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Books by Asa G. Hilliard, III

Teachings of Ptahhotep: The Oldest Book in the World /  The Maroon Within Us  / SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind

African Power  / Young Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement

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The passing of the late Dr. Asa Hilliard, death by malaria, like most grand symbolic events, can be read respectfully in more than one way. Those who were his devotees will interpret the passing of this great prophet of the "Présence Africain" as the ultimate sacrifice, and the proof of their beloved leader's dedication to the redemption of our Fatherland.   Other sympathetic, but less partisan pan-Africanists will view his passing from a West Africa contracted disease as an ironic demonstration of a dreamer's devotion to an African Eden that never did and never can exist.  There is much truth in each these perspectives. Like all the majestic mythologies symbolizing the course of human events, Hilliard's life and death symbolize the transcendental unity of opposite and equally undeniable truths.

I am a strong believer in living outside the American plastic bubble.  I think little is gained by short tours that take us to Accra one week and Nairobi the next.  In order to get a feel for a place, one really needs to spend a year or two.  At least that was my experience with England.   It took me one year to suspect, and two years to understand how differently the English and the Americans speak what superfically seems to be the same language.   I had read about these linguistic differences in books, but it took me two years of total immersion to understand what the books were trying to tell me. 

I have been to Africa only twice, and spent a total of a mere six weeks on the continent.  That is a pathetically short time.  I once met a beautiful young Afro-American woman in the Liberian rain forest, with tears in her eyes as she began to understand the dark lies of the cannibalistic Tolbert regime, and realized she was stranded at Cuttington College for a year.  More recently I had a beautiful young Euro-American woman tell me she wanted to spend four months in Senegal because she was interested in the prehistory of Olduvai Gorge.  I had to remind her that the distance from Dakar to Nairobi is greater than the distance from Fairbanks to Mexico City. 

The reason for going to Africa should be educational, but that is my bias, of course.  I would recommend to any scholar in Africana studies that they try spending at least an academic semester in some African location, particularly one of the West African cities.  I would also recommend an introduction to the grammar of one West African language. 

Yesterday, while surfing the net, in order to avoid serious work, I came across an article on a short story, "Murder in the Cassava Patch," by the late Bai T. Moore, a Liberian author.  The author chose to interpret the story in terms of incest and sexual abuse.  Like her, I missed the point of this novel, until Bai T. Moore explained it to me over a dinner in 1980.   The story, which was based on an actual murder case, was based on domestic slavery.  The protagonist fell in love with a member of his own household, but she was not his sister, as the African American critic supposed.  She was the daughter of his master.  She could never think of him as anything but a "nigger," even after she became a degraded street-walking prostitute.  She still saw him as her inferior, and that was why in a fit of unrequited love, he murdered her.  So much, says Bai T. Moore, for the "benevolent" domestic slavery system.  I believe Achebe was equally condemning of indigenous slavery. 

Crummell and Delany engaged in rhapsodies over what the redemption of Africa could mean for the redemption of, not only black folk, but the entire human race, as they navigated the beautiful rivers of Liberia, during Delany's visit of 1859.  They had no illusions about "domestic slavery" however.  Crummell unlike Blyden was unwilling to apologize for the abuses of the women's cults and such practices as female genital mutilation.  "Darkness covers the land." said Crummell.  Ceremonial spirit possession must be rooted out, was Delany's position.

But the Afrocentrists do not want to entertain the idea that traditional African societies, like all civilizations, contained the seeds of their own destruction.  I think that was the difference between Crummell's and Blyden's view of Egypt.  Both believed that Egypt was a great cradle of civilization with ties to the rest of the continent, but Crummell (like David Walker) believed that all the ancient civilizations had deadly flaws that led to their decline.  They also believed that these flaws were present in Euro-American civilization.  No human civilization could escape from the depravity of a fallen world unless (in Walker's, Crummell's, Garvey's, or even Blyden's view) it accepted the redeeming power of civilizing Christianity.  Thus, as Garvey often said, the West was in extreme danger of a collapse.  Du Bois agreed with Garvey on this. 

Where Du Bois differed from Garvey, was in the belief he shared with Nkrumah, Awolowo, Azikewe, Robeson, Nyerere, Mboya, and (before they became cynical) the young Kenyatta and Sekou Touree, was in their belief in what Padmore called African Socialism.  Senghor, Diop, Price-Mars, Hayford, and Césair, among others, believed in something similar.  These visionaries were commendable, but their views were pulverized, by an indigenous African venality, without which neocolonialism would have been a joke.  Richard Wright, for all the naivety of his observations on Africa was closer to the truth than he realized; not because Africa was alien to the West, but, as Achebe understood, because it was subject to the same human frailties. 

Africa, no less than Europe, is a construct of the human mind.  Appiah, seems to think that the image of Africa reveals some uniquely African-American fantasy, but I think not.  Where I disagree with Appiah and Tunde Adeleke, is in my belief that Africans are no less culpable than Americans and West Indians of dream-weaving, no less involved in the creation of African utopianism.  Ethiopia has yet to unfurl her noble wings.

Back in the classical period, Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, along with other members of the African Civilization Society, believed that they could make Africa into a "grand center of Negro civilization."  That once Africa had been redeemed everything else would fall into place. Africanus Horton and Samuel Ajai Crowther shared their dreams.  Delany, who contracted "the fever," both literally and figuratively in 1859, apparently survived with no ill effects and apparently tempered his African romanticism.   Garnet never got over his, breathlessly confessing his exaltation to Alexander Crummell on the eve of his departure for Liberia in 1881.  Six weeks after his arrival, he contracted "the fever," presumed to be malaria, and died swiftly on the continent he had so long idealized.

Let us all go to Africa, at least once.   Let us maintain our commitment to Africa's suffering population and to all her scattered children.  But let us remember, in those words drafted by George Schuyler, in parody of Du Bois, much ironic truth is still contained. For now, as in the days of old,

"The Goddess of the Nile weeps bitter tears at the foot of the Sphinx." 

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posted 16 August 2007 / updated 11 October 2007