Abraham, Patriarch of a Nation

In the Catacombs of Rome (cubiculum C), painted about 329 A.D. 

Abraham, Patriarch of a Nation

Did you know? 

You are the descendants of a mighty nation that reaches back beyond the confines of a story that contradicts what you are taught to believe. It is the beginning of the knowledge to our origins that is before slavery. Yes, contrary to what you have been taught of histories intertwine with American folklore there is an ancestral heritage you know little of. It begins within the pages of a book that has been the foundation of the World's so-called "religious doctrines," but it is much more to us...."The Set Apart Scriptures," or as it is known to mainstream society "The Bible."

Our story begins with Abraham, when The Most High called on him and revealed to Abraham his destiny: 

At the time Abraham was living in Ur with his Father and the rest of his family.

Ur (biblical, Ur of the Chaldees), ancient city of Mesopotamia. Its ruins are approximately midway between the modern city of Baghdâd, Iraq, and the head of the Persian Gulf, south of the Euphrates River, on the edge of the Al ajarah Desert. The site of Ur is known today as Tall al Muqayyar, Iraq.

Source: *Wikipedia

Terah, Abraham's father and other family members were worshipping idols and participating in other iniquities (sin).

Genesis 12:1-9

Now The Most High had said to Abram;

1“Get out of your country,

From your family

And from your father’s house,

To a land that I will show you.

2 I will make you a great nation;

I will bless you

And make your name great;

And you shall be a blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you,

And I will curse him who curses you;

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

4 So Abram departed as the The Most High had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. 6 Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land.

7 Then the The Most High appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to The Most High, who had appeared to him. 8 And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to The Most High and called on the name of the Yah. 9 So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.

Abraham was a loyal and obedient servant to The Most High and through his faith he became a friend and he was favored by The Most High.

Genesis 15:1-5

1 After these things the word of the The Most High came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”

2 But Abram said, “Yah, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!”

4 And behold, the word of The Most High came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” 5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

Genesis 15:12-16

12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. 14 And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

Verse 13 states: "Then He said to Abram: 

“Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years."

There is only one people who have been taken captive and has been in a land not of their origin as strangers. Who has been afflicted and servants (slaves) for four hundred years?

All black people involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade!

The Most High goes on to say:

Genesis 17:1-7

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, The Most High appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty Yah; walk before Me and be blameless. 2 And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face, and Yah talked with him, saying: 4 “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.

The covenant is with the Twelve Tribes of Israel and their descendants. The blessings to non-Israelites will come through the true Israelites (walking in faith) professing the knowledge of the Good News, if they choose to believe in the truth.

Genesis 17:9-11

9 And Yah said to Abraham: “As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. 10 This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; 11 and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you.

The Most High told Abraham that many descendants will come from him and He also made a covenant that was expected to be followed generation after generation. We are the inheritors of that covenant today. Further proof of that fact is in Deuteronomy 28, specifically verse 68.

Deuteronony 28:68:

68 “And the The Most High will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you, ‘You shall never see it again.’ And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

Is there any other people who have been taken by ships specifically with the sole intent of making them slaves in another land ?

The word “buy" in this context means "save."

So now, you know the beginning of our story, it’s up to you to do the research and confirm the truth for yourself!

Recommended books to read in your research:

From Here To Timbuktu by Rudolph Windsor: A History of the Ancient Black Races.

The Valley Of The Dry Bones by Rudolph Windsor: The Conditions That Face Black People in America Today.

The Negro Question: Books 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. by Lee Cummings

Into Egypt Again With Ships: A Message To The Forgotten Israelites By Elisha Israel

Robert Smalls: Courage on the High Seas

Robert Smalls

In Beaufort, South Carolina a family plot in the churchyard of Tabernacle Baptist Church rests the remains of Robert Smalls. In his honor is a monument with the inscription that was spoken by Smalls to the South Carolina legislature in 1895:

"My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life."

Courage on the High Seas

Little is known of Robert Smalls in mainstream American History, however what he contributed to history and this country, specifically black history should be duly noted because what is not known is he was the founder of the South Carolina Republican Party, among other significant contributions he made throughout his lifetime. 

