THE collective heritage of Mankind that persists in our memory and asserts itself continuously into our references is inhabited by men who were courageous enough to challenge the idolatry of the day, and chip away the plaster that covers the truth about the idols we thought were real.Ivan Van Sertima belongs to that heritage of courage to challenge the idols, with a legacy to us of scholarship across human variations.
Thus, he proceeded with a priesthood of other scholars to resurface with new and ignored information to tear down the pseudo-intellectual facade of racist mythology and paint a true landscape of the African presence on Earth.
The very first time I heard of Van Sertima was the day Dudley Charles began explaining to me about this exciting book he’d bought at the Universal Bookstore that outlined the arrival of Africans in the New World before Christopher Columbus.
After work that day, I hurried down to the bookstore, whose owner, Ovid Holder, was a good friend. I browsed through the book, ‘They came before Columbus’. But I was short on cash, so I didn’t buy it then. But I did recall J.A. Rogers mentioning about the Olmec of Mexico. But this book was much more; and I had to get a copy. Ivan Van Sertima would never leave my mind again.
The collection of books that involves Dr. Van Sertima envelopes a volume of historical and anthropological information necessary to counter the tons of volumes of picture books, novels, movies, TV shows and Internet images that still follow the trend that excludes African humanity from its extensive interactions with other variations of humanity.

WHY’S THAT

It must be understood why that came to be. The racist need to academically and spiritually reduce Africa to an agreed level of inferiority was spawned by the leaning on the African for forced support through slavery as a means to master tropical colonies; to keep severed any bonds of kinship that could connect the peasantry of Europe with this new human chattel.
Religion had to be twisted to demonise the African. Ethiopia, Kush, Egypt, Elam, Cartage… The cradles of civilisation had to be taken from the African man so as to appease the questioning conscience of their own humanity.
New idols were commissioned; the African noses of ancient statues were broken off, and European writers who endeavoured to be truthful were not celebrated. The academic and philosophical path that culminated with Adolf Hitler was launched long before he was born.
There were others before Van Sertima who had lifted the torch of truth. He and his colleagues were not hesitant to celebrate Chancellor Williams, Theophile Obenga, Von Wuthenau, and Cheikh Anta Diop among others. Their contributions proceeded to unmask, through scholarship and indelible evidence, the vast onslaught of pseudo-academia that had nurtured a popular culture ‘stock imagery’ of ethnic falsifications perpetrated through the visual arts, games and movies, and also by reputable academic publications such as National Geographic.

STRICTLY BUSINESS
Most of them, however, argue that what they do is more business than documentary, and that the paying audience is the misguided, indoctrinated non-Afro population.
The debate on the African presence in the Americas that ‘They came Before Columbus’ and ‘African presence in early America’ stimulated posed tremendous probabilities against the old order.
Professor Van Sertima was invited by UNESCO to join the International Commission for a new History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind. He was honoured for his work in this field, that also incorporates the publishing of “The Golden Age of the Moors”, “Blacks in Science”, “Egypt, Child of Africa”, “African Presence in Early Asia”, “Black Women in Antiquity” and other titles. He was also asked by the Swedish Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976-1980.
The books, tapes and DVDs that envelope Dr. Van Sertima and his colleagues present a corps of current research material that creative persons in the arts and education can rely on to fill the vacuum in the context of certain historical lessons on Africans in and out of Africa.
Scenarios from Cambodia, to India to Moorish Europe can be explored; the potential for a vast, popular literature is open to the creative writer and artist, should he dare to explore. The world today has the space for creative honesty.
Recently, two movies, ‘Noah’ and ‘Gods of Egypt’, but the latter mostly, dabbled with the same pre-Hitler world view, but were given the “thumbs down” by Hollywood.
That institution has moved a long way from David Wark Griffith of “Birth of a Nation” fame, whose incredible talent did not prevent him from glorifying the KKK in his 1915 epic.
Ivan Van Sertima’s contribution deserves more than a chair at UG; it deserves the creative community taking its themes into the minds of the future.