NJ Amistad Law Is Crucial For Black History, Newark Teacher Says

NEWARK, NJ — The following article comes courtesy of Bashir Muhammad Ptah Akinyele, a history and African studies teacher at Weequahic High School in Newark. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.

Teaching history is my passion, particularly Black history. In this article, African history and Black history will be used interchangeably. Unfortunately, there are still debates brewing in the world on whether or not to call the history of African people-Black history or African history. But whichever African history or Black history term we use, white supremacy and systematic racism continuously distorts the factual contributions Black people made to human civilizations and the world’s major religions.

Many racist concocted lies about Black people were constructed into "truths" in the western world's institutions of learning. As a result, when we as human beings complete our matriculation through Europeanized educational institutions, many of us leave the classroom indoctrinated to believe that whiteness is superior. But blackness is inculcated as inferior. Unfortunately, these lessons in whiteness have circulated in school systems for centuries making the lives of Black people not matter in the United States and in the world. And in many schools in America, the history of Europeans still exist as the only legitimate lessons in social studies and history departments in the millennium. However, New Jersey's Amistad educational law challenges racist fabricated lies about European people’s role in the development of civilization and religions in the study of history in the classroom. It forces educators to now include the contributions Black people made to establish civilization and religions on the planet earth. But most importantly, the Amistad Law mandates that Black history be included into social studies, and all subject area curricula (i.e, english, mathematics, science, etc), to give students a more balanced picture of the development of humanity’s civilizations and religions. Personally, it has given me as a history teacher more freedom to use African history in the classroom to help my students know that Black cultural traditions are at the foundation of the human world.

The Amistad Law (A1301) is a educational law that requires all public schools to include African / African American history in all social studies classes. This bill was created by two former New Jersey State African American Democratic Assemblymen named William D. Payne and Craig A. Stanley in 2002 (https://www.nj.gov/education/amistad/about/)

The two former lawmakers named the Amistad Law after a rebellion aboard a European Spaniard slave ship named the Amistad. The revolt was led by a Mende born African named Sengbe Pieh (His European slave name was Joseph Cinque') in 1839. Pieh and the Africans ended up in America. With the help of both Black and white American abolitionists, Pieh and the Africans sued for their liberation in the US Supreme Court. Pieh and the Africans won their case. They eventually retuned to their freedom In Africa.

The revolutionary Amistad law in New Jersey is on the cutting edge of progressive education. It is the first educational law of its kind in America.

In all New Jersey public schools, the Amistad law forces all social studies and history curricula to teach the horrors of the enslavement of Black people, the outrageousness of colonialization in Africa, the unjust oppressive force of US segregation, and the hideous system of apartheid in South Africa. But the law also eliminates social studies and history teachers beginning the history of Black people only under racial oppression. The Amistad Law requires teachers to educate students on Africa’s great civilizations in the world before slavery, segregation, colonialism, and apartheid.

Although many New Jersey schools are struggling to mandate their educational curricula to the Amistad Law, Newark, NJ's public school district is the first major educational system in the state to adhere to the law beginning in the 2020 -2021 school year.

The progressivism of the Newark Public Schools (NPS) under the leadership of Superintendent Roger Leon helped to make the Amistad curriculum possible for all teachers and students. Through the calls and activism from the community for the school’s curriculum to incorporate the contributions Black people made to world and American civilizations, he began to insure our schools adhere to New Jersey’s Amistad Law. Because of this move, NPS pioneered a curriculum dedicated to the inclusion of African / African American history into the social studies curricula in the United States. Although the Amistad curriculum is not perfect, it has opened our classrooms up for the factual and balanced instructions in social studies and history.

Prior to the Amistad law, teaching and incorporating Black history into world and American history curricula, was a struggle as a teacher. Many supervisors, and the school systems itself, did not see the value in teaching Black history in social studies and in history departments.

Amistad provides the support, resources and curriculum guides needed for me as a history teacher at Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ to adequately merge lessons in Black history into world and American history.

My students are amazed about the depth African culture laid for the foundation of the human world. And Amistad has given me the opportunity to take the liberty to explore the facts of African history before white supremacy created racially oppressive systems such as slavery, segregation, colonialism, and apartheid intentionally distorted African history and culture in the world.

A few citations on the importance of incorporating African history into the social studies and history curricula are needed so that we can understand the magnitude of the Amistad law in the Newark Public Schools in this article.

Africa being the cradle of humanity is given its rightful platform in Amistad:

I can teach a lesson on Africa being the cradle of humanity. And that the human being from Africa populated the entire planet earth. This accurate account of humanity’s early history in Africa, and in the world, will not be looked at as pseudoscientific history by school supervisors.

Africa’s Nile Valley is civilization’s pillar for human development in Amistad:

I can teach my students that before the Greeks (332 B.C.E), the Romans (30 B.C.E), and the Arabs (640 A.D) invaded Kemet (the African name for Egypt is Kemet), this civilization was a great Black civilization that once ruled and influenced the world for over 3000 years. (The word Kemet is translated from the hieroglyphics to mean the land of Black people. Europeans and Arabs call the Medu Neter the hieroglyphics.)

I can teach my students that the Medu Neter is the world's first and oldest system of writing found in Kemet. I use the word hotep as my attention getter in my classroom and as a greeting with all the students at Weequachic High School. The word hotep is the oldest written word for peace in human history.

I can teach that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras all studied from their African master teachers in Kemet to lay a foundation for philosophy and mathematics in the western world.

I can teach that Kemetic people discovered that the earth rotated around the sun thousands years before the European scientists named-Galileo and Copernicus. As a result of Kemetic scientific development, the world received a 365 day calendar that we use to this very day. Through African history and culture, we now know that earth rotates around the sun in 365 days.

I can teach that the real father of medicine-was a Blackman named Imhotep. According to Egyptology (the scientific study of the history and culture of ancient Egypt), Imhotep was the first person in history to breakdown the circulation of blood in the human body. He is also the builder of world's first step pyramid located at Saqqara in Kemet using mathematics. This early form of ancient Kemetic mathematics are now called in contemporary society algebra and geometry. Imhotep is considered in history as the world's first multi-genius.

I can cover history lessons on the great pyramids of Giza. I teach that all the pyramids in Kemet were built before the existence of the Abrahamic faiths (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam). And that the pyramids were constructed by free labor, not by an enslaved labor force.

The lessons on the contributions Black people made to the world's religions are expanded in Amistad:

I can teach that the concept of monotheism, the belief in the oneness of God, started in Kemet (Egypt) thousands of years before Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam.

And that the 10 commandments originated from the 42 laws of Ma'at in Kemet thousands of years before the Torah, the Bible, and the Qur'an. I can teach that the laws Ma'at were the world's first moral and ethical code system.

I can even teach the concept of a human soul was coined in ancient Kemet thousands of years before advent of Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam. Kemetic people called the soul by the Medu Neter word Ba. But they called the spiritual house of the human soul by the Medu Neter word Ka. The Muslims now call this ancient African spiritual concept of the spirit and the soul-the Kaba. The Kaba is located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is the Islamic world’s holiest spiritual center. Thousands of Muslims come to Mecca every year for their spiritual Haj (Arabic word for pilgrimage). Haj is one of the pillars for Al-Islam.

The great West African empires are studied in Amistad:

I can teach my students that the western region of Africa established thriving nation-states, schools, and respectable world leaders. All of this history took place while Europeans were experiencing their dark ages.

I can teach my students that after the destruction of Kemet, arose the three great West African empires called Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. They were all dominant forces in the world.

During this time in the history, Black people created a major West African school called the University of Sankore at Timbuktu. People from all over the world traveled to West Africa to study at the school in subject areas such as the arts, the humanities, philosophy, mathematics, sciences, Al-Islam, Arabic, theology, and medicine.

The African conquest of Spain in 711 is examined in Amistad:

I can teach my students that Africans conquered Spain for nearly 800 years. Europeans called these particular Africans- Moors. The African Moors were religious practitioners of the Islamic faith from North Africa.

The African Presence in the Americans prior to Christopher Columbus’ 1492 “discovery” of the Americas is explored in Amistad:

I can teach my students about the African presence that spread to many lands in the Western Hemisphere prior to the European explorer Christopher Columbus.

History students can learn that before Christopher Columbus sailed to the "new world in 1492," Black people left West Africa to explore what historians call the Americas during the pre-Columbian era.

The Black Liberation Movement (Civil Rights and Black Power) impacts politics and culture in America. Its history is analyzed in Amistad:

In reaction to white supremacy, and systematic racism in America and in the world, Black people began to resist. Some of our greatest community ancestors such as Fredrick Douglass, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, began to fight for the civil rights of Black people. They inspired Black people to challenge the United States to live up to its democratic creed established by the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson, a founding father, wrote in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence America's basis for the human right (Albeit only property owning white people) to freedom in the world on July 4, 1776. He said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Although many of the founder fathers were contradicting themselves, because many of them were slave owning whites, they created a idea of freedom that resonated with oppressed Black people in America.