Robert Smalls was born in a cabin on April 5, 1839, his mother Lydia Polite was a slave to Henry McKee in Beaufort, South Carolina. Smalls worked as a house slave until the age of 12. His owner John McKee sent him to Charleston, South Carolina to work as a waiter, ship rigger and sailor. All his earnings were to go to McKee, this arrangement continued until he was 18 and negotiated to keep all but $15 of his monthly pay. This allowed Smalls to save his money. 

A year earlier on December 24, 1856 Smalls married, Hannah Jones, a slave owned by the Kingman family, she was five years his senior and already had two children. With their owner's permission they settled into an apartment together and soon Hannah gave birth to two children, Elizabeth Lydia on February 1858  and Robert Jr three years later. Smalls tried to purchase his family and Kingman agreed for $800, he only had $100. As slaves there was no guarantee they could remain together as a family, at any time they could be sold off or worst, this led Smalls to incorporate a plan.
In 1861, Robert Smalls, a 22-year-old mulatto slave who’s been sailing these waters since he was a teenager: intelligent and resourceful, defiant with compassion, and an expert navigator was hired as a deckhand on the confederate transport steamer Planter and eventually worked his way up to become a wheel-man, more or less a pilot, though slaves were not honored by that title. 

As a result, he was very knowledgeable about Charleston Harbor.

The Planter was under the command of Commander Brigadier General Roswell Ripley, the commander of the Second Military District of South Carolina. The transport steamer was commissioned to deliver military weapons to the Confederate forts, meanwhile Union ships were blocking the harbors, this was an avenue that meant freedom for many slaves if they were able to reach the Union ships. The Navy commanders were accepting runaway slaves as contraband.
 

Smalls told his wife to be prepared when the time came.

With the civil war now in its second year, the Union Navy had blockades around most of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the Confederates were defending Charleston, South Carolina and its coasts.  It was the evening of May 12, 1862 and the 140 foot Steamship Planter docked for the night. It was heavily armed for the next morning, there were two hundred rounds of ammunition, a 32 pound pivot gun, a 24 pound howitzer and four hundred other guns. The three white officers, Captain Relay, pilot Samuel H. Smith and engineer Zerich Pitcher decided to leave the ship for the night leaving the eight slaves on the ship alone. Smalls revealed to the other slaves his plans to commandeer the ship, completely aware of the dangerous plight they were about to undertake they agreed with the understanding if caught they would not be taken alive. They were willing to sink the ship with explosives they had planted in the hull of the ship.

Smalls was often jokingly teased that he looked like Captain Relay, even displaying some of his mannerism. He decided to use it to his advantage and put on Relay's straw hat and naval jacket. At 2:00 am on May 13, Robert Smalls orders his crew to put up the boiler and hoist the South Carolina and Confederate flags as decoys and eased out of the dock. The ship came into view of Ripley's headquarters, they stopped at the West Atlantic wharf to pick up Small's wife, children, four women, three men and another child. At 3:25 am, the Planter furthers her journey. Smalls blows the ship's whistle from the pilot house while passing Confederate Forts Johnson and later at 4:15 am Fort Sumpter. Smalls passed through a total of five Confederate harbor forts along the coast to his final destination using the proper signals at each checkpoint. His familiarity with Navy signals and the mannerism of Captain Relay leads him convincingly to pass as a white commander of the ship in the pre dawn hours. As the Planter entered Union waters, the rebel alarm sounded, but it was too late to intercept Smalls and his crew members. The Planter approached the Union blockade and Smalls orders his crew to replace the Palmetto and Rebel flags with a white bed sheet signaling their surrender.
Acting Volunteer Lt. J. Frederick Nickels of the U.S.S. Onward orders his sailors to “open her ports.”

As the steamer came near, and under the stern of the Onward, one of the Colored men stepped forward, and taking off his hat, shouted, ‘Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!’ That man is Robert Smalls, and he and his family and the entire slave crew of the Planter are now free."

Du Pont so impressed with the daring action of Smalls expressed in his letter to the Navy secretary in Washington:

 “Robert, the intelligent slave and pilot of the boat, who performed this bold feet so skillfully, informed me of [the capture of the Sumter gun], presuming it would be a matter of interest.” He “is superior to any who have come into our lines — intelligent as many of them have been.” 

