand up for your
right to existence. It happens
every time you force UNC-CH to
recognize the University as more
than a mere vineyard in which
minds are cultivated, but a place
where voices are given their right-
ftil place in spaces that historically
have denied them entrance, pres
ence and identity. My final ques
tion is simple: Are those who have
forgotten to speak and spell ready
to help construct a narrative of
existence for Africans in the
Diaspora?
*An earlier and much modified
version of a speech entitled
“Forgetting When We Could Not
Do: Black Responsibility in the
Next Century” was presented to
the Craig Residence Hall
Association, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, on
February 27, 1997.
*This essay also appeared in the
February 1998 edition of the
“Black Ink.”
10
Black Ink