Rest in Peace to Dr. Ivan Van Sertima and Happy Belated Birthdays to Malcolm X (May 19th) and Big L (May 30th)

Hotep everyone, on May 19th, 2009, we celebrated the 84th birthday of one of the most dauntless, articulate, brilliant, and influential rhetoricians, public speakers, leaders and men in world history and his name is Malcolm X also known as El-Hajj Malik El- Shabazz. Malcolm X represented manhood, peace, truth, justice, radicalism, Black nationalism, liberation, change and evolution. I have a post dedicated to Malcolm X on my page so if one would like to learn more about the life of this great ancestor, then they could read the my blogpost dedicated to the commemoration of his life.

On May 25th, 2009, the Pan- African world community lost an influential scholar, anthropologist, historian and teacher by the name of Dr. Ivan van Sertima. Dr. Ivan van Sertima died at the age of 74 and he was known for writing numerous books about the achievements, merits and contributions of African people in the development of civilization. Dr. Ivan van Sertima was born in Guyana on January 26, 1935, completed his undergraduate studies at the School of Oriental and Africana Studies at the University of London in 1969 with honors and became fluent in the language of Swahili. In 1970 he moved to the United States where he attended Rutgers University for graduate school where he became a professor and achieved his Master's Degree and became the Associate Professor of Rutger's Department of Africana Studies.

Dr. Ivan Sertima was known for writing numerous articles, essays and books but was known for his predominant, prolific, popular, provocative and brilliant masterpiece which is the 1976 book, "They Came Before Columbus." In this book, he explained, shared and propagated the facts that going back , that Western Africans migrated to Central America to build civilization; specifically the Olmec civilization as far back as 1600 B.C. and taught the Mayans over a thousand years before Columbus was even thought of. He used various substations to prove his points with the pyramid building, mummifications, similar deities and religious belief systems of the Olmecs being similar to the ones of Egypt and also, the wearing of war helmets which were tantamount to the war helmets of the 25th Nubian dynasty and other scientific research. Dr. Ivan Sertima emphasized in his speeches and writings that the Egyptians were Black and that Africans were the original humans who civilized the old and new world. In 1986, he appeared at the United States congressional committee to challenge the American government for giving credit to Columbia for "discovering America."

In closing, Dr. Ivan Sertima played a great, influential and meritorious role in World history and Africana academia and studies. In society, Black people universally are looked at as tenuous, irrelevant, incompetent, incorrigible, neglected and complacent people. A people who are subordinate and inferior to everyone who didn't make a contribution in history in the world's panorama. It is imperative for us as a people to study the word of scholars like Dr. Ivan Sertima to learn about our contributions in history so that we could gain a knowledge of self and realize/ configure our obligation in today's society, to improve our lives and to contribute more greatness for our race and society. Dr. Van Sertima inculcated and taught us that the Black man and woman created and built civilization and made major contributions to the arts and sciences in Africa, North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Australia. He will be missed in the Black community and his lessons need to be taught to the next generation so that the posterity of our race could look viable, affluent and promising.