Smalls own extensive knowledge of the Charleston region's waterways and military configurations proved highly valuable. At Port Royal he gave detailed information about Charleston's defenses to Admiral Samuel Dupont, commander of the blockading fleet. This intelligence allowed Union forces to capture Coles Island and its string of batteries without a fight on May 20, a week after Smalls' escape. The Union would hold the Stono inlet as a base of operations for the three-year duration of the war.
While Du Pont sends the families to Beaufort, he takes care of the Planter’screw personally while having its captured flags mailed to Washington via the Adams Express, the same private carrier that had delivered Box Brown to freedom in 1849. In the North, Smalls was feted as a hero and personally lobbied the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to begin enlisting black soldiers. After President Lincoln acted a few months later, Smalls was said to have recruited 5,000 soldiers by himself.

In October of 1862, Smalls returned to the planter as a pilot, he was part of Admiral Dupont's South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. He was engaged on approximately 17 military actions including the April 7, 1863 assault on Fort Sumpter and the attack at Folly island Creek, South Carolina. In two months, he assumed command of the Planter during extreme hostile fire, the white captain, James Nickerson in a cowardly act hid in the coal bunker.  Smalls refused to surrender, fearing that the black crewmen would not be treated as prisoners of war and might be summarily killed. Smalls entered the pilot house and took command of the boat and piloted her to safety.
For his valor, Smalls was promoted to the rank of captain. He earned $150 a month making him the highest paid black soldier in the war. When the war was over in 1865, Robert Smalls was on board the Planter during the ceremony in Charleston Harbor.

Immediately following the war, Smalls returned to his native Beaufort, where he purchased his former master's house at 511 Prince St, which had been seized in 1863 by the Union tax authorities for refusal to pay taxes. Later, the former owner sued to regain the property. Smalls retained ownership in the court case, a case which became an important precedent in other similar cases. His mother, Lydia, lived with him for the remainder of her life. He allowed his former master's wife, the elderly Jane Bond McKee, to move into her former home prior to her death. 

Smalls continued his service to the country as a first generation black politician, serving in the South Carolina state assembly and senate. For five non consecutive terms in the U. S. House of Representatives (1874-1886). In 1895, Smalls witness a roll back of Reconstruction in his state of South Carolina as the revision in the constitution stripped blacks of their voting rights.
As a politician, Smalls authored state legislation providing for South Carolina to have the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He also founded the Republican Party of South Carolina. Due to the state's white Democrats disfranchising most blacks (who made up much of the Republican Party), Smalls was the last Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th congressional district until 2010.  Similar constitutions across the South for some time passed challenges that reached the US Supreme Court, resulting in the exclusion of African Americans from politics across the South and crippling of the Republican Party in the region.

A few of the many honors of Robert Smalls:

 

 

There is a statue of Robert Smalls in the US National Museum of African American History.

Fort Robert Smalls was named in his honor; it was built by free blacks in 1863 on McGuire's Hill on the South Side of Pittsburgh during the American Civil War. It survived until the 1940s.

*I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, this is a fact I never knew. I was taught about the Fort Pitt block house in Point State Park and I went to Fort Pitt Elementary School.  I was taught about the donations and achievements of the wealthy Carnegie's. But never about Fort Robert Smalls, built by free slaves in honor of this courageous man. Not one school I went to mentioned this! 

 

This is extremely important:

 

If you do not seek out the knowledge of your true history, you will rob yourself of the knowledge and pride to be a part of a talented and resourceful people. You will never know the greatness, the extraordinary accomplishments and the persistent fortitude of a people who is deserving of the accolades and gratitude that "truly" made this country great!

The desk that Smalls used as Collector of Customs is on display at the Verdier House museum in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Robert Smalls died of malaria and diabetes on February 23, 1915 at the age of 75.

 

All praise to The Most High, Yah for without Him we are nothing!

