African history has been deleted, distorted, stolen, and misrepresented since the Greeks, Arabs, and other invaders set foot on Africa’s shores and sat at the foot of African scholars.
So, engaging African history is not simply an academic interest or study; it’s an act of war. The truth about African history is very threatening to the Global Status Quo, it is a threat to the self-identity of those who unjustly dominate the world. African history isn’t suppressed or distorted because people don’t like us, it’s done because it’s central to the current narrative of the world, to the power and resource distribution of the world.
Black people participate in this too. When we bow to Allah, or Jesus we are validating the distortion of our own history, we are disgracing our own ancestors, we are embracing the myths that attack our history. When we embrace Capitalism, when we embrace the colonial borders and boundaries, when we fail to understand the historical foundations of our current conditions; we participate in the ongoing distortion and destruction of African history. We participate in so many ways.
So, when you research African history, you are engaged in Ideological and Intellectual Warfare.
Our lack of information and misunderstanding about our history is one of the main obstacles to our Liberation and Pan-African Unification.
The further you go back you’ll have to navigate and untangle the research of White “Africologist,” “Anthropologist,” and “Egyptologist.” That’s because Africans were denied the opportunity to do academic work and research for so many decades during colonization, slavery, Apartheid, and Jim Crow; so much of the work was done by Whites, many of them Racist; but you can still find gems and facts if you know how to interpret their writings. Some of the more honest researchers and historians were Albert Churchward, Gerald Massey, and Jean-Pierre Hallet.
When digging into African history you can’t shun White scholars but you can’t take them at face value either.
During the time between the Garvey era and the Black Power era there begin to emerge many Black Radical Scholars (note: if you ain’t a Black Radical Scholar, then you ain’t no kinda Black Scholar, because you simply regurgitate what your Oppressors taught you, which is usually anti-African in nature; also, any Scholar would conclude that Radicalism is the rational postion in all things when their people are under Genocidal Oppression, so, only Black Radical Scholars are valid Black Scholars)….in the area of history. Ivan Van Sertima, Anthony Browder, John Henrick Clarke, John G. Jackson, Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan, Prof. William Mackey, Chancellor Williams, etc.
Their works are abundant, and many of their their lectures can be found of YouTube, you can also buy them (which I recommend) form various distributors on the web.
I know you asked for book titles, but it’s better to start with scholars and go from there; that way you can also look up journals, papers, and lectures from the scholars.
As a researcher, you need to sustain hard copies of your materials, don’t depend too much on digital copies or online resources; every Black home should have a large multi-media library of all of our scholars and works.
I’m don’t really care which particular land area, or tribe I specifically came from; I claim the whole of Africa, I’m a Pan-Africanist. Africa has gone from family, to tribe, to city, to state, to nation; we are in the continental and global unity stage now. We need to work towards uniting the African world; that’s my focus above uniting with a particular community, tribe, or nation within Africa. So there’s not strategic or operational value in finding particular part of Africa I’m from, for me.
I am a member of the vast African Diaspora, the African Diaspora is a African as any African born on the continent of Africa, our cultural products are African, Hip Hop is as African as Zouk, the Mambo, Afro-Beat; you can take the African out of Africa but you can’t take Africa out of the African. Black people didn’t break from African when we were kidnapped, or migrated out, we expanded Africa across the globe, we’ve been expanding Africa across the globe longer than any other Race on this planet; and we didn’t have to use war and vicious empires to do so, because our culture and humanity is so rich. So, I’m an African; and that’s enough for me.
I don’t discourage others from doing their genealogies, but I don’t really need to.
