Destruction of Black Civilization – Chancellor Williams

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

Destruction of Black Civilisation is a widely read classic exposition of the history of Africans on the continent, the people of African descent in the United States, and in the diaspora. This is a well-researched scholarly work detailing the development of civilisation in Africa and its destruction.

This book attempts to answer the question “Why are black people always on the back foot?”. It is a very strong challenge to the other extremist view of black inferiority. Arguing strongly in favour of black pride and black unity. Despite the charged nature of the discourse, it contains very many facts of African history that are less known and acclaimed, probably because they do not fit in with modern stereotypes of African history, constructed in the nineteenth century that was dominated by “standard” notions of African inferiority. For example, the contributions of early African civilisation to technological advancement, the role of Sudan in Egyptian civilisation, black resistance in Nubia to Arab encroachment.

The reader should, however, be warned that this book does not pretend to be a passive account of black history. The author is very proactive and radical in his interpretations; intending the book as a blue print for mobilising the black race against a supposed historical conspiracy by white and arab races to marginalise it.

“I was convinced that what troubled me and what I wanted to know, was what troubled the black masses and what they wanted to know. We wanted to know the whole truth, good and bad. For it would be a continuing degradation of the African people if we simply destroyed the present system of racial lies embedded in world literature only to replace it with glorified fiction based more on wishful thinking than on the labours of historical research.”