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Who Betrayed the African World Revolution?: And Other Speeches
This collection of speeches covers an array of topics from the contributions of Nile Vally civilizations to the future of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century.
223 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 18, 2007
Dr. Clarke does an incredible job of stringing together the common historical threads that constitute a cultural imperative among africans in america towards the eventualization of our spiritual, physical, and psyco-socioeconomic freedom. The level of analysis that he provides is almost comforting in the face of a broader society that would regard this field as a psuedo-science.
May 13, 2026
A COLLECTION OF SPEECHES COVERING A RANGE OF TOPICS
John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998) was an African-American historian, professor, and a pioneer in Pan-African and Africana studies.
He said in his June 10, 1992 lecture, ‘Who Betrayed the African World Revolution?’, “We first have to define what exactly is a revolution. Our crisis today is that we do not seem to understand that a revolution means a complete change. In a revolution you do not patch an old society. You replace an old society. When a society … fails to serve its people, the conscious role of those who have suffered from that society is not to prop up that society, but to change that society in such a way that it will never be the same again. When that society was originally built on your sweat, your life… you not only have the right to change that society, you have the responsibility to do so.” (Pg. 22)
He states, “the Caribbean people… did have the finest example of an African cultural continuity of any people living outside of Africa… but it almost disappeared from the Caribbean islands except briefly with the Rastas… who misused African nationalism. It is unfortunate that in some parts of the Caribbean islands, Rastafarianism became a fashion and fad with no connection to the original African nationalism… When you go to the beaches of Jamaica and see Rastas roaming the beach, satisfying these unfulfilled white ladies, I think some of them missed the point.” (Pg. 26)
He reports, “The political and cultural transition of Black America from 1875 to the … decline of Blacks in elected politics… Throughout the African world activists were not petitioning and appealing to the alleged Christian conscience of our oppressors… This is the African revolution that was the preface to the 20th century revolution that we betrayed. Why did we betray this revolution? … who was in charge, who were the spokesmen in the main during those years? They were people who thought our greatest hope was to be like our oppressor instead of destroying our oppressor. Though they fought for a new society, they would model that society on the corrupt and dying society of the oppressor. When the Africans began to ask for a new society, they were asking for an African-dominated society. But most of the Africans asking the questions were trained by the oppressor… and so the methodology of running a state was borrowed from the oppressor.” (Pg. 29-30)
He asserts, “in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement, young people… opened up the door for a generation of Blacks to go to schools that they never would have been able to go to. A generation later, those same Blacks began to look down their noses at the very people who had opened those doors… An army of traitors appeared in the whole African world. They are paid traitors. Some of them are in government… Some of them are heads of states. All they have gotten out of it have been Mercedes-Benzes, some Swiss bank accounts, and the premium of the European women (which is very easy to get). The years between the March on Washington and the assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. need to be seriously studied. These were the years when a lot of people throughout the African world were selfishly betraying the ideas of the Black revolution and making peace with the enemies of African people the world over…. The African revolution had been betrayed on all points.” (Pg. 34-35)
He contends, “At the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. made his most famous and least effective speech… it was a golden opportunity, tragically missed. He had a dream, but he did not have a plan… Although it was not noticeable at the time, the effectiveness of Martin Luther King Jr. began to decline after the March on Washington… The people were turning more and more to … the voice of Malcolm X… He was also calling on them to reclaim their manhood and their womanhood and once more to have the confidence and the skill to rule nations.” (Pg. 40-41)
He observes, “We have not produced a thinker that will bring us out of confusion. We have produced a lot of money-changers, male prostitutes for the establishment. They know how to … deposit their thirty pieces of silver, but they don’t know how to tell you how to revolutionize the community.” (Pg. 82)
He notes, “I have, as a teacher and a researcher, looked at African people within the mail currents of the history of the world. At every single time that Europe came out, it came out to rob you of the energy they needed to survive. They’re doing it in South Africa right now. I’ve told some of these Africans who advocate a multiracial government that you are dreaming and playing the fool. Those who say that we will share the government with the Whites are also playing the fool… If he won’t share power with you HIS country what makes you think you’ve got to share power with them in YOUR country?” (Pg. 83)
He asserts, “Spirituality is real. Organized religion is a formation of man. Nearly everything that is a formation of man had some defect… If you create another religion which says that my religion gives me the right to enslave you because you are an infidel, you are making God an accessory to murder. The misunderstanding of the spirituality extracted from African and the opportunistic remolding of it into something which rationalizes someone’s domination over another people has made all organized religions, to some degree, atheistic because they deny by their actions that God is love and that God is kind and merciful.” (Pg. 87-88)
He argues, “The Europeans would extract from Nile Valley literature the spirituality and elements that would go into making the world’s three major religions. This is an argument for most Blacks who are Moslems, but most Blacks who are Moslems are not true Moslems, they are Arabists. ‘Islam is the Black man’s true religion.’ Okay, I agree with you. Every organized religion is the black man’s true religion because every element that went into the making of it came out of Africa.” (Pg. 90-91)
