Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500BC to 2000AD

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As part of the Great Migration out of the rural South, the Williams family moved to Washington, DC, in 1910.

He is noted for his work on African civilizations prior to encounters with Europeans; his major work is The Destruction of Black Civilization (1971/1974). In detailing and evaluating the merits of African constitutionalism, Williams demonstrates (especially through the telling of the history of the Kingdom of Kuba) how the erosion of traditional African democracy and devolution into autocracy helped speed up the destruction of African civilizations. The book was written at a time when many Black students, educators, and scholars were starting to piece together the connection between the way their history was taught and the way they were perceived by others and by themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it was eye opening and it answered some of the questions I had that if we invented writing how then did we lose it, if we were wearing cloth thousands of years ago how did we lose all that. Books like "The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 BC to 2000 AD" immediately jump to mind.

Our history can then become at once the foundation and guiding light for united efforts in serious planning what we should be about now. A few years ago, I read the Mis-education of the Negro and back then I thought the Negro who was being referenced was the African American.

It was part of the reading list for an organization I had joined named the Eye of Ra African Sorority and Fraternity. The strategies used to conquer parts of the African nation by the europeans and the Arab invaders were interesting and diabolical; to be able to turn a people against themselves without ever having to step on the battlefield. In 1971/1974, Williams published his major work, The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race Between 4500 B.The book is premised on the question: ""If the Blacks were among the very first builders of civilization and their land the birthplace of civilization, what has happened to them that has left them since then, at the bottom of world society, precisely what happened? Wengrow, David; Dee, Michael; Foster, Sarah; Stevenson, Alice; Ramsey, Christopher Bronk (March 2014). In doing so, Williams’ hostility toward non-African people, as well as people with mixed African and non African ancestry (“Mulattoes”), is clear and ever-present. p46 - "The conclusion of the experts who did not accept the theory, put forward by Professors Cheikh Anta Diop and Obenga, that the Nile Valley population had been homogenous from the earliest times until the Persian invasion, was that the basic population of Egypt settled there in Neolithic times, that it originated largely in the Sahara and that it comprised people from the north and from the south of the Sahara who were differentiated by their colour". at the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974.

Williams noted the highly democratic and communal nature of traditional African sociopolitical organization, and contrasted it with the aggressive individualism of Europe and Western Asia. He argues if Blacks only understood the true history of their greatness, and came together once again, they could be great once again. The three pieces of the puzzle that he put together for me were the existence of Meroe, Kush and Napata. The Destruction of Black Civilization provides the blue print and the analysis from which the African Diaspora may reach and find the strength for positive self development. Now before someone condemns this book, it also details the problems within African continent and why they were so easily conquered by outsiders.This contrast can be seen in how rulers are checked and controlled by the masses of people in African societies, as opposed to their apparent unchecked power in non-African societies. Williams began his studies abroad in England as a visiting professor to the universities ofOxfordandLondonin 1953 and 1954. A. Diop's two books, Nations Negres et Culture and Anteriorite des Civilizations Negres, which have profoundly influenced thinking about Africa around the world.