A FEW WORDS ABOUT WORDS
BOOKSMART
MICHAEL HARRIOT:“ Black AF History – The Un-Whitewashed Story of America”
By DIANE HARRIS
“ In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
So begins the children’ s poem about a jolly exploration that many of us learned as an introduction to understanding the origins of this nation. Michael Harriot’ s book,“ Black AF History, The Un-Whitewashed Story of America” is an ambitious effort to fill in the gaps and provide context and perspective to the“ official story.”
Through in-depth research, personal family stories and sardonic humor, Harriot takes us on a journey from Europe through Africa to America to lay out the sequence of events that he said more accurately led to the“ discovery” of the New World. Harriot and his three sisters were home-schooled by their mother in Hartsville, South Carolina.“ The Harriot house had four bedrooms, one bathroom, a dining room, and a living room you could only enter if you were entertaining company, had obtained written and verbal permission, or if somebody who had the Holy Ghost died,” he writes in the book’ s introduction.
The main gathering place for family activities( singing, dancing, boardgames) was a den-like room in the center of the house that would eventually become known as the“ Middle Room.” This was also the family study hall and library, equipped with stacks of books on a wide range of topics. His mother chose homeschooling, Harriot tells readers, because she believed that“ a Black child cannot fully realize their humanity in the presence of whiteness.”
“ Black AF History” is a book in which American history is retold from a Black perspective. It includes Unit Reviews, which asks rhetorical questions about the topics, and Supplement material at the end of each chapter.
According to Harriot, the impetus for slavery was a church fight! The fall of the Roman Empire eventually made the Catholic Church the most powerful institution in Europe. Internal friction caused the church to split into two factions: Eastern Orthodox Church vs. the Roman Catholic Church.
This rupture also spawned a quest by each faction to expand their territories and fill the coffers.
Harriot says this led to what he calls the“ people-stealing project” – slavery – and provides a framework for how a race-based American empire and its political ideology were built and sustained.
Despite this weighty subject matter, the chapters are fluid, credible and compelling reading.
Harriot deftly weaves in witty antidotes, obscure facts, and poems( like the“ African American Emancipation Proclamation”)
throughout the book, which also chronicles the pivotal role of women in the civil rights movement. It also provides a suggested reading list.
And there is a fascinating account of a young white college graduate, nicknamed“ Speed,” who gets his start in a lowly position at the Library of Congress and later becomes a major player in COINTELPRO, a 15- year effort by elements of the U. S. government to disrupt, among others, the activities of civil rights groups and the Black Panther Party.
I found“ Black AF History, The Un- Whitewashed Story of America” to be an essential reference book. Harriot writes,“ History can never be objective or unbiased because, no matter how hard the storytellers may try, the perception of reality prejudices all stories.” He’ s right.
“ Until the lion tells its story,” the African proverb declares,“ the hunter will always be the hero.”
This book tells the history of America from the lion’ s perspective. •
Diane Harris is an avid reader and regular contributor to the Morgan Global Journalism Review.
31