Professor John Glover Jackson, "One of Our Greatest Cultural Historians" and more

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In the video presentation that that follows, among many others pearls of wisdom and knowledge of history, Dr. Jackson will orient us to the closeness of the relationship of some of our greatest historians and scholars of the 19th and early 20th century...Including his relationship with Dr. Arthur Schomburg, Dr. Willis Huggins, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, and J.A. Rogers.
I also include a biography of Dr. Jackson written by Dr. Runoko Rashidi and a essay by Dr. Jackson himself entitled "Jesus Was A Negro".

PROFESSOR JOHN GLOVER JACKSON (1907-1993):
HUMANIST AND PIONEER TO THE PAST

By RUNOKO RASHIDI

John Glover Jackson, one of our greatest cultural historians, was born on April 1, 1907 in Aiken, South Carolina. Jokingly, he would sometimes tell me: "Runoko, I was born on April Fool's Day and I've been a fool ever since!" At the age of fifteen he moved to Harlem, New York, where he entered Stuyvesant High School. During his student days Jackson began to engage in indepth historical research and was soon writing short essays about African-American history and culture. These essays were so impressive that in 1925, while still a high school student, Jackson was invited to write articles for the Honorable Marcus Garvey's newspaper, the Negro World.

In addition to his growing activities as a writer, in 1930 Jackson became a lecturer at both the Ingersoll Forum and the Harlem Unitarian Church. Among his teachers and associates during this formative phase of his life were Hubert Henry Harrison (whom Jackson would later refer to as the "Black Socrates"), Arthur Alfonso Schomburg (founder of the Schomburg Library in New York), Joel Augustus Rogers (one of the greatest historians and journalists of the twentieth century) and Dr. Willis Nathaniel Huggins (a brilliant historian and ardent Pan-Africanist).

In 1932 young Jackson became the Associate Director of the Blyden Society. Named after the outstanding race leader of the nineteenth century, Edward Wilmot Blyden, the Blyden Society performed an outstanding role as an African-American support group for Ethiopia after Italy's brutal 1935 African invasion. Among the very early and, as Jackson was quick to point out, most talented students to come out of the Blyden Society is the now highly respected and almost venerated Dr. John Henrik Clarke.

Although these were difficult years for John Jackson, with race-prejudice, poverty and illness his frequent companions, he continued to produce well-researched, informative and controversial works. In 1934 Jackson coauthored with Dr. Huggins A Guide to the Study of African History. In 1937, also with Dr. Huggins, he wrote Introduction to African Civilizations. In 1939 he authored Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization, and Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth in 1941. His insightful literary contributions to The Truthseeker Magazine continued regularly from 1930 until 1955.

Beginning in the 1970s John Glover Jackson produced several major books. These works include Man, God, and Civilization in 1972, Introduction to African Civilizations in 1974, Christianity Before Christ in 1985, and Ages of Gold and Silver in 1990. Professor Jackson, one of the most remarkable scholars of our time, taught and lectured at colleges and universities throughout the United States and resided during his last years in southside Chicago, Illnois. John Glover Jackson joined the ancestors October 13, 1993.

John Glover Jackson was one of the major influences in my life, and I was blessed to know him personally. I met Professor Jackson for the first time in 1982 while working at Compton College. After our initial encounter, we were to spend many hours on the phone and in person dissecting history, scholarship and politics. The twilight years of his life were spent in a nursing home in southside Chicago. He remains one of my great heroes.

SOURCES:

http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html

See Related Video Presentations by Dr. Rashidi in this curriculum:

Dr. Runoko Rashidi "INTRO TO HISTORICAL AFRICAN INFLUENCE WORLDWIDE"

Egypt (Kemet): The Source Of The Bible, Part 1

Jesus Was A Negro

A Rationalistic Review

By John G. Jackson (1933)

Source: John G. Jackson Virtual Museum

"That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology—that still clings to the thoughts and tinges with its potential influence the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe and America, is indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of destiny, of the insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft produce the most grave and momentous results."

