Library Hosts African American Seminar

Norman Daniels, Coordinator of Multicultural Affairs of Suffolk County Community College, conducted a seminar entitled, "African Americans Before They Were Americans," describing the great civilizations and rich culture throughout Africa before the slave trade brought Africans to our shores at Sachem Public Library earlier this month.

Daniels said that his teachers told him Africa was barren of history.  As a young man of African descent, he took umbrage to this and set out on a personal mission to find out the history of his people. 

At the onset of his quest, Daniels admitted that his image of Africa was, "just like the Tarzan movies with jungle and wild animals everywhere."  

He soon found that he was deeply mistaken.  He learned about the famed Egyptian civilization and their universities in Cairo and Alexandria.  Furthermore, he learned about the advanced civilization of Mali and its larger than life figure Mansa Musa. 

He also researched Mali's famous University of Sankore, which was where the Greek father of history, Herodotus, ventured in pursuit of scholarship because he needed to study at the most prestigious university of his day.  This university taught advanced sciences, medicine, law, and philosophy as far back ago as the 12th century.

Daniels said many historians assert that democracy existed in Africa well before Greece and that there were pyramids all over (not just Egypt). Archaeological evidence shows that Africans may have crossed the Atlantic before Columbus settling in places such as Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and Africans may have developed the concept of “Zero” before any other. 

He also solemnly stated that over 200 million East African men and women were sold into the American slave trade and that regrettably approximately 90 million did not survive the notorious "Middle Passage."  In Africa, they referred to this devastating loss of life during the transatlantic voyage as the "Maafa" which is the African word for Holocaust.

The overriding theme of Daniels' talk was that it doesn't hurt to increase your cultural awareness.

"If you understand, you don't hate," he said. "If it wasn't for us all working together, we wouldn't be where we are today." 

He warned all cultures not to harbor anger on behalf of their history and asserts that people all need to move forward together, while at the same appreciating the different contributions each different group has made along the way.