The Historical Legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop : His Contributions To A New Concept of

African History
Author(s): John Henrik CLARKE
Source: Présence Africaine , 1er et 2e TRIMESTRES 1989, Nouvelle série, No. 149/150,
HOMMAGE à Cheikh Anta Diop (1er et 2e TRIMESTRES 1989), pp. 110-120
Published by: Présence Africaine Editions

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24351980

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John Henrik CLARKE

The Historical Legacy

of Cheikh Anta Diop :
His Contributions
To A New Concept of African History

Cheikh Anta Diop was considered to be one of the greatest

scholars to emerge in the African world in the twentieth century.
The years of his life (1923-1986) were years of transition and
change for African people and the whole world. I am fortunate
enough to say I knew Cheikh Anta Diop as friend, colleague and
master teacher. When alive he was Africa's greatest thinker. He is
recognized as the world's foremost African scholar. Using the dis
ciplines of linguistics, cultural and physical anthropology, history
and the knowledge of chemistry and physics which his research
required, he forged new theoretical pathways and revealed new
evidence in the quest to uncover the ancient origins and unifying
principles of classical African civilization.
Dr Diop's view of Egypt as a black civilization earned him the
enmity of Eurocentric historians. However, his views were
grounded in research in the hard sciences which he used to
demonstrate the melanin content of mummified remains.

Dr Diop was not only an innovative theoretician but, as a

pragmatist, he published works which outlined programmatic sug
gestions for the political and economic unification of Africa. In
some ways he went beyond Pan-Africanism. He was a scholar
activist, dedicated to science in the interest of his people. He saw
Africa and its people as the hope of humanity.
I last saw him alive at the conference in Brazzaville, in March
and April 1985. This conference dealt with the one-hundredth
Anniversary of the Berlin Conference on the partitioning of
Africa. In his keynote address he outlined the ancient and
medieval history of Africa and demonstrated the African roots of
world civilization. He was more than a historian : he was also a
scientist of the highest calibre. All African people, everywhere, are

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THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP... 111

closer to understanding their destiny because of the person

and the work of Cheikh Anta Diop.
In his book, Black Africa : The Economic and Cultural Basis
For a Federated State, he presented a blueprint for saving the
mineral wealth of Africa for African generations still unborn. This
book is not widely read nor understood. This is unfortunate because
it is one of his more useful books. His last book, Civilization and
Barbarism, was being translated from the French when he passed
and will be published in the United States in 1989. This is his last
comprehensive work and a monumental achievement in scholarship.
Fate is not generous in the distribution of great men of the
calibre of Cheikh Anta Diop. We as a people are fortunate to have
encountered his genius and to have enjoyed his findings in our his
tory through his brief lifetime. Cheikh Anta Diop has left us a mis
sion and a legacy. Carrying out this mission and honoring this legacy
is the greatest monument we can erect to him. He will rest in peace
only when his people are free of foreign domination and we are
secure in understanding our history and our world mission.
*

* *

I first became aware of the writings of Che

reading the proceedings of the First and Seco
Negro Writers and Artists. His work was a re
sonally because I had not encountered in print African scholars
who were so forthright in challenging prevailing misconceptions
about African history and putting forth this new creative view
with documents. When I read his contribution to this First Confe
rence, « The Cultural Contribution and Prospects of Africa », I
began to inquire about his other writings. I discovered later that
the contents of the article was part of a chapter of a future book.
In reading the proceedings of the Second Conference held in
Rome, my curiosity grew concerning this new voice in the African
wilderness of historiography. I later inquired about his work and
discovered that Présence Africaine had published a comprehensive
work of his authorship on African history. I later corresponded
with him as one of the founding members of The Black Academy
of Arts and Letters, and when I was asked to compile a list of
the twenty most important books on Africa written by Africans,
his book, already referred to, was listed.
When I attended the second meeting of the International Con
gress of Africanists in Senegal that met at the University of
Dakar, I sought out Cheikh Anta Diop. I was surprised to learn
that he was not one of the participants. His office and laboratory
were located on the campus of the University, three hundred