*sources:
wikipedia, black pst.org, pbs.org

 

MARCUS GARVEY, Live Freedom Speech

MARCUS GARVEY, Live Freedom Speech 

 There is no future for a people who deny their past. My Foreparents, My Grandparents, My Mother, My Father did not suffer and die to give me an education to slight, oppress or discourage my people. Whatsoever education I acquired out of their sacrifice of over 300 years, I shall use for the salvation of the 400 million Black people of the world. And the DAY when I forsake my people; may GOD Almighty say, "there shall be no more life for you".

I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much white American Christianity. Namely that God had created the black man inferior. And that he intended Negroes to be a Servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well I predicated my view of man on the doctrine of E Margo de E "all men regardless of color are created in the image of GOD". From this premise come the equality of all men and brotherhood of all men. The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that He created of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth and is most interested in brotherhood than with ones own race. Because if Negroes are created in God's image, and Negroes are Black then God must IN SOME SENSE be Black.

If the White man has the Idea of a white God let him worship his God as he desires. We have found a new ideal. Because God has No color, and yet it is HUMAN to see everything through ones own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their god thru their white spectacles, we have only now started to see our God thru our own Spectacles.

But we believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God; God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy One, the one God of all the Ages; that is the God of whom we believe but we shall worship HIM thru the spectacles of Ethiopia.

For two hundred and fifty years we have struggled under the burden and rigors of slavery. We were maimed, we were brutalized, we were ravaged in every way. We are men, we have hopes, we have passions, we have feelings, we have desires just like any other race. The cry of race all over the world, of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, Of England for the English, of France for the French or Germany for the Germans; do they think it unreasonable that we the Blacks of the world should raise our cry Africa for the Africans?

The Negro is a MAN; we represent the New Negro. His back is not yet against the wall, we do not want his back against the wall because that would be a peculiar and desperate position. We do not want him there. It is because of this we are asking for a fair compromise. Well the Belgians have control over the Belgian Congo, which they cannot use. They have not the resources to develop, nor the intelligence. The French have more territory than they can develop, there's certain parts of Africa in which they cannot live at all. So it is for YOU to come together and give us a United States of Africa. We are not going to be a race without a country. God never intended it and we are not going to disappoint God's confidence in us as Men. We are Men, human beings, capable of the same acts as any other race. Possessing under fair circumstances the same INTELLIGENCE as any other race. Now Africa's been sleeping. Not dead, only sleeping. Today Africa is walking around not only on our feet but on our brains. You can enslave us for some 300 years, the bodies of men, you can shackle the hands of men, you can shackle the feet of men, you can imprison the bodies of men, BUT YOU CANNOT SHACKLE OR IMPRISON THE MINDS OF MEN.

Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up black men and women and pull all nature's knowledge to you. Turn ye around and make a conquest of everything North and South, East and West. And then we you have wrought well, you will have merited God's blessing, you will become God's chosen people and naturally you'll become leaders of the world. And as you bow down to the white man today, so will others bow down to you and call you a race of masters because of the intelligence of your mind and your achievements. No race has the last word on culture and civilization. They do not know what we're capable of; they do not know what we're thinking. They're thinking in terms of dreadnaughts, battleships, airplanes and submarines. You know what we're thinking about? That is our own private business.

So give us credit for being able to use our minds. And once people are in concept of themselves; determined to use their minds you do not know to what extent they can go. Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.

 Deuteronomy 28:47:51

 ⁴⁷ “Because you did not serve The Most High, your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, ⁴⁸ therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom The Most High will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you. ⁴⁹ Yah will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, ⁵⁰ a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. ⁵¹ And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you.

Deuteronomy 28:52-54

 ⁵² “They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which The Most High, your God has given you. ⁵³ You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom The Most High, your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you. ⁵⁴ The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind,

Deuteronomy 28:64-68

⁶⁴ “Then Yah will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known—wood and stone. ⁶⁵ And among those nations you shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place; but Yah will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul. ⁶⁶ Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life. ⁶⁷ In the morning you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were morning!’ because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because of the sight which your eyes see.
⁶⁸ “And Yah will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you, ‘You shall never see it again.’ And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

Deuteronomy 28:45-46

⁴⁵ “Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of Yah, your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. ⁴⁶ And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever.