CLASS OVERVIEW

Learn about the original people of Haiti the Tainos and how they lived their lives until the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

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Haiti sits in the middle of the greater Antilles which are islands in the northern part of the world near the Americas.

Before 1492, Haiti was divided into five separate kingdoms: Jaraqua, Maguana, Marien, Maguana and Highey.

There were five Chiefs or Caciques. Many more had ruled before Columbus.

In their governing system, there were always mixed genders in governing. There could not be all men or all women chiefs, there must always be at least one male chief, if the other chiefs were all women or one woman chief if the other chiefs were all men, to rule Haiti.

The chief’s job was to keep order, make sure people were taken care of with enough food and dwellings.

They’re dwellings, called Bohios, consisted of homes that were circular for very large families, up to 10 to 15 men and families. The Chiefs would have rectangular homes and they could have up to 30 wives and all live together.

The Tainos used hammocks the same as we use today and they were made out of cotton. 

They also used canoes for transportation and the canoes could hold up to 10 to 15 people and larger canoes would hold up to 150 people depending on the size. Many people came from South America using these kinds of canoes. 

The Tainos were very agricultural people and the main part of their diet was the Yuca plant which looks like a potato. They made it into cassava and also made bread. They also had fish, and would barbecue the fish. They also hunted for small animals. They had cooking Huts. The women were the agriculturalist and the men would hunt and fish; they also hunted turtles. 

They had a language and had a lot of symbols to add to communications. Petroglyphs were carved on walls and stone. 

They had birds for pets and also they use the birds as Messengers. They train the birds to go across the island to give warning and messages.

The Tainos believed in many gods and they represented their gods with Zemis or Cemis. They would sculpture their gods in a triangular form. They had strong beliefs in ancestors and in the Chiefs. They use these Zemis for guidance. The main Zemi was for water and food which sustain them for their survival.

The Tainos were a peaceful people, but they had an enemy that would come and raid their villages called the Caribs. They used bows and arrows and clubs to defend themselves. The  Caribs were sometimes known to be cannibalistic 

Chief Anacona, who was the only woman Chief at the time to provide balance,  was from the bloodline of chiefs. She was talented with poetry and dance and was very athletic. She was honored all over Haiti. She was also a religious expert as well. After her brother’s death she went with her husband and became ruler in her kingdom.

There was no jealousy in their kingdom. They were peaceful people living a simple life. No one owned any land and the land belonged to everyone. 

In 1492, Columbus came to Haiti where Anacona was Chief. When Columbus’s ship came to the island, it wrecked, the Tainos jumped in the ocean to save the wreckage thinking that the people might need what was floating in the ocean. As Columbus saw the kindness of the Tainos and the gold that they had around their necks and wrist, he began to think that these people would be easy to make servants and get gold from them. Columbus had at least 100 people with him on this voyage.

Columbus and his people built a fort and named the island Hispaniola for Spain.

Columbus return back to Spain and left the 30 people in Haiti where they were making the Tianos dig for gold, disrespecting them and treating them very harshly.  At the beginning, the missionaries and soldiers held a Christmas dinner for everyone but the Taino’s realized that these people meant them no good and killed all of them by burning down the fort. 

When Columbus return, he brought back hundreds of Conquistadors to enslave the population and take all the gold. The Conquistadors ruled with terror and killed the Tainos with cruel acts of violence. They burnt the Chiefs alive. 

The priest tried to convert the people.

Before Columbus, the Tainos were 500,000 to 2 or 3 million, after Columbus, the number was below 50,000 after murders slavery disease, rape and other atrocities. 

There was fierce resistance by the Tainos and some went up in the mountains.

There was a new governor in the area who was cruel and crushed the rebellion with much cruelty. He used the lies that things would change but that’s what they were, lies. There were two chiefs who were brothers who wanted to speak to the king of Spain and were told that they were going to be brought to the King but either they were killed on the ship or the shipwreck but they never got to Spain. 

Anacona prepared a party for the Spanish to offer peace for her kingdom and the Spanish came but they closed the Tainos up in the building and set the building on fire. Anaconda was rescued. They told Anacona if she would become a Christian and marry the governor, that her life would be spared and she said no, and they killed her. 

After all of these experiences there were no full-blooded Tainos left in Haiti after Columbus.

1. Alexander Pushkin is known as The Father of Russian literature.

2. Yasuke was known as the African Samurai of Japan.

3. St. Augustine of Hippo was one of the most influential men the Christian church has ever known. Quote: Pray as though everything depends on god. Work is so everything depends on you.

CLASS OVERVIEW

Learn about the Black Caesar and Black Popes.

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED:

• Please check the materials that go with this lesson and print relevant materials.

• Also, check out the books and products the teachers use for further learning.

• Reach out to support@urbanintellectuals.com if you have any questions or issues.

• Some links may be affiliate links where we may earn a small commission from purchases.

THE BLACK EMPERORS OF ROME: ROMAN EMPEROR CARACALLA (KARA-KALLA)

Ivory Bust of Emperor Caracalla: British Muesum Emperor Caracalla – By Oguejiofo Annu
It was Bob Marley who sang that “2000 years of history could not be wiped away so easily.”
Lucius Septimius Bassianus (April 4, 188 – April 8, 217), commonly known as Caracalla, was a Black Roman Emperor who ruled from 211 to 217.
Caracalla was the eldest son of Septimius Severus, the first black African-born Emperor of Rome. But before Septimius Severus, there had been other Roman-born black Emperors of Rome. This story of the other black emperors of Rome will be explored in another write-up, but for now we focus on Caracalla.
Unlike his father Septimius Severus, Caracalla was born and raised in Italy. After the death of his father, he ruled jointly with his younger brother Geta until the latter’s death in 211.
Caracalla’s reign was notable for the Constitutio Antoniniana, granting Roman citizenship to freemen throughout the Roman Empire. That act laid a foundation for a peaceful multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Empire that Rome was to become.

Caracalla was mean towards the military incursions of the Goths, the Parthians and the Tartars, and he took brutal and extreme steps to suppress those invaders from Turkemenistan that were sorely troubling the cohesion of the Roman state.
A modern-day British historian Edward Gibbon, a descendant of the Goths, referred to him as, “the common enemy of mankind” because of the massacres he authorized in various parts of the empire.
In AD 213, Caracalla went north to the German frontier and subdued the Alamanni tribesmen who were causing trouble in the Agri Decumates. Due to that feat the Senate conferred upon him the title of “Germanicus Maximus”.
In AD 216, Caracalla took on the Parthians, a related tribe of the Goths, (the Parthians are the ancestors of the modern day Farsi-Iranians) who were causing problems on the southernmost flank of the empire. He tricked the Parthians into believing that he accepted a marriage and peace proposal, but then launched a series of blistering attacks on the Parthians when their guards were down. The thereafter ongoing conflict and skirmishes became known as the Parthian war of Caracalla.

The baths of Caracalla were the largest public baths ever built in ancient Rome. To put it in historical perspective, the central room of the baths was larger than St. Peter’s Basilica. It could easily accommodate over 2,000 Roman citizens. The bath house opened in 216, complete with libraries, private rooms and outdoor tracks. Caracalla ordered the building of those baths that are named in his honour.
Caracalla was assasinated by his body-guard while travelling from Edessa to continue the war against Parthian. He died on April 8, AD 217.
It is important that Africans should remember and celebrate Caracalla and his family line, i.e. the Severan Dynasty, because as black Africans, they were us and we are them.
By the dint of their heritage, they were part of our legacy, and their attainments represented part of our unfolding tale of greatness, of towering historical achievements, of courage, regency and inimitable genius.
The descendants of the Goths who conquered Rome, and now control historical narratives, would want you to believe that they were the real Romans. Through centuries of selective narration and faking of historical artefacts, they have largely succeeded in hiding the central role of the Africans in the defunct Roman empire.
They hide the facts that the Goths and the Parthians (the ancestors of the present day Germans, Russians, British, Spanish, Italians, and Iranians…the Aryans!!!) were the mortal enemies of the dark Ibero-Maurisian Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Libyans, and Numidians, Mauritanians, and Saharans, the original owners of western Europe. They promote a fake and false notion that Rome was a so-called white created civilization affiliated with their Gothic ancestry. But this is a lie!
Black Roman Emperor Karakala The memorials of Caracalla, Septimius Severus, Geta, Maximinus, and a long line of Black, Moorish, African Emperors of Rome reject this lie. We must revisit the Roman Empire and salvage the Black ancestors and Emperors that have been covered by the global western academic conspiracy.
Again we chant, blessings on the memorial of the Severan Dynasty, they were the “naigre” Emperors of Rome, from Africa. We will be meeting more Black Roman Emperors in the next series.

African Popes

More info on Africans in the World

AFRICANGLOBE – During the selection of the pope, many scoffed at the idea that one of the 12 Black cardinals would be picked. However, it would not have been a first. There have been three African popes: Victor (183-203 A.D.Born in Africa, Victor was the son of a man named Felix and an unnamed mother. He continued to use his given name after becoming the pope and inspired two other men to also use the name, Victor. Before becoming the pope, Victor was a bishop. He likely worked in Leptis Magna, which was an ancient city in the Carthage region. He may have spent some time in Tripolitania too. The Church does not know much else about his early life. Gelasius (492-496 A.D.
Pope Gelasius I was the bishop of Rome from 1 March 492 to his death on 19 November 496. Gelasius was a prolific author whose style placed him on the cusp between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. His predecessor Felix III employed him especially in drafting papal documents. During his pontificate he called for strict Catholic orthodoxy, more assertively demanded obedience to papal authority, and, consequently, increased the tension between the Western and Eastern Churches.and Mechiades or Militiades (311-314 A.D.). Pope Miltiades (Greek: Μιλτιάδης, Miltiádēs), also known as Melchiades the African (Μελχιάδης ὁ Ἀφρικανός Melkhiádēs ho Aphrikanós), was the bishop of Rome from 311 to his death on 10 or 11 January 314. It was during his pontificate that Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan (313), giving Christianity legal status within the Roman Empire. The pope also received the palace of Empress Fausta where the Lateran Palace, the papal seat and residence of the papal administration, would be built.
All of them have been declared saints, that is, the Catholic Church feels certain that all three went to heaven

1. Name a musician who was of African descent.

    Answer: Beethoven and Hayden

2. Name Five things about Saint Saint Nicholas.

     Answer: 1. Black 2. Wealthy 3. A Bishop 4. Loved children 5. Generous