Think back to your time in the classroom, what can you remember being taught about your African origins? Besides the period of slavery, the struggles of the civil rights sixties and range of inventions innovations and breakthroughs of the 19th and 20th century, not much right.

It’s no secret, nor has it been for some two thousand years Black African people have been around since what many would call the dawn of time. It was the children of Africa that began civilising the world introducing them to the liberal arts like reading, writing, mathematics, medicine, advanced agriculture and stone masonry to name a few. Africa through the middle ages just like the ancient times was the academic headquarters of the world, the home of spirituality, the continent was where the blueprint for modern day society was created.

Sadly, the assignation of self-worth was completed through the barbaric Maafa (African holocaust/ transatlantic slave trade) John Henrik Clarke said: Slavery ended and left its false images of Black people intact. Systemic institutionalised racism ensures the perpetuation of these false images mainly through the entertainment & media platforms but most damagingly through the education & academic systems.

Jamaican born Journalist & Historian, Joel Augustus Rogers, whose numerous works and contributions to the international black community are mostly unknown today understood the importance of highlighting the triumphs of black African excellence. In 1934 he released his version of this title as a crash course to Black African history, to uplift and empower people with less access to information than we do today who faced lynchings and social beratement for succeeding. 2017’s edition was produced to remind the world of J. A. Rogers. On top of that, to combat to the global white supremacist power structure by helping to cement in the minds of all Black African people worldwide that they’re the original standard of excellence.