For a great many people in the World, we look out at it through the prism of some type of religious, social, political, educational, or other kind of unified body of thought. This is our primary way of interpreting, and decoding our World. There is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, with so many variations and factions within each of these, that it can make a person’s head spin. There is Conservatism, Liberalism and Radicalism. There is Marxism and other political lens to look at the World. No matter how comprehensive an individual’s unified body of thought might be, and no matter how rigorously one applies oneself to interpreting and deciphering, there are going to be contradictions that just do not work themselves out in any kind of rational way. This is just a truth that a person must come to grips with. A Pan African Internationalist outlook finds itself with just as many contradictions as any of the other outlooks mentioned above.

Finding the discrepancies in outlook, is a perfect segue into Russell Rickford’s We Are An African People. Rickford tenaciously ferrets out the evolving History of Black Independent Schools, while pointing out much of the ideology behind them. He is careful in his approach to show paradoxes and inconsistencies. This is a good thing. In this effort, we must applaud Rickford for bringing serious attention and focus to a subject, Black Independent Schools, that up-until-now, had been seriously neglected. His analysis is heavy, which means that he is giving the topic the type of spotlight that it deserves. As a person who has taught at one of the independent schools that Rickford analyzes, and who pretty much sees the world through a Pan African Internationalist scope, I find Rickford’s book educational, both in its History and instruction. He lays out in clear detail why the Black Independent Movement evolved slowly from trying to make things work within the existing public school system and then creeping, over time, and coming to a place where it was felt that decent and genuinely good schooling would only find fruition through independent efforts.

What I like most about Rickford’s book is that it clearly shows that Black folks began, as a basic foundation, that schools, at minimum, had the duty of teaching our children to be functionally literate. There was no grand theory behind this. This was just an elementary expectation (pun intended!) that was felt to be needed, and in place, before any other type of philosophy, or anything else, could be built upon it. Black educators and Black parents began with the accepted-given that our children are to be functionally literate before we proceed on to any further educational efforts. This is us being Booker T. Washington-like practical in our desires of a basic given. Sadly, though, the sheer absence of this “given” in the public school sphere is one of the reasons that led to the Black Independent School Movement.

I would argue, that though many Black Independent Schools often went on to erect elaborate edifices of Historical, Philosophical and Cultural outpourings that they wanted their students to ingest, at bottom, what was wanted, first and foremost, was functional literacy. With functional literacy, any group of students can rationally and intelligently attack and approach their World, in ways that can possibly benefit their future freedom. Without it, it is virtually impossible. In saying this, I think it is fair to quote from one of the blurbs on the back of the book to properly summarize where Rickford’s book takes us:

We Are An African People is an insightful and impressively researched study of an important aspect of the Black Power and early Black Studies Movement that had previously received little scholarly attention. Through his focus on independent black nationalist educational institutions, Russell Rickford convincingly reveals Black Power as both a visionary and practical movement —James Smethurst, author of The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism In The 1960s and 1970s.

There is nothing that I disagree with in Mr. Smethurst’s analysis. I would just highlight the fact that the Black Independent School Movement was BOTH visionary and practical. This seems the most fair thing that a person can say about the phenomenon. It was visionary and it was practical. This is its most essential benefit to us in perpetuity.