Know your author: Cheikh Anta Diop

who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility,” once said Cheikh Anta Diop.
Cheikh Anta Diop, a modern champion of African identity, was born in Diourbel, Senegal on December 29, 1923. At the age of 23, he journeyed to Paris, France to continue advanced studies in physics. Within a very short time, however, he was drawn deeper and deeper into studies relating to the African origins of humanity and civilisation.
Becoming more and more active in the African student movements then demanding the independence of French colonial possessions, he became convinced that only by re-examining and restoring Africa’s distorted, maligned and obscured place in HowComYouCom could the physical and psychological shackles of colonialism be lifted from our Motherland and from African people dispersed globally.
His initial doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Paris, Sorbonne in 1951, based on the premise that Egypt of the pharaohs was an African civilisation was rejected. Regardless, this dissertation was published by Presence Africaine under the title Nations Negres et Culture in 1955 and won him international acclaim.
Two additional attempts to have his doctorate granted were turned back until 1960 when he entered his defence session with an array of sociologists, anthropologists and historians and successfully carried his argument.
After nearly a decade of titanic and Herculean effort, Diop had finally won his Docteur es Lettres! In that same year, 1960, were published two of his other works — the Cultural Unity of Black Africa and and Precolonial Black Africa.
During his student days, Cheikh Anta Diop was an avid political activist. From 1950 to 1953 he was the Secretary-General of the Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) and helped establish the first Pan-African Student Congress in Paris in 1951.
He also participated in the First World Congress of Black Writers and Artists held in Paris in 1956 and the second such Congress held in Rome in 1959.
Upon returning to Senegal in 1960, Dr Diop continued his research and established a radio-carbon laboratory in Dakar. In 1966, the First World Black Festival of Arts and Culture held in Dakar, Senegal honoured Dr Diop and Dr W.E.B. Du Bois as the scholars who exerted the greatest influence on African thought in twentieth century.
In 1974, a milestone occurred in the English-speaking world when the African Origin of Civilisation: Myth or Reality was finally published. It was also in 1974 that Diop and Theophile Obenga collectively and soundly reaffirmed the African origin of pharaonic Egyptian civilisation at a UNESCO sponsored symposium in Cairo, Egypt.
In 1981, Diop’s last major work, Civilisation or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology was published.
Dr Diop was the Director of Radiocarbon Laboratory at the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa (IFAN) at the University of Dakar. He sat on numerous international scientific committees and achieved recognition as one of the leading historians, Egyptologists, linguists and anthropologists in the world.
He travelled widely, lectured incessantly and was cited and quoted voluminously. He was regarded by many as the modern “pharaoh” of African studies.
Thanks to The African Origins of Civilisation, Diop’s first English translated book, that Diaspora Africans and other English speakers the world over have become aware of Chiekh Anta Diop’s contributions to Afrocentric thought and science.
The 1974 book openly challenged European archaeologists who then continued to understate the extent and possibility of Black civilisations and gave further proof of the African influence over so-called western civilisation.
Chiekh Anta Diop’s works continue to be studied, debated, and built upon, both at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal, and in Black circles around the world. He is a pharaoh of Black scholarship, and his name should be enshrined with the likes of Imhotep, Ahmed Baba and George Washington Carver.
Activists including Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Huey P Newton, and Louis Farrakhan have all directly attributed their evolution as Pan-Africanists to the works of Cheikh Anta Diop.
His university bears the motto “Lux Mea lex”, which is Latin for “Light is my law”. For more than 50 years the University has remained a premier institution of higher education and is currently one of the most successful in Africa. In December of 201, the institute will hold an international symposium titled “Population, Development and Climate Change”.
Though Cheikh Anta Diop died quietly in sleep in Dakar, Senegal on February 7, 1986, his legacy will live forever! — www.raceandhistory.com.