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 112 PRÉSENCE AFRICAINE

yards from the assembly hal

The organizing body, The Af
predominantly white-dominat
gnized the scholarship of Che
to a new concept of African
work was mentioned at the Conference. I visited him in his labo
ratory, while attending the Conference, and discussed the long
effort that African-Americans and Caribbean-Americans have
engaged in the writing and preservation of African history. Some
of them he had never heard of.
The first meeting with Cheikh Anta Diop went well, better
than I had expected. I had brought with me one of the French
translations of the Conference. For years I have had a fair read
ing knowledge of French without being able to speak it at all.
Cheikh Anta Diop called his son who brought over one of his
books that was unknown to me. He gave me an autographed
copy that I still have and treasure. The book is : Antériorité des
Civilisations Nègres, Mythe ou Vérité historique ? My first meet
ing with Cheikh Anta Diop was an intellectual turning point in
my life. Later that evening at the Conference I had the honor of
meeting the great scholar from Niger, Boubou Hama. His address
to this conference emphasized the fact that African scholars will
be the final interpreters of African history.
*

* *

I returned to the United States and spent the

trying to convince American publishers that th
Anta Diop should be translated into English and
United States. I first mentioned this to my fri
the late Alioune Diop, who encouraged me to co
repeated disappointments. It was not until 1974
publisher, Lawrence Hill, saw fit to publish
Origin of Civilization : Myth or Reality. The bo
by Professor Mercer Cook, former head of t
Languages, Howard University, who was fluent
same time I was still an associate editor of Freedomways Maga
zine and wrote an essay review of the book. I felt its publication
was a personal achievement. The following are parts of that review
that was published in several magazines and reprinted in the
Anthology, The Freedomways Reader. The essays reads in part :
« Cheikh Anta Diop, one of the most able of present
day scholars writing about Africa, is also one of the greatest
living African historians. His first major work, Nations
nègres et Culture (1954), is still disturbing the white histo

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THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP... 113

rians who have made quick reputations as authorities on

African history and culture. In this book, Dr. Diop shows the
interrelationships between African nations, north and south
and proves, because in this case proof is needed, again and
again, that ancient Egypt was a distinct African nation and
was not historically or culturally a part of Asia or Europe.
More myths about Africa are put to rest in another one of hi
books, The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa (1959). The publ
cation of his first book in the United States, The African
Origin of Civilization, Myth or Reality, is a cause for celebra
tion. This book and others of recent years, all by African wr
ters, have called for a total reconsideration of the role that
African People have played in history and their impact on th
development of early societies and institutions.
« Cheikh Anta Diop was born in the town of Diourbel, in
Senegal, on the West coast of Africa in 1923. His birthplace
has a long tradition of producing Muslim scholars and oral
historians. This is where his inspiration and interest in history,
the humanities and social sciences from an African point of
view began. After the publication of his first book, Nation
nègres et culture, that had been rejected as a Ph.D. thesis at
the Sorbonne in Paris, he became one of the most controve
sial of present day African historians. Nations nègres et
culture is both a reassessment of the African past and a chal
lenge to Western scholarship on Africa. He refutes the myth
of Egypt as a white nation and shows its southern African or
gins. It is his intention to prove that, through Egyptian civil
zation, Africa has made the oldest and one of the most signif
cant contributions to world culture. This is not a new argu
ment that started with Cheikh Anta Diop's generation of Afr
cans. The Ghanaian historian, Joseph B. Danquah, in hi
Introduction to the book, United West Africa at the Bar of the
Family of Nations, by Lapido Solanke, published in 1927
four years after Cheikh Anta Diop was born, said exactly the
same thing. His statement reads :
"By the time Alexander the Great was sweeping the civi
lized world with conquest after conquest from Chaeronia to
Gaz, from Babylon to Cabul ; by the time the first Aryan
conquerors were learning the rudiments of war and govern
ment at the feet of the philosopher Aristotle and by th
time Athens was laying down the foundations of European
civilization, the earliest and greatest Ethiopian culture had
already flourished and dominated the civilized world fo
over four centuries and a half. Imperial Ethiopia had con
quered Egypt and founded the XXV Dynasty and for a
century and a half the central seat of civilization in the

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 114 PRÉSENCE AFRICAINE

known world was held by

Negro, maintaining and defe
and Persian Empires of the E
"This, at the time when E
lized world in culture and
West was not, and the first
was yet to be held. Rome was nowhere to be seen on the
map and sixteen centuries were to pass before Charlemagne
would rule in Europe and Egbert became the first King of
England. Even then, history was to drag on for another
seven hundred weary years before Roman Catholic Europe
could see fit to end the Great Schism, soon to be followed
by the disturbing news of the discovery of America and the
fateful rebirth of the youngest of world civilizations" ».

