A powerful and peaceful land of trade and scholarship was established in Africa long before European ships even landed there. Great African Empires flourished from the wealth of Africa’s natural resources that marked its rich and lavish history. Though Europeans and Arabs, people who most benefited from the wealth of Africa, denied Africa its legacy, the magnificence of people of color is embedded in the history of powerful empires such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Cairo, and Zimbabwe.

The gold deposits of West Africa brought great wealth to the surrounding people from which great empires emerged. The first of the three most powerful successive empires of West Africa is Ghana. By the