Eckler

A little over a half century ago Kersey Graves created quite a furor in the orthodox religious circles by writing a book which flaunted the sensational title of The World's 16 Crucified Saviors. One of the most interesting parts of the book is a section in which the author discusses the racial identity of Jesus and offers evidence that the Christian Savior was a black man. The passage referred to reads as follows:

There is as much evidence that the Christian Savior was a black man, or at least a dark man, as there is of his being the son of the Virgin Mary, or that he once lived and moved upon the earth. And that evidence is the testimony of his disciples, who had nearly as good an opportunity of knowing what his complexion was as the evangelists who omit to say anything about it.

In pictures and portraits of Christ by the early Christians he is uniformly represented as being black. To make this more certain a red tinge is given to the lips; and the only test in the Christian bible quoted by orthodox Christians as describing his complexion represents it as being black.

Solomon's declaration, I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem' (Sol, I, 5), is often cited as referring to Christ. According to the bible itself, then, Jesus Christ was a black man. Let us suppose that at some future time he makes his second advent to the earth, as some Christians anticipate he will do, and that he comes in the character of a sable messiah, how would he be received by our Negro hating Christians of sensitive olfactory nerves. Would they worship a Negro God?

The question might arise in the mind of the reader: "Well, the argument of Kersey Graves sounds plausible enough, but really we need a great deal more corroborative evidence before we can give his conclusions more than palling notice?" This question, the writer believes, is justified. In questions of historical controversy only the most careful consideration of evidence should satisfy us.

To say that the early pictures and images of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus represent them with black complexions is not enough. Our statement must be backed up by archaeological evidence. This evidence, fortunately, was collected by the Great British Orientalist, Sir Godfrey Higgins, and has been preserved for posterity in his monumental work, The Anacalypsis, or An Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions.

Sir Godfrey Higgins informs us that "In all the Romish (Catholic) countries of Europe, France, Italy, Germany, etc., the God Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures to be black. The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black. If the reader doubts my word he may go to the Cathedral at Moulins—to the famous Chapel of the Virgin at Loretto—to the Church of the Annunciata—the Church at St. Lazaro or the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa—to St. Francisco at Pisa—to the Church at Brixen in Tyrol and to that at Padua—to the Church of St. Theodore at Munich—to a church and to the Cathedral at Augsburg, where a black virgin and child as large as life—to Rome and the Borghese chapel of Maria Maggiore—to the Pantheon—to a small chapel of St. Peters on the right hand side on entering, near the door; and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches in countries professing the Romish religion.

"There is scarcely an old church in Italy where some remains of the worship of the black virgin and black child are not to be met with. Very often the black figures have given way to white ones and in these cases the black ones, as being held sacred, were put into retired places in the churches, but were not destroyed, and are yet to be found there…

"When the circumstance has been named to the Romish priests they have endeavored to disguise the fact by pretending that the child had become black by the smoke of candles; but it was black where the smoke of a candle never came and, besides, how came the candles not to blacken the white of the eyes, the teeth and the shirt, and to redden the lips? Their real blackness is not to be questioned.

"… A black virgin and child among the white Germans, Swiss, French and Italians" (The Anacalypsis, Vol. I, Book IV, Chap.I). My friend, Mr. J.A. Rogers, the well-known traveler and journalist, has seen quite a large number of these black images of the Madonna and infant in his European travels and has discovered that some of the images possess African features. Evidently early Christians must have thought that Jesus Christ was a member of the Ethiopian race or they would not have so stressed the dark hue of the skin of the Savior and his mother in their pictures and statues.