He asserts, “I found there was nothing especially new about Pan-Africanism. The same as we had Christianity before people gave it a name, we had Pan-Africanism before people gave it a name. And we had Afrocentricity before people put a name on it and called it Afrocentricity, which is an error, because there is no ‘fro’ in Africa. People are putting ‘new’ coats on ‘old’ things, formulizing them and dogmatizing them and giving you the illusion that they are giving you something new. They are rehashing old African ceremonies and telling you that they are giving you a substitute for Christmas, when you could have created the same thing yourself had you taken time to think about it. I’m not saying don’t celebrate Kwanzaa… My argument is against the fake claims made around it that they invented it, when it was here all along. All they did was formalize it, dogmatize it, and give it a name.” (Pg. 100-101)
He states, “One thing that we fail to understand is that we have no friends in this world and we owe the world nothing but a whipping. This is because everybody, who has not already turned on us, has proved that they would do it anytime it was to their convenience economically.” (Pg. 103)
He says, “Integration has been a disaster because integration wasn’t our greatest need. Justice was our greatest need. Once you get justice, who you integrate with socially is a personal matter which has nothing to do with law. Where you send your child to school depends on the needs of your child and your interpretation of those needs.” (Pg. 111-112)
He recounts, “I told [a former student of his] about the myth of Arab Science. What we call Arab Science is really Egyptian Science which has been stolen and re-written by the Arabs. You can tell right now that I have an anti-Arab prejudice. I just don’t like them.” (Pg. 116)
He insists, “You think ‘Africancentricity’ is a narrow thing. It is as broad as your view of the world… Africancentricity was any effort on the part of a person of African descent attempting to return what slavery and colonialism had taken away… What angers me about the whole approach to Africancentricity is the fact that it is so narrow. It is part of our totality as a people. It is part of our style as a people. It began to develop in this African Holocaust and it hasn’t ended. It has continued in its progression.” (Pg. 118-119)
He reports, “Now, Du Bois was hard to take. I had three encounters with Du Bois. He didn’t believe that anybody who did not finish a whole lot of college had anything worth listening to. When I sat with him and discussed Kant… and the philosophy of the categorical imperative, all the philosophical ways of life of the world of Africa and Asia and different religions of the world, he said, ‘Son, are you sure you didn’t finish Morehouse?’ … I said, ‘Dr. Du Bois, I didn’t finish the seventh grade.’… I can’t remember all of the different honorary degrees I’ve got. I’ve got two more coming up in the next month or so.” (Pg. 122-123)
He asserts, “In order to justify the slave trade, the Europeans created an African people in their minds who never actually existed. They created a people with no known culture and no known contact with a civilized way of life.” (Pg. 157)
Although some otherwise sympathetic readers may disagree with some of Clarke’s statements (e.g., about Afrocentricity), this collection of essays will be of great interest to those studying him.
John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998) was an African-American historian, professor, and a pioneer in Pan-African and Africana studies.
He said in his June 10, 1992 lecture, ‘Who Betrayed the African World Revolution?’, “We first have to define what exactly is a revolution. Our crisis today is that we do not seem to understand that a revolution means a complete change. In a revolution you do not patch an old society. You replace an old society. When a society … fails to serve its people, the conscious role of those who have suffered from that society is not to prop up that society, but to change that society in such a way that it will never be the same again. When that society was originally built on your sweat, your life… you not only have the right to change that society, you have the responsibility to do so.” (Pg. 22)
He states, “the Caribbean people… did have the finest example of an African cultural continuity of any people living outside of Africa… but it almost disappeared from the Caribbean islands except briefly with the Rastas… who misused African nationalism. It is unfortunate that in some parts of the Caribbean islands, Rastafarianism became a fashion and fad with no connection to the original African nationalism… When you go to the beaches of Jamaica and see Rastas roaming the beach, satisfying these unfulfilled white ladies, I think some of them missed the point.” (Pg. 26)
He reports, “The political and cultural transition of Black America from 1875 to the … decline of Blacks in elected politics… Throughout the African world activists were not petitioning and appealing to the alleged Christian conscience of our oppressors… This is the African revolution that was the preface to the 20th century revolution that we betrayed. Why did we betray this revolution? … who was in charge, who were the spokesmen in the main during those years? They were people who thought our greatest hope was to be like our oppressor instead of destroying our oppressor. Though they fought for a new society, they would model that society on the corrupt and dying society of the oppressor. When the Africans began to ask for a new society, they were asking for an African-dominated society. But most of the Africans asking the questions were trained by the oppressor… and so the methodology of running a state was borrowed from the oppressor.” (Pg. 29-30)
He asserts, “in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement, young people… opened up the door for a generation of Blacks to go to schools that they never would have been able to go to. A generation later, those same Blacks began to look down their noses at the very people who had opened those doors… An army of traitors appeared in the whole African world. They are paid traitors. Some of them are in government… Some of them are heads of states. All they have gotten out of it have been Mercedes-Benzes, some Swiss bank accounts, and the premium of the European women (which is very easy to get). The years between the March on Washington and the assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. need to be seriously studied. These were the years when a lot of people throughout the African world were selfishly betraying the ideas of the Black revolution and making peace with the enemies of African people the world over…. The African revolution had been betrayed on all points.” (Pg. 34-35)
He contends, “At the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. made his most famous and least effective speech… it was a golden opportunity, tragically missed. He had a dream, but he did not have a plan… Although it was not noticeable at the time, the effectiveness of Martin Luther King Jr. began to decline after the March on Washington… The people were turning more and more to … the voice of Malcolm X… He was also calling on them to reclaim their manhood and their womanhood and once more to have the confidence and the skill to rule nations.” (Pg. 40-41)
He observes, “We have not produced a thinker that will bring us out of confusion. We have produced a lot of money-changers, male prostitutes for the establishment. They know how to … deposit their thirty pieces of silver, but they don’t know how to tell you how to revolutionize the community.” (Pg. 82)
He notes, “I have, as a teacher and a researcher, looked at African people within the mail currents of the history of the world. At every single time that Europe came out, it came out to rob you of the energy they needed to survive. They’re doing it in South Africa right now. I’ve told some of these Africans who advocate a multiracial government that you are dreaming and playing the fool. Those who say that we will share the government with the Whites are also playing the fool… If he won’t share power with you HIS country what makes you think you’ve got to share power with them in YOUR country?” (Pg. 83)
He asserts, “Spirituality is real. Organized religion is a formation of man. Nearly everything that is a formation of man had some defect… If you create another religion which says that my religion gives me the right to enslave you because you are an infidel, you are making God an accessory to murder. The misunderstanding of the spirituality extracted from African and the opportunistic remolding of it into something which rationalizes someone’s domination over another people has made all organized religions, to some degree, atheistic because they deny by their actions that God is love and that God is kind and merciful.” (Pg. 87-88)
He argues, “The Europeans would extract from Nile Valley literature the spirituality and elements that would go into making the world’s three major religions. This is an argument for most Blacks who are Moslems, but most Blacks who are Moslems are not true Moslems, they are Arabists. ‘Islam is the Black man’s true religion.’ Okay, I agree with you. Every organized religion is the black man’s true religion because every element that went into the making of it came out of Africa.” (Pg. 90-91)
He asserts, “I found there was nothing especially new about Pan-Africanism. The same as we had Christianity before people gave it a name, we had Pan-Africanism before people gave it a name. And we had Afrocentricity before people put a name on it and called it Afrocentricity, which is an error, because there is no ‘fro’ in Africa. People are putting ‘new’ coats on ‘old’ things, formulizing them and dogmatizing them and giving you the illusion that they are giving you something new. They are rehashing old African ceremonies and telling you that they are giving you a substitute for Christmas, when you could have created the same thing yourself had you taken time to think about it. I’m not saying don’t celebrate Kwanzaa… My argument is against the fake claims made around it that they invented it, when it was here all along. All they did was formalize it, dogmatize it, and give it a name.” (Pg. 100-101)
He states, “One thing that we fail to understand is that we have no friends in this world and we owe the world nothing but a whipping. This is because everybody, who has not already turned on us, has proved that they would do it anytime it was to their convenience economically.” (Pg. 103)
He says, “Integration has been a disaster because integration wasn’t our greatest need. Justice was our greatest need. Once you get justice, who you integrate with socially is a personal matter which has nothing to do with law. Where you send your child to school depends on the needs of your child and your interpretation of those needs.” (Pg. 111-112)
He recounts, “I told [a former student of his] about the myth of Arab Science. What we call Arab Science is really Egyptian Science which has been stolen and re-written by the Arabs. You can tell right now that I have an anti-Arab prejudice. I just don’t like them.” (Pg. 116)
He insists, “You think ‘Africancentricity’ is a narrow thing. It is as broad as your view of the world… Africancentricity was any effort on the part of a person of African descent attempting to return what slavery and colonialism had taken away… What angers me about the whole approach to Africancentricity is the fact that it is so narrow. It is part of our totality as a people. It is part of our style as a people. It began to develop in this African Holocaust and it hasn’t ended. It has continued in its progression.” (Pg. 118-119)
He reports, “Now, Du Bois was hard to take. I had three encounters with Du Bois. He didn’t believe that anybody who did not finish a whole lot of college had anything worth listening to. When I sat with him and discussed Kant… and the philosophy of the categorical imperative, all the philosophical ways of life of the world of Africa and Asia and different religions of the world, he said, ‘Son, are you sure you didn’t finish Morehouse?’ … I said, ‘Dr. Du Bois, I didn’t finish the seventh grade.’… I can’t remember all of the different honorary degrees I’ve got. I’ve got two more coming up in the next month or so.” (Pg. 122-123)
He asserts, “In order to justify the slave trade, the Europeans created an African people in their minds who never actually existed. They created a people with no known culture and no known contact with a civilized way of life.” (Pg. 157)
Although some otherwise sympathetic readers may disagree with some of Clarke’s statements (e.g., about Afrocentricity), this collection of essays will be of great interest to those studying him.
May 21, 2017
Excellent book!
Read
December 20, 2017Amazing source regarding African and African American history, fantastic notes...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews