Author Description

BLACK HISTORY EXTRAVAGANZA honoring Dr. Ben-Jochannan is a labor of love for someone intimately associated with the master teacher for some 40 years as student, traveling companion, mentee and friend. In repayment, this effort to help acknowledge and sustain his name, life's work and historical and philosophic outlook is necessary so the younger generation know of the enormous intellectual light this extraordinary scholar represented in those extremely challenging social and intellectual times of the last half century. As the systematic onslaught against African (Black) personality continued, one particular scholar, lecturer, historian, publisher, archaeologist and Tour Guide to Egypt stood unmoved and unrelenting in defense of an entire people's history, culture and spiritual well-being. In this, Dr. Ben took on all disparaging comers as he educated and nurtured intellectual "cubs" becoming equipped to challenge historical distortion and omission manifested from the false mantle of global white supremacy. To accomplish the enormous task, Dr. Ben wrote, innovated self-publishing, lectured, and took students to museums and then to Egypt pointing out contradictions between the Existential Data and the symbolic Representation of Ancient Egypt. As all this unfolded, Dr. Ben took "offensive" and "friendly fire;" yet the great man continued to extol the cultural and historical achievements attained by Africans, placing them in proper perspective within the natural and historical process of humanity's cultural progress represented in Nile Valley and other African "high cultures" of intellectual, scientific, and art and architectural achievements. In the many areas dealt with in Extravaganza's Table of Contents, viz., Introduction; The Awesome Egyptian Temple; Who were the Ancient Egyptians;? The Archaeology of Egypt; The Art of Ancient Egypt; Architecture of Ancient Egypt; The Religion of Ancient Egypt; and the History of Egypt, Dr. Ben made a substantial impact while educ