The spirit of this project rises from the long labor of our historians and truth-tellers who fought to reclaim the story of Black life from the silence imposed upon it. Marcus Garvey stands first among them, the architect of Pan-Africanism, whose Universal Negro Improvement Association and Negro World awakened a global pride that no empire could suppress. Beside him, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History,” exposed how schools distorted the record through The Miseducation of the Negro and founded Negro History Week to honor what had been erased.
Dr. John Henrik Clarke lifted Africa back to the center of world history through his teaching and through the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, the Senegalese scholar, proved that Ancient Egypt was African in origin and spirit, breaking the myths of European supremacy. Dr. Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus traced African brilliance in the Americas before European contact, while Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, known as “Dr. Ben,” mapped the Nile Valley as the heart of African civilization.
Thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire turned inward, showing how colonialism poisoned the psyche and taught the colonized to doubt their own humanity. In our own time, Dr. Sylvia Wynter and Dr. Nell Irvin Painter continue this work, revealing how history itself has been crafted to sustain hierarchy and exclusion.
Together, these visionaries exposed the machinery of erasure: records burned, names twisted, minds misled. Their work makes clear that to reclaim Black history is not nostalgia; it is resistance. It is the road back to self-knowledge, pride, and freedom.
