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Authors: Chinua Achebe
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factors that they should send here neither merchants nor wares, because it is our will that in these kingdoms [of Congo] there should not be any trade in slaves nor market for slaves. 4
Dom Afonso was a remarkable man. During his long reign, he learned to speak and read Portuguese. We are told that he studied the Portuguese codified laws in the original bulky folios, and criticized the excessive penalties which were inflicted for even trivial offenses. He jokingly asked the Portuguese envoy one day: “Castro, what is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground?” 5
Here was a man obviously more civilized than the “civilizing mission” sent to him by Europe. Radical African writers are inclined to mock him for being so willing to put aside the religion and ways of his fathers in favor of Christianity. But nobody mocks Constantine I, the Roman emperor who did precisely the same thing. The real difference is that while Constantine was powerful and succeeded, Afonso failed because the Christianity which came to him was brutal and perverse and armed with the gun. Three hundred and fifty years after Dom Afonso, Joseph Conrad was able to describe the very site on which his kingdom had stood as the Heart of Darkness.
Such stories as Dom Afonso’s encounter with Europe are not found in the history books we read in schools. If we knew them, the prevailing image of Africa as a place without history until Europeans arrived would be more difficult to sustain. Young James Baldwin would not have felt a necessity to compare himself so adversely with peasants in a Swiss village. Hewould have known that his African ancestors did not sit through the millennia idly gazing into the horizon, waiting for European slavers to come and get them.
But ultimately Baldwin proved too intelligent to be fooled. He realized there had to be a design behind the consistent tragedy of black people. That was when he said to his nephew: “It was intended that you should perish in the ghetto.”
Note the word “intended.”
When I first came to the United States in the 1960s, I did not meet James Baldwin, because he had gone away to France. We finally did meet twenty years later, in Gainesville, Florida, in 1983, at a memorable event: the annual conference of the African Studies Association. During the unforgettable four days we spent down there at the conference and later visiting old slavery sites, he spoke of me in these words: “my buddy whom I met yesterday; my brother whom I met yesterday—who I have not seen in four hundred years; it was never intended that we should meet.” 6
That word again—“intended.” The first order of business for Africans and their relatives, African-Americans, is to defeat the intention Baldwin speaks about. They must work together to uncover their story, whose truth has been buried so deeply in mischief and prejudice that a whole army of archaeologists will now be needed to unearth it. We must be that army on both sides of the Atlantic. The grievance against Africa sometimes encountered among African-Americans must now be critically examined. The first generation of your ancestors who saw what happened firsthand should be the ones to hold a deep grudge against Africa, if there was good reason to do so.But many of them in fact clung to Africa. Olaudah Equiano, one of the luckiest among them, acquired an education, freed himself, and wrote a book in 1789:
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself
. He preceded his European slave name by his original Igbo name and affirmed his African identity, waving it like a banner in the wind. When and how did the grievance begin to grow and fester? We must find out.
Equiano has been followed down the years by a band of remarkable men and women who realized in their different ways that the intention to separate us must be confounded if we are to succeed: W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Leo
Dom Afonso was a remarkable man. During his long reign, he learned to speak and read Portuguese. We are told that he studied the Portuguese codified laws in the original bulky folios, and criticized the excessive penalties which were inflicted for even trivial offenses. He jokingly asked the Portuguese envoy one day: “Castro, what is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground?” 5
Here was a man obviously more civilized than the “civilizing mission” sent to him by Europe. Radical African writers are inclined to mock him for being so willing to put aside the religion and ways of his fathers in favor of Christianity. But nobody mocks Constantine I, the Roman emperor who did precisely the same thing. The real difference is that while Constantine was powerful and succeeded, Afonso failed because the Christianity which came to him was brutal and perverse and armed with the gun. Three hundred and fifty years after Dom Afonso, Joseph Conrad was able to describe the very site on which his kingdom had stood as the Heart of Darkness.
Such stories as Dom Afonso’s encounter with Europe are not found in the history books we read in schools. If we knew them, the prevailing image of Africa as a place without history until Europeans arrived would be more difficult to sustain. Young James Baldwin would not have felt a necessity to compare himself so adversely with peasants in a Swiss village. Hewould have known that his African ancestors did not sit through the millennia idly gazing into the horizon, waiting for European slavers to come and get them.
But ultimately Baldwin proved too intelligent to be fooled. He realized there had to be a design behind the consistent tragedy of black people. That was when he said to his nephew: “It was intended that you should perish in the ghetto.”
Note the word “intended.”
When I first came to the United States in the 1960s, I did not meet James Baldwin, because he had gone away to France. We finally did meet twenty years later, in Gainesville, Florida, in 1983, at a memorable event: the annual conference of the African Studies Association. During the unforgettable four days we spent down there at the conference and later visiting old slavery sites, he spoke of me in these words: “my buddy whom I met yesterday; my brother whom I met yesterday—who I have not seen in four hundred years; it was never intended that we should meet.” 6
That word again—“intended.” The first order of business for Africans and their relatives, African-Americans, is to defeat the intention Baldwin speaks about. They must work together to uncover their story, whose truth has been buried so deeply in mischief and prejudice that a whole army of archaeologists will now be needed to unearth it. We must be that army on both sides of the Atlantic. The grievance against Africa sometimes encountered among African-Americans must now be critically examined. The first generation of your ancestors who saw what happened firsthand should be the ones to hold a deep grudge against Africa, if there was good reason to do so.But many of them in fact clung to Africa. Olaudah Equiano, one of the luckiest among them, acquired an education, freed himself, and wrote a book in 1789:
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself
. He preceded his European slave name by his original Igbo name and affirmed his African identity, waving it like a banner in the wind. When and how did the grievance begin to grow and fester? We must find out.
Equiano has been followed down the years by a band of remarkable men and women who realized in their different ways that the intention to separate us must be confounded if we are to succeed: W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Leo
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