The Destruction of Black Civilization

Chancellor Williams's The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500B.C.to 2000A.D. is a book of enduring power that has retained its ability to provoke from the time of its first publication by Third World Press in the 1970s. In it, Williams begins telling of the destruction of black civilization with his own story, the story of an inquisitive young boy who grew up in South Carolina and wanted to know why it was that white folks had all the power and control. Thus it could be said that when he was very young, Chancellor Williams began the monumental task of striving to reveal a vital evidenced history of black people. As an adult, Williams worked 16 years to accomplish this task because, as he explains it in his book, he needed to make it an unhurried summary of history. His research worked at specifically answering several important questions: (1) How did all-black Egypt become all-white Egypt? (2) What were some of the details of that process that assisted in erasing the feats of the African race from recorded history? (3) How was it that the black inventors of writing came to lose this art? (4) Are the African people one race? (5) If so, how do we explain the multiple languages and cultural varieties? (6) Is there some historical explanation for black disunity and black self-hatred? (7) How do we explain black desire for white and Asian rulership?

His profound work recovered a lost and destroyed history, and he intended it to make known the wholly unified guiding ontological system that had persevered from a black past to a black present over several thousands of years. An important aspect of his work involves the utilitarian directive of an African ethos that can guide all black people onward. The search for a black heritage was a major concern for Chancellor Williams, for he believed that only when African descendants learn about their past as a people can they find their true identity, and he perceptively acknowledged that otherwise black people will be gliding in the swales and currents of the heritages of other people.

Williams's admonitions to black people can be described as sobering, and his imperative is prophetic given that he conducted his research in the tumultuous times of the late 1950s through the 1960s. His work is a concise summarization of an intended two-volume review of African history, and it contributed to the revision of history that has sought to make things right and truthful. The belief that African descendants need to know the truth of black history, which remained unacknowledged in the West for centuries, drove Williams's research.