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Note from the Author

 

Born in a predominantly white world in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa in 1939, it took me a long time to sort out things about the role that race played in America. None of my black relatives seemed to care to explain it to me even though most of us lived just north of the railroad tracks and stockyards within the confines of the neighborhood labeled "Lee Town."
A few of the older black athletes at Iowa Wesleyan College occasionally attempted to "school" me, but at that time, being under age 21, their rhetoric was too far over my head. But there was one black/Jew incident that still remains in my memory. That was the effort of some out-of-state Jews (students) and some Kansas City Negroes (students) who tried to start a fraternity that blacks and Jews could join. Because at that time, neither of us were allowed membership into any of the on-campus fraternities.
By the time I left Mt. Pleasant in 1962, to take my first teaching job in Arizona, I knew that blacks/Negroes/colored people were the national minority. It took me another 20 years to realize that Jews were the international minority.


My most illuminating moment of realization as to the true roots of my past occurred while I was pursuing my Ph.D. at The University of New Mexico when I met two black men who taught black studies courses there. Specifically, it was upon reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X where Malcolm mentioned that Aesop was the Greek name for an Ethiopian (page 185). And he mentioned finding out about this {on page 175} through reading the 3 volumes of J. A. Rogers' Sex and Race. Upon reading these entries, I sought out and found a Greek/English dictionary in the library on campus and much to my delight, I was able to verify that statement.


After reading Malcolm's autobiography, my search bugs ignited. I purchased all of J. A. Rogers' books and used three of them as texts for my Afro-American Heritage course at The University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. By reading every footnote, and checking those facts that I questioned, I ended up reading every book published by Dr. Yosefben-Jochannan (Africa: Mother of Western Civilization); all of Ivan Van Sertima's books (The African presence in Ancient America They Came Before Columbus);E. A. Wallis Budge's books (The Egyptian Book of the Dead); Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilization Myth or Reality); all of William Loren Katz' books (The Suppressed Book About Slavery!); Carter G. Woodson, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Hubert Harrison, Arthur A. Schomberg --and any book that I found challenged the academic history party line, e.g., Ralph Ginzburg's 100 Years of Lynchings,The Shocking Record Behind Today's Black Militancy, Lincoln's Unknown Private Life edited by Lloyd Ostendorf and Walter Olesky, and White House Confidential The Little Book of Weird Presidential History, by Greg Stebben and Jim Morris.


It took years -many years. And around 1980 or so, I realized that as I grew to understand the ancient and not so ancient history of black people, I simultaneously learned about the history of Jews and Europeans. So, in order to understand Jews even better, I read A Coat of Many Colors Jewish Subcommunities in the United States, by Abraham D. Lavender; The Practical Kaballah, Saul S. Friedman's Jews and the American Slave Trade, and the writings of many Jewish scholars. I even read The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews by The Nation of Islam, and of course, The Black Jews of Harlem, by Howard Brotz, and several other books describing the state of America's Black Muslim community.

From reading these books, and countless others, my dissertation title ended up being The Mythical Negative Black Self concept. One day, while juggling my reading schedule with class work, I realized that the histories of blacks in antiquity and worldwide so closely relates to much of the history of the Jews from antiquity and worldwide that I declared that we should not be enemies. If anything, we should be the best of friends! Which explains in part why I wrote this book as well as my journey from being an innocent colored boy born in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa in 1939 to being a 70 year old retiree still being driven to mend all of those fences that seem to keep us all from getting along.
Currently, my Black/Jews romance was expressed through the readings of a wonderful book: Everyman's Talmud, The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages, written by Abraham Cohen. It is also expressed through my subscription to the agency that I think every man and woman in America should support: The Southern Poverty Law Center and its founder, Morris Dees. To this Center, I make a monthly financial contribution, and I think everyone who claims not to be a racist should do likewise.

Click on the Book to read an excerpt from
"Peace talks, Blacks and Jews"
From Dr. Elmer E. Wells.

 

 

POST SCRIPT


If you enjoyed any of this, then you might well want to continue with The next web site in the series ,

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where you will be privileged to get a preview of
I Jesus Christ My Story as Revealed to Dr. Elmer E. Wells
plus the following poems/essays:


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