This became a rallying call for many Black civil rights activists in America. Our ancestors began to write, speak, and organize Black people to ignite them in a movement to force white people to insure that all people have equal rights and freedom in America. It was long struggle to make civil rights a mass movement. However, in 1955, a sparked was lite in the spirit of Black people. The Afrcan American community got tired of centuries of legalized second class citizenship. Our mass acceptance of Black oppression come to an end. African Americans began take on segregation on public buses in Montgomery, Alabama with the threat of losing their jobs and their very lives. This was led by Black civil rights leaders such as, E. D Nixon, Rosa Parks, and a young Pastor named the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. For over year, Black people boycotted the city's buses until their demands for equality were met and respected in Montgomery. Black people successfully challenged and changed racist laws on public buses regulating African Americans to the back of the bus. This massive social justice action gave rise to the modern day Civil Rights Movement.

From 1955 to 1965, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr arose to leadership inspiring masses of Black people all over America to fight against racial discrimination. He popularized the need for Civil Rights for Black people and all oppressed people. Dr King helped to make it a mass movement inclusive to many religions, races and cultures in America to struggle with Black people for racial, social, political, and economic equality. Today's Black progressivism is deeply rooted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

But prior to the civil rights movement, another movement of Black people began to develop in America, and all around the Americas, to fight for Black equality and freedom; but they stressed Black unity, Black pride, Black independence, land, and nation-building. It will be called in the 20th century-Black nationalism. Some Black progressives have their roots in Black nationalism as well in America.

The ideology of Black nationalism was born out of slavery in the late 1700s Americas and under the colonization and apartheid regime of Africa in the late 1800s. It became a legitimate movement for social, political, economic, religious, and cultural Black equality. It advocated for the right of Black people to fight for freedom, empowerment, independence, land, and self-determination. But most importantly, Black nationalism became the means to rescue,,reconstruct, and restore Black humanity and the Black nation broken into pieces by white domination.

In America, towards the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, Black nationalism begins to take different strategies in the struggle for equality, independence, and empowerment from White domination in and outside the United States.

Three Black Trinidadians names H. Sylvester Williams, George Padmore, and C.L.R. James will take Black nationalism internationally. They believed that Africa, and the struggle for Black people to be free, must be unified throughout the world. Williams, Padmore, and James called their form of Black nationalism-Pan-Africanism. They held their first Pan-African conference in 1900. These powerful Black leaders led to the foundation for six Pan African conferences However, in 1945 in Manchester, England, at the fifth Pan-Afrcan conference all their hard work payed off. These Pan Africanist Trinidadians work attracted Black leaders from around world, and from the continent of Africa, such as Jomo Kenyatta, Nandi Azikiwe, and Kwame Nkrumah. The Pan-African nationalists led Ghana to her independent in 1957 from English colonialism. And many other African revolutionary nationalists will lead Africa from grip of European colonial rule. The main thrust behind the fifth Pan African conference was the great Dr. W. E. B DuBois. By 1945, he is a respected civil rights activist, but a committed Pan Africanist. But before 1945, Dr. DuBois was forming his arguments against racial injustice by criticizing the great Booker T. Washington in his book of essays called-'The Souls of Black Folks'published in 1903.

I can teach that the Black Freedom Struggle made democracy, civil rights, the movement for self determination, and cultural pride a reality for all people to enjoy, fight for, and exercise in United States to this day.

What does this all mean?

The knowledge of Black history is an equally important corner stone in social studies and history curricula to help move all humanity forward in human development and for social justice.

African/African American history are the missing pages to world and American history.

In conclusion, the Amistad Law has finally given me, and teachers, the freedom to incorporated African history lessons into world and American social studies and history curricula. I have been released as an educator, to teach Black people's contributions to language, science, theology, religion government, architecture, medicine, law, the idea of a nation-state, philosophy, mathematics, democracy, civil rights, human rights, democracy, and liberation struggles. Additionally, the Amistad Law is committed to social justice for all people. Therefore it provides avenues for social studies and history departments to incorporate the contributions indigenous People, Latinos, Asians, and LBGTQ people made right along side Black people in the development of human society. All of this has been made possible from New Jersey's Amistad Law.

Hotep (Peace)!

-Bashir Muhammad Ptah Akinyele is a history and African studies teacher at Weequahic High School in Newark, New Jersey. He is also the co-coordinator for ASCAC's (the Association for Study of Classical African Civilizations) Study Group Chapter in Newark (https://ascac.org/).

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