124th birthday of Chancellor Williams

(Born 22 December 1893, Bennettsville, South Carolina, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

DISTINGUISHED historian and sociologist, prolific author including the authoritative tome, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD (1974) – It would appear that Chancellor Williams has the Igbo genocide poignantly in mind particularly as he writes the very distressing lines in his illustrious study (see quote from p. 218 below) of Africans trained by conqueror-European World occupation forces in Africa to murder other Africans so ruthlessly … In the past 51 years, beginning on 29 May 1966, Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria has been trained and feverishly equipped militarily by its bature British overlords to slaughter 3.1 million Igbo people in Biafra (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and tens of thousands more subsequently (13 January 1970-present day [22 December 2017]) in this foundational, most gruesome, and most devastating genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa … The genocide continues unrelentingly and the immanently hate-driven perpetrators wage this crime against humanity on every conceivable contour of Igbo political, social, economic existence…

Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD (Chicago: Third World, new edition, 1995), 345pp, pbk, US$12.43/£12.99:

Now the shadows lengthened. The Europeans had also been busily building up and training strong African armies. Africans trained to hate, kill and conquer Africans. Blood of Africans was to sprinkle and further darken the pages of their history … Indeed, Africa was conquered for the Europeans by the Africans [themselves], and thereafter kept under [conquest] control by African police and African soldiers. Very little European blood was ever spilled. (The Destruction of Black Civilization, p. 218)

(John Coltrane Sextet, “Out of this world” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Garrett, clarinet, bass; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live at Penthouse Jazz Club, Seattle, US, 30 September 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe