All rights reserved.
Copyright 2008 by
The Black Think Tank
Our logo is a "cylinder tangential to
a sphere. It is the only case where
the equality between the height of
a cylinder and the diameter of the
circle at the base, which is also that
of the inscribed sphere, is of
particular interest. This figure is the
one that Archimedes chose as an
epitaph, because as he said, it
represented his “most beautiful
discovery." Diop contended that
Archimedes had (somewhat in the
tradition of Christopher Columbus)
discovered; something that had
existed long before it was
discovered "an established
theorem discovered 2,000 years
before him by his [African]
predecessors."
-- from Cheikh Anta Diop's
Civilization or Barbarism: An
Authentic Anthropology.
(Translated from the French by Yaa-
Lengi Meema Ngemi, Edited by
Harold J. Salemson and Marjolijn
de Jager, Lawrence Hill Books,
1991, p.242. First published by
Presence Africaine, Paris, 1981).
The Black Think Tank was founded on
January 21, 1979, by individuals who had
been at the center of the late 1960s birth and
battle for black studies. The Black Think Tank
pioneered a Black Male/Female Relationships
movement, including "black love" (Kupenda
groups, Kupenda being Swahili for 'to love')
designed to help our people learn to love
again, to feel loved, to love ourselves and,
therefore, one another, inasmuch as we
already know how to hate one another. The
Black Think Tank then issued The Call and
was the catalyst for the contemporary Rites
of Passage movement for African-American
boys in the popular manual, Bringing the
Black Boys to Manhood: The Passage, which
promulgated lectures and workshops
nationally and internationally, including in
promulgated lectures and workshops
promulgated lectures and workshops
nationally and internationally, including in  
London and the Caribbean islands. Related  
books of importance and influence followed
quickly: The Endangered Black Family and The
Miseducation of the Black Child. The Black
Think Tank is here by grim necessity and
popular demand. We, as a people, can see
clearly now that the old ideas have not
worked, and some that might have worked
have yet to be tried. Our leaders have argued
back and forth for decades lost forever over
the many good thoughts and corollaries of
Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, and W.
E.B. DuBois, but have never really
implemented either one of them.
We must continue to be receptive to the
insights and strategies of the anointed and
renowned among us, past and present, but
now is the time to penetrate and jump-start
the wisdom of the people, the unsung,
unseen and unheard, those Langston Hughes
once dubbed the "misbred, misread, and
misled." Thus, Langston anticipated the
words of his fellow alumnus of Pennsylvania's
Lincoln University, Kwame Nkrumah: "Go back
to the people; live with them, learn from
them, love them. “Start with what they know,
build on what they have, for the people may
be the best thing that you will ever have.”

This is where the Black Think Tank comes in,
dedicated to forging a facility to tap into and
foment the undying enthusiasm of our race to
think and grow free.
Studies in
Black Male Female
Relationships








This in from The CV Drum
“The monthly news beat and photo
album of African-American
communities in America

Drumbeat 1:  "Dr. Julia Hare’s
latest book
The Sexual and Political Anorexia
of the Black Woman: The Pain Guts
and Glory of the Black Woman
First Edition 2008
Black Think Tank Books
San Francisco

CLICK HERE TO GET IT NOW!

Drumbeat 2: "No disrespect to
stellar research synthesizers
withletters behind their names like
Cornel West, Ph.D., and Skip Gates,
Ph.D., reports the Drum, "but my
money is also with those researchers
who can also “make it plain” for the
masses, in addition to “talking shop”
in the academy.  This skill is also
what made giants like Carter G.
Woodson, Dr. Carlton Goodlett and
Flo Kennedy,J.D. stand out and be
loved in many African com munities.
Dr.Julia Hare is from that mold.Rather
than pull from a few press releases.
That came across my desk in recent
months about Dr.Hare’s book, I am
briefly focusing exclusively on why
this book should be a must read for
those interested In transdisciplinary
and African-centered scholarship,
which are about re-empowering the
women warriors in our communities
(which also means re-empowering
the entire community)."
"Transdisciplinarity is about the
understanding of the present world,
which cannot be accomplished
in the framework of traditional
disciplinary research. Plain and
simple, add this excellent book to
your personal or professional
library." -- CV Drum
CVDrumnews@gmail.com
A Conversation  
with the Father of
Black History








                 Carter G. Woodson

We are now in the final week of
Black History Month. Allow us to
introduce to some and present to
others the father of Black History
Month.

Once upon a time, in the late
nineteenth century, there lived a
black boy in the cornfields of
Virginia. He was the son of former
slaves in a poor family of nine
children with little hope for
advancement until his father
heard they were building a high
school in Huntington, West
Virginia and moved his family
there. And so it was that at the
age of twenty, with hardly any
formal education, Carter G.
Woodson became a belated
student at the Frederick Douglass
High School.  

Proving to be a quick study,
Carter G. had graduated from high
school by the time he was twenty-
two, but weary of working in the
coal mines where he felt despised
by whites and looked down on by
blacks, he bravely entered a
liberal Christian college in
Kentucky named Berea, the first
college in the South to admit
students of every race and both
genders on an equal basis, while
charging no tuition from that day
to this.Today Carter G. Woodson
is one of the college’s most
revered alumni.  In fact, one of us
(Dr. Julia Hare) has keynoted
Berea’s Annual Carter G. Woodson
Weekend.

Interestingly, Woodson attended
Berea at first for only two years
(until it closed its doors to
blacks). He then enrolled at the
University of Chicago but returned
to Berea when it reopened its
doors to blacks. Then, armed with
a bachelor’s degree in literature,
he taught for a United States
government sponsored program of
education in the Philippines
before returning for graduate
study at the University of
Chicago, which would not
recognize his degree at Berea,
forcing him to get another
bachelor’s degree before the
master’s at the University of
Chicago.  Not to be outdone by
Berea, the University of Chicago
includes Carter G. Woodson (as
well as Nathan Hare) on its
official website as among
approximately 150 “Notable
Alumni” living and dead. After
leaving Chicago, Carter G.
Woodson went on to become the
second black person to receive a
Ph.D. in history at Harvard. W.E.B.
Dubois, with whom Woodson
would later collaborate informally
in the building of Crisis magazine,
had been the first to do so.
By then Carter G. Woodson had
arrived at the categorical
recognition that something was
missing in the education of black
people at every level in American
society. He saw vividly both the
visible and hidden consequences
of what he regarded as the tragic
fact that “the role of his own
people in American history and in
the history of other cultures was
either being ignored or
misrepresented.” According to
Wikipedia, Woodson “recognized
and acted upon the importance of
a people having an awareness
and knowledge of their
contributions to humanity,” and
set out immediately on a mission
and what would become the
making of the legacy known to us
today as “Black History Month.”
We are privileged indeed to
converse with Prof. Woodson.
across the generations of our
oppression in America, on the
occasion of Black History Month.

Nathan and Julia Hare: Prof.
Woodson, what a pleasure and a
privilege it is to have a few words
with you. Your invention of “Black
History Week” remains one of the
most influential and cherished
accomplishments of our people in
America, and we are happy to
inform you that it is now “Black
History Month.” We’ve never
actually met you before, but we
studied your writings in high
school. One of your books was
the text for a course in “Negro
History” at the Toussaint L’
Ouverture High School in Slick,
Oklahoma in the days of Jim Crow
segregation, and your good works
and wise words were often on the
tongues of teachers at Tulsa’s
Booker T. Washington High
School, now a predominantly
white magnet school called
“Washington” (as if in George
Washington, because the white
kids didn’t want to go to a school
named after Booker T.). So you
can see, Dr. Woodson, that the
struggle continues. We have read
that you wanted black history
taught in our schools and
communities every day. Why were
you so concerned about black
history and what drove you on to
give it such an important and
irrevocable place in American
society and the world? Why is
black history so important?

Prof. Woodson: If a race has no
history, if it has no worthwhile
tradition, it becomes a negligible
factor in the thought of the world
and it stands in danger of being
exterminated.

The Hares: Could you teach on
that for a moment Dr. Woodson?

Woodson: In history, of course,
the Negro had no place in this
curriculum [designed and
controlled by their white
oppressors].  He was pictured as
a human being of the lower order,
unable to subject passion to
reason, and therefore useful only
when made the hewer of wood
and the drawer of water for
others. No thought was given to
the history of Africa except so far
as it had been a field of
exploitation for the Caucasian.
You might study the history as it
was offered in our system from
the elementary school throughout
the university, and you would
never hear Africa mentioned
except in the negative You would
never thereby learn that Africans
first domesticated the sheep,
goat, and cow, developed the
idea of trial by jury, produced the
first stringed instruments, and
gave the world its greatest boon
in the discovery of iron. You
would never know that prior to
the Mohammedan invasion about
1000 A.D. these natives in the
heart of Africa had developed
powerful kingdoms.

The Hares: We’re afraid it isn’t
much better in that respect
today, Dr. Woodson. The idea of
including black history in the
elementary and secondary
curriculum is still a struggle,
though there is an ambivalent and
ambiguous trend toward offering
black courses of study such as
you once advocated, not only in
history but “literature, religion,
and philosophy, journalism,
business, and science and
mathematics.” [Woodson, “The
Seat of the Trouble,” The
Miseducation of the Negro], You
also once observed that even so-
called “educated” blacks,
especially the “’highly educated,”
do not like to hear such
expressions as ‘Negro literature,’
‘Negro poetry,’ ‘African art,’ or
‘thinking black’“  
These things,” you remarked, “did
not figure in the courses which
they pursued in school [and]
highly educated Negroes
denounce persons who advocate
for the Negro a sort of education
different in some respects from
that now given the white man.”
But can you imagine why, at this
late date, this regrettable
situation still exists?

Woodson: No systematic effort
toward change has been possible,
for, taught the same economics,
history, philosophy, literature and
religion which have established
the present code of morals, the
Negro’s mind has been brought
under the control of his
oppressor. The problem of holding
the Negro down, therefore, is
easily solved. When you control a
man’s thinking you do not have to
worry about his actions. You do
not have to tell him not to stand
here or go yonder. He will find his
“proper place” and will stay in it.
You do not need to send him to
the back door. He will go without
being told. In fact, if there is no
back door, he will cut one for his
special benefit. His education
makes it necessary.

The Hares:  So that’s why with
the emergence of the “black
bourgeoisie” class we have so
many “Black Anglo Saxons,”
brothers and sisters with white
minds in black bodies, people the
brothers and sisters in “the hood”
call “bourgies,” “oreos” and
“coconuts” (brown on the outside,
white on the inside) who go to
sleep at night and dream that
they will wake up white. And don’
t mention our black leaders.  
Many at first could not believe
that an African-American family
could make it to the White House,
and they have failed to carry on
the work of Martin Luther King,
not to mention the black
consciousness movement of the
1960s. So now our leaders are
mainly either funded or elected
officials or appointed outright by
the white powers that be, much
in the manner of the old
plantation overseers. They are
nothing but “leading blacks” (so-
called leaders, without any
followers or any plan not given to
them or approved by their
oppressors). These leading blacks
are too often those we see on the
podium receiving awards and
certificates as “black leaders.”

Woodson: The difficulty is that
the “educated Negro” [on the
whole] is compelled to live and
move among his own people
whom he has been taught to
despise. As rule, therefore, the
“educated Negro” prefers to buy
his food from a white grocer
because he has been taught that
the Negro is not clean. It does
not matter how often a Negro
washes his hands, then, he
cannot clean them, and it does
not matter how often a white
man uses his hands he cannot
soil them. The educated Negro,
moreover, is disinclined to take
part in Negro business, because
he has been taught in economics
that Negroes cannot operate in
this particular sphere. The
“educated Negro” gets less and
less pleasure out of the Negro
church, not on account of its
primitiveness and increasing
corruption, but because of his
preference for the seats of
“righteousness” controlled by his
oppressor. This has been his
education…

The Hares: This conversation
sure is getting good, Prof.
Woodson.  You remind us of The
Willie Lynch Letters being
circulated these days about the
perhaps apocryphal legend of a
speech that a British slave owner
of the West Indies (“lynching” is
said to have derived from his
name) delivered on the bank of
the James River back in 1712 to
teach slave owners in the colony
of Virginia the art of “The Making
of a Slave.”  Mr. Lynch also was
given to teach his methods or
“Cardinal Principles for Making a
Negro.” Much of this was
anticipated in the book you wrote
in 1933, The Miseducation of the
Negro. You’ll be happy to know it’
s still popular today. Essence
magazine listed it a year or so
ago as a bestseller in black
bookstores, along with Dreams of
My Father by Barack Obama, and
our own book, The Miseducation
of the Black Child. Yes! Would you
believe it?

Woodson: That’s amazing. The
education of the Negro child is
under outside control… The so-
called modern education, with all
its defects, however, does others
so much more good than it does
the Negro, because it has been
worked out in conformity to the
needs of those who have
enslaved and oppressed weaker
peoples…the large majority of the
Negroes who have put on the
finishing touches of our best
colleges are all but worthless in
the development of their
people…The educational system
of a country is worthless….Men of
scholarship, and prophetic
insight, must show us the right
way and lead us into light….The
mere imparting of information is
not education.

The Hares: Our schools have
become killing fields and holding
cells. We continue to spend a lot
of time in our schools training the
black child but not enough time
educating them. When you train a
child they can become an
employee. When you educate a
child the child can become an
employer. When you train a child
the child can get a nice job, but
when you educate a child has a
choice of a career. When you train
a child they learn to memorize,
and sometimes quite well, but
when you educate a child, the
child learns to think. Many
predicted that the present
generation would become the
“children of the dream.”  Instead
they’re part of a generation that
is both the most incarcerated and
murdered (usually by one
another). We have children who
no longer respect their parents or
any other authority figure. Unable
to respect their parents they in
turn cannot respect themselves.
We must seize back control of our
children’s minds. We’ve lost the
right to discipline in the schools,
the home, the church and the
street. Taking discipline away
from the parents, under threat of
sending the parents to jail, the
teachers are afraid of the
principle, the principals are afraid
of the school board, the school
board is afraid of the
superintendent, the
superintendent is afraid of the
parent, the parents are afraid of
the kids, and the kids are afraid of
nobody. It is time for us to act.
Black people need to deal with
our history 365 days of the year.
Every month must be Black
History Month.*

By Nathan and Julia Hare, *"A
Conversation with the Father of Black
History,  (a front page feature continued on
page 2, reprinted from the SUN REPORTER ,
Volume 65, Number 8, February 25, 2010,
pp. 1-2.
Contact: Phone: 415-671-1000. Fax: 415-
671-1005. Email: sunreporter@sbcglobal.net
  
                      ************















      Black Studies
             What's New?

                    Something Old
                   Something New

Seventeen lonely years after its original
publication, what appears to be an
emerging Black Think Tank underground
classic (The Miseducation of the Black
Child) is noted a "bestseller" by Essence
magazine, along with such as "The Willie
Lynch Letters" by William Lynch and
Kashif Malik Hassan-el, "Dreams From
My Father" by Barack Obama, and The
Mis-Education of the Negro by the late
great Carter G. Woodson.

Touted in the coveted paperback
nonfiction category,The Miseducation of
the Black Child competed with books
initially published in hardback to make the
rounds of mainstream libraries and
media reviewers before morphing into
paperback on "the Great White Way." By
contrast The Miseducation of the Black
Child came  straight out of The Black
Think Tank, based on living lessons
learned by individuals who have taught in
the public schools of the District of
Columbia, Chicago and San Francisco,
fueled by  clinical observation as well as
academic and informal interaction with
late 1960s college student activists,
community and street intellectuals at
Howard University as well as the
battlegrounds of the strike for black
studies at San Francisco State, creatively
applied to overhauling the public schools
and educating every black man, woman
and child.
                            ***********