Here, Dr. Danquah is showing that African history is the

foundation of world history. In the present book by Cheikh Anta
Diop, and in most of his other works, his objective is the same.
In his first major work on history, Dr Diop said :

« The general problem confronting African history is this :

how to reorganize effectively, through meaningful research,
all of the fragments of the past into a single ancient epoch,
a common origin which will re-establish African conti
nuity... If the Ancients were not victims of a mirage, it
should be easy enough to draw upon another series of argu
ments and proofs for the union of the history of Ethiopian
and Egyptian societies with the rest of Africa. Thus com
bined, these histories would lead to a properly patterned
past in which it would be seen that (ancient) Ghana rose in
the interior (West Africa) of the continent at the moment of
Egyptian decline, just as the Western European empires
were born with the decline of Rome ».

While using Africa as the vantage point and the basis for this
thesis, Dr. Diop does not neglect the broader dimensions of his
tory. He shows that history cannot be restricted by the limits of
ethnic group, nation or culture. Roman history is Greek as well as
Roman, and both Greek and Roman history are Egyptian,
because the entire Mediterranean was civilized by Egypt and Egypt
in turn borrowed from other parts of Africa, especially Ethiopia.
Africa came into the Mediterranean world mainly through
Greece, which has been under African influence. The first Greek
invasion of Africa was peaceful and scholarly. This invasion
brought in Herodotus. Egypt had lost its independence over a
century before his visit. This was the beginning of the period of

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THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP... 115

foreign domination over Egypt that would last, in different

for over two thousand years.
♦

* *

The African Origin of Civilization, Myth or

volume translation of the major sections of
culture and Antériorité des civilisations nègre
have challenged and changed the direction of
place of African people in history in scholarly
world. It was largely due to these works that
with W.E.B. Dubois, was honored as « the write
the greatest influence on African people in the
at the World Festival of Arts held in Dakar, S
The main thesis of the present work is a red
place of Egypt in African History in particula
tory in general. Dr. Diop calls attention to the
logical and anthropological evidence that suppo
civilization of Egypt, he maintains, is Afric
early development. In his book, Dr. Diop say
Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written cor
rectly until African historians connect it with the history of
Egypt ».
He approaches the history of Africa frontally, head on with
explanations, but no apologies. In locating Egypt on the map of
human geography he asks and answers the question : who were
the Egyptians of the Ancient World ?
Over a generation ago, African-American historians such as
Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. DuBois, Willis N. Huggins,
J.A. Rogers and Charles C. Seifort read the works of radical his
torians in their attempt to answer this question. This tradition
continued and is reflected in the works of present days black his
torians such as John G. Jackson's Introduction to African Civili
zations (1970), Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan's Black Men of the Nile
(1972) and Chancellor Williams' The Destruction of Black
Civilization: Great Issues of a Race From 4500 B.C. to
2000 A.D. (1971).
Until the publication of James G. Spady's article « Negritude,
Pan-Benegritude and the Diopian Philosophy of African History »
in a bibliography on African Affairs, volume V, n°. I, January,
1972, and the interview by Harun Kofi Wangara, published in
Black World Magazine, February 1974, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop
was known to only a small group of black writers and teachers in
the United States. Most of his books were originally published by

