An Ancient Syrian Soldier with his Wife

The color coding of Black classical cultures to look pink colored, in modern media, is a basic issue that should be addressed by the Department of Education and the religious community. Black youth, and people at large, are critically shortchanged when society fails to tell the truth. Mesopotamia and Sumer (currently the Middle East) were greater Africa to the ancient mind. World History Encyclopedia

Mass Media, Popular Culture, and History

The producers of Krapopolis, a comedy, have been forward-thinking in getting out a more accurate depiction of the ancient world, namely ancient Greece. Of course typically all of the ancient world's people have been depicted as pink-colored by Eurocentric media creators. From biblical illustrations to children's books, like Aesop's Tales, the current status quo could take a page from this forward-leaning satirical work.

Top: Menes, the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt. Middle: Menhotep II, pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom. Bottom: Rameses the Great, from the tomb of Queen Nefertari. Despite the appropriation of Ancient Egypt by Eurocentric propaganda, the primary source depictions remind us that the falsifying of Black classical civilizations cannot outstrip the reality of legitimate artifacts. Meanwhile, the Fayum paintings of the first and second centuries, and the Ottoman slave trade (Turkey) of Europeans into Egypt through the late 1800s, remind us that societies are forever changing and evolving.

Freedom School Youth Indict Current-day Hip Hop

I had a great time teaching at Freedom School in the Twin Cities this summer. Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) started the schools in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, in 1964. The schools were designed to promote education for transformation and liberation. At this summer's graduation, the students held a mock trial pointing out the brillance of hip hop's early innovators juxtaposed with today's unwholesome lyrics, which were blamed with misleading the masses of youth in inner cities.

Jim Brown -- Les Lester with the NFL Great

We lost former NFL great Jim Brown recently. He was one of the best examples of an athlete who used his platform unequivocably to advance the causes of the oppressed, and Black people. Several years ago as a reporter with the Chicago Defender newspaper, I met with Brown, Earl King of the No Dope Express Foundation, and Eddie Read of Chicago Black United Communities (CBUC). Today's athletes would do well to assist in ensuring the correct framing of Black people and their history is promulgated.

George Floyd's Ancestor Had Gained Wealth

According to a new book -- His Name is George Floyd -- by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuel and Toluse Olorunnipa, George Floyd's ancestor Hillery Thomas Stewart, like many ambitious former enslaved men and women of the post-slavery era, worked hard and gained wealth; "but it was stripped away by unscrupulous businessmen and tax authorities during an era of racial terror." The authors' point out that Stewart had amassed 500 acres of land in North Carolina. "The kind of thing you can give to your descendants and allow them to have a shot in life." They say the the story is not unlike many descendants of African Americans, who played fair to achieve the American Dream, but were denied it due to Jim Crow America. Link: Center for Public Integrity

The schools in the West have never taught about Black classical cultures, such as the Etruscans who preceded Rome in Italy. To accelerate the education on these preeminent societies, schools must begin to ensure that primary source depictions, not the fraudulent modern artists' drawings, be promulgated in today's institutions. Early Rome was a colony of Etruria.

Africa's True Size Distorted by Maps... .

Because of distortions on the Mercator maps, we now know that the general depiction of Africa on the world's maps is undersized. A true representation of the continent reveals that the combined land masses of the United States, China, Western Europe, India, Eastern Europe, Mexico, and Japan would fit into Africa. Source Link