adballoon This should be shown to all people in all schools as part of their history education. This is an amazing straight forward summary of history and the place that people of color have had in the world throughout time. It gives an excellent perspective on religion and how it is used to conquer and divide. This should be mandatory for all students in public schools throughout America. Because of it's take religion, history and how we got to where we are today I can see why it would be suppressed and ignored by the status quo. Thanks to all who were involved who made this movie possible. I saw it on the Sundance Channel and will never forget it. It reaffirms and adds to most of what I know of historically and religiously.

William J. Fickling This documentary consists almost entirely of the octogenarian, and totally blind from glaucoma, John Henrik Clarke talking to the camera, backed up by old film clips and still photos. We hear at length Mr. Clarke's ideas regarding black nationalism, pan-Africanism and the like while learning almost nothing about Clarke as a person. He tells us that he earned a Ph.D., but we don't learn from where, and that he taught, but we don't learn where. We don't even learn if Clarke was married, has children, where he has lived since age 18, or any of the usual stuff of documentaries. We learn of his admiration for Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Kwame Nkrumah and of his reservations about Martin Luther King (he thinks King was wrong to adopt non-violence as a philosophy). Clarke tells us that history has been dominated by a Eurocentric perspective (undoubtedly true), that black history has been egregiously neglected (undoubtedly true as well), that Africa was ravaged by the slave trade and colonialism (also undoubtedly true), and advocates a pan-African, black nationalist perspective. Fine--that is a respectable point of view, and he is certainly entitled to his opinion. What he is not entitled to do, however, is to distort history, which he does throughout this documentary. Here are some of his assertions, which are at best dubious and at worse demonstrable falsehoods:1) He states that the civilization of ancient Egypt was a black civilization, but offers not one whit of evidence to support this. 2) He states that the ancient Carthaginian civilization, and Hannibal, were black, but again offers no evidence to support this. 3) He states that Egyptian civilization was the crowning glory of the ancient world, an assertion that is absurd by any reasonable standard. In fact, most people would have to strain to recall any lasting intellectual contributions made by the Egyptians, whose civilization was dwarfed intellectually by those of Greece and Rome. 4) He states that Carthage was conquered by "a group of thugs who weren't very well educated--the Romans." Absurd: he is talking about the civilization of Vergil, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, for any of whom there is no equivalent in the Carthaginian legacy. 5) In perhaps the most absurd, and demonstrably erroneous, assertion of all, he states that the fall of Rome was brought about in large part by the rise of Islam, and that Rome was defeated by the Arab Moslems when they invaded North Africa. Fact: Rome fell in 476 as a result of invasions from Gothic tribes from what is now Germany. Islam didn't originate until 632, and the Islamic conquest of North Africa didn't occur until the century after that, so Clarke is off by over 150 years. 6) Clarke states that W.E.B. DuBois was the greatest mind that America has ever produced. Well, he's entitled to his opinion, but he offers no evidence to support this point of view.I could go on, but I'll stop here. The film has some merit in that it presents an alternative to Eurocentrism, but this merit is far outweighed by its outright distortions of fact. In all, a mediocre film at best. 5/10

tikemyler The world does not run on truth but rather on competing perceptions. This is why our politicians deal in "spin" (the weaving of perceptions) and our legal system has a standard of "reasonable doubt" (judgment rendered from how facts are perceived), rather than absolute verity. This documentary, noble in its aim, advances a reconciliation of how this adage has been advanced via the Eurocentric perception of history. Mr. Clarke, an eminent historian and educator, compels the truth seeker with his authoritative command of historical accounts long omitted, manipulated and rejected by the revisionism of European recorders of history. Perhaps others from other cultures will someday endeavor to unearth, reveal and make available to all their histories and make similar contributions to the world's historical reconciliation of truth, for as long as we continue to labor under the false, misguided and in some cases sophistic perceptions that govern our thinking, we will continue to be slaves to the dissent that divides the human family, rather than be liberated by the unbiased knowledge of our shared contributions and value to history. I recommend this film for its advancement of this aim.

Zeech Bought this from Radio WBIA drive, and like a Coltrane solo, it truely flipped me. It's not a lecture, from this heavy, heavy weight historian (think he set up the Black and Puerto Rican Dept. at Hunter) and not a biography. It's a flip of both, JC summarises Afrikan history from 10,000 BC to the present day and during this macro overview, he drops his own past of which I knew nothing. And honestly while watching it with me mate, we both felt inspired equaly from the macro Nile Valley civilizations and the struggle this little brother had growing up.I am so glad to have picked this up before he became and ancestor and watch it whenever I feel depressed, and it does help lift me up. zeech