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 116 PRÉSENCE AFRICAINE

Présence Africaine, the Paris

national Society of African C
Egyptology developed in con
the slave-trade and the colon
that Egypt was literally take
made an extension of Europe.
ancient African history. African history is out of kilter until
Ancient Egypt is looked upon as a distinct African nation.
The Nile River played a major role in the relationship of
Egypt to the nations of Southeast Africa. During the early history
of Africa, the Nile was a great cultural highway on which ele
ments of civilization came into, and out of, inner Africa. Egypt's
relationship with the people in the South was both good and bad,
depending on the period and the Dynasty in power.
In his chapter, « What Were the Egyptians ? », Dr. Diop
explains the rise and fall of Egypt's Golden Age and the begin
nings of the invasions, first from Western Asia, that turned this
nation's first age of greatness into a nightmare. This was the
period of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings. During this time, accor
ding to the traditional story, seventy Jews, grouped in twelve
patriarchal families, nomads without industry or culture, entered
Egypt. These Jews left Egypt four hundred years later, six-hun
dred-thousand strong, after acquiring from African people all of
the elements of their future religion, tradition and culture, inclu
ding monotheism. Whosoever the Jews were when they entered
Africa, when they left, four hundred years later, they were ethni
cally, culturally and religiously an African people. In this part of
his book, Cheikh Anta Diop leaves no room for argument.
In the chapter « Birth of the Negro Myth », Dr. Diop shows
how African people, whose civilizations were old before Europe was
born, were systematically read out of the respectful commentary
of human history. This examination is continued in the chapter
« Modern Falsification of History ». Here, Cheikh Anta Diop deals
with how Western historians, for the last five hundred years, wrote
or rewrote history glorifying the people by European extraction and
distorted the history of the rest of the world. Those who read this
book seriously are in for a shock and a rewarding experience in
learning. This is a major work by a major African historian.
*

♦ *

The work of Cheikh Anta Diop has had its greates

useful meaning for African writers, scholars and te
outside of Africa, especially those in the United Sta
Caribbean Islands. These Africans in exile have found new

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THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP... 117

directions and a new definition of themselves in reading these

books.
The Journal of African Civilization has emphasized his work
in several volumes and has in process a future volume devoted to
an appraisal of the work of Cheikh Anta Diop by African-Amer
ican colleagues. His last major work, Civilisation ou Barbarie, is
presently being translated into English for publication in the
United States. In my opinion, the work of Cheikh Anta Diop is
Pan-Africanist, Nationalist and Socialist with an intellectual
balance between all three.
His two essays in the Special Issue of the Journal entitled Nile
Valley Civilizations, points new directions for African scholarship
and reminds us that the Nile Valley was the beginning of our
ancient culture and the beginning of so much of the world's
culture. I do not think it is too much for me to say that Cheikh
Anta Diop is a resource for the whole of the African world and
his contribution to a new concept of African history is universal.
We must preserve his message in order to preserve ourselves.
♦

* *

In retrospect, a life as rich and useful as that o

Diop's would have been untimely had it lasted a hu
All of his books are monumental, including the sm
insight into what has happened and what is still a
both inspiring and frightening. He seemed to hav
eyes that saw tomorrow and wanted you to see it w
In my address to the closing meeting of the Fo
the International Congress of African Studies, in
1978, I made the following reference to the work
Diop :
« Mister President,
Secretary-General,
Honorable Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the American delegation consis
African Studies Association and the African
dies Association, I want to thank the conven
4th Session of the International Congress of
dies for their effort in bringing us here for a
cussion on a subject vital to the existence and
of the people of this continent. The theme of
The Dependence of Africa and the Ways of
the Situation, has long historical roots and
sions and we have not touched on all of them.

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118 PRÉSENCE AFRICAINE

most of us know that our

not done full justice to the
we have located the surfac
At best, we have located th
lightly. We have given man
right questions. Who is to blame for the dependence of
Africa, and who is responsible for finding a remedy ? Most
of us do not seem to be aware of the fact that African think
ers have already asked the question and thought out some
answers that are worth serious consideration.
« In 1960, Présence Africaine in Paris published a work
by the Senegalese historian, Cheikh Anta Diop, Black
Africa : The Economic and Cultural Basis of a Federated
State.
« This book, first published nearly two decades ago,
dealt with the theme of this Congress. With all due respect
to our papers and deliberations this week, Professor Diop,
in my opinion, brought more to the subject than our com
bined efforts.
« In the English edition of the same book, recently
published in the United States, he brought his information
up-to-date by first dealing with the energy crisis now prevai
ling in Africa. He stated :
"The days of the nineteenth century dwarf states are
gone, our main security and development problems can be
solved only on a continental scale and preferably within a
federal framework. Enlightened self-interest itself argues for
the adoption of this framework before it is too late".
« He calls attention to the drain of this nation's energy
by the major Western powers in the following statement in
his book :
"Belgian-American interests preparing for the political
instability that would prevail in the colonies following
World War II, working at maximum rate and beyond,
mined all the uranium of the then Belgian Congo in less
than ten years and stockpiled it at Oolen in Belgium. The
Shinkolobwe mines in Zaire today are emptied having sup
plied the major part of the uranium that went into the
Nagasaki and Hiroshima Bombs. Until 1952, Zaire was the
world's leading uranium producer ; now it ranks sixteenth in
reserves and has ceased to be counted among the producers.
This one example shows how fast our continent can have its
non-renewable treasures sucked away while we sleep."
« Professor Diop's book is about all the things we have
been talking about here this last week. The origins of

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THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP... 119

African dependence and what can be done about it. His

approach is Pan-Africanist and Socialist.
« The African-American historian, William Leo Hans
berry, wrote a shorter work on this subject called Africa,
World's Richest Continent. Professor Hansberry calls atten
tion to the fact that the agricultural and hydro-electric
potential of Africa is the greatest in all the world. His find
ings provoke this question : if Africa is so rich, why are
most African people so poor ? Who is managing the riches
of Africa ?
« The Guyanian writer, Walter Rodney, wrote a history
of the origin and growth of this dilemma in his book How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
« The essence of the point that I have been trying to get
across is that the problem of Africa dependence and the
search for a remedy is not new. It is part of a crisis that
started in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the
second rise of Europe, the development of the slave trade
and the colonial system that followed it.
« The dilemma is both topical and historical. This
dilemma will not be resolved until all Africa is completely
liberated and freed from dependency.
« This is not the problem only of the Africans who live in
Africa. This is a problem, and a fight, that must be shared by
African people everywhere. In this effort to complete the
liberation of Africa and free Africa from dependency, we
must extend the base of Pan-Africanism into a concept of an
African World Union. This should be the mission of the pre
sent generation of Africans. It should also be the legacy that
we leave for generations of Africans still to come. »
*

* *

White American « scholars » never got to kn

Diop and they are poorer for it. In the last yea
Americans, more laymen than scholars, wer
and calling him The Pharaoh of History.
Cheikh Anta Diop was the inspiration for th
Nile Valley Civilizations held in Atlanta, Geo
1984. The idea for this conference started
Dr Yosef ben-Joachannan and the Harlem le
The First World Alliance. The idea was to ca
scholars, mainly those in exile in the Western
a dialogue on the future direction of the study
When the organizing committee intregrate
« scholars », most of them second-rate, and di

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 120 PRÉSENCE AFRICAINE

of the leading black scholars t

withdrew his support along wi
Cheikh Anta Diop was unable
two papers he prepared were p
History, September 1984.
In the first, « Africa : Cradle
nued an inquiry that he starte
tion, « If Africa is the birthpl
also logical that Africa is the b
This is carefully written and
Europeans and Americans who searched for early man and his
culture in Africa.
His second paper, « Africa's Contribution to the World's
Civilization : The Exact Sciences » is about a little known and
neglected subject. The subject is little known because Western
scholars, in most cases, refused to concede that Ancient Egypt
was a part of Africa. The basic theme of this article and the main
works of Cheikh Anta Diop is to prove this point.
In this regard, Cheikh Anta Diop has not been alone. A
number of scholars have furnished proof in documents that the
Ancient Egyptians spread from South to North, the Nile River
being the great cultural highway that it still is. Cheikh Anta Diop
has given us additional scientific proof of the southern origins of
Egypt. In fact, his work should have ended the debate.
In his only extensive lecture tour in the United States, Cheikh
Anta Diop spent most of the time at the Atlanta University com
plex, the largest consortium of Black Schools in one place in this
country. He made a lasting impression on the community. The
essence of his message was that African humanity is international
because we are a world people. He said he had come to the
United States to meet another part of his African family. It was
at Atlanta University that he was called « The Pharaoh of
African History ». His was one of the greatest goodwill visits of
an African scholar of our times.

John Henrik CLARKE

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