According to Christian dogma, Jesus is the Son of God. Since children are, as a rule, similar in complexion to their parents it is reasonable to assume that God also is black. This conclusion is both logical and scientific. "There is a strong reason the think," declares Joseph McCabe, "that man was at first very dark of skin, wooly haired and flat nosed." And since the bible tells us that man was created in God's image, then beyond all doubt God must be of dark complexion with unmistakably African features.

Some of my friends have suggested that should it be generally believed in these United States that either Jesus or Jehovah was of sable hue that the Christian church would soon go out of business. They reason that white citizens of the nation, on account of race prejudice, would have absolutely no use for a black God: and the colored citizens would not have any confidence in an Ethiopian God who had so long neglected his own race of people. However, I do not think such a situation will come to pass, for the overwhelming majority of people do not believe what is plausible or what is true; they believe what is comforting or pleasing.

References Resource Bibliography:

Christianity and the Black/African Influence


Compiled by Eric Kofi Acree, Librarian


Adamo, David Tuesday. Africa and the Africans in the Old Testament. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1998.

Anyike, James C. Historical Christianity African Centered. Chicago, Illinois: Popular Truth, Inc., 1994.

ben-Jochannan, Yosef. African Origins of the Major "Western religions". Baltimore, Md.: Black Classic Press, 1991.

_____. The Black Man's Religion, and Extracts and Comments from the Holy Black Bible. New York: Alkebu-lan Books Associates, 1974.



ben-Jochannan, Yosef Finch, Charles; Oduyoye, Modupe; Saakana, Amon Saba
The Afrikan Origins of the Major World Religions. London: Karnak House, 1988.

Boyd, Paul C. The African Origin of Christianity: A Biblical and Historical Account, volume 1. London: Karia Press, 1991.

Cone, James H. For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1984.

Douglas, Kelly Brown. The Black Christ. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994.

Drake, St. Clair. Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology, volume 2. Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1990.

Dudley, Dean. History of the first Council of Nice: A World's Christian Convention, A. D. 325: With a life of Constantine. New York: ECA Associates, 1990.

Dunston, Bishop Alfred G. The Black Man in the Old Testament and its World: A Study of the Facts That Are Revealed in the Authorized (King James) Version of the Holy Bible During the Days in Which the Old Testament Was Lived. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992.

Felder, Cain Hope. Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class, and Family. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989.

Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

Graves, Kersey. The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, or, Christianity Before Christ: Containing New, Startling, and Extra Ordinary Revelations in Religious History, which Disclose the Oriental Origin of All the Doctrines, Principles, Percepts, and Miracles of the Christian New Testaments and Furnishing a Key For Unlocking Many of its Sacred Mysteries, Besides Comprising the History of 16 Heathen Crucified Gods. Cleage Group, 1991.

Isichei, Elizabeth Allo. A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ; Lawrenceville, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1995.

Jackson, John G. Christianity Before Christ. Austin, Texas: American Atheist Press. 1985.

_____. Man, God and Civilization. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1972.

_____. Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth. Austin, Texas: American Atheist Press. 1988.

_____. Was Jesus Christ a Negro?: The African Origin of the Myths and Legends of the Garden of Eden. ECA Associates, 1987.

L'Huillier, Peter. The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical Councils. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995.

Luibhéid, Colm. The Council of Nicaea. Galway, Ireland: Officina Typographica: Galway University Press, 1982

Mosley, William. What Color Was Jesus? Chicago, Illinois: African American Images, 1987.

Peet, T. Eric (Thomas Eric). Egypt and the Old Testament. Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool ; London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1924.

Taryor, Nya Kwiawon. Impact of the African Tradition on African Christianity. Chicago, Illinois: The Strugglers' Community Press, 1984.

Quattlebaum, M. C. Niger is Really Black: Blacks, Browns, Burnt-Faces Throughout Holy Writ. Sarasota, Florida: Lindsay Curtis Pubishing Company, 1984.

Webb, James Morris. The Black Man The Father of Civilization Proven by Biblical History. San Francisco, California: Julian Richardson Associates Publishers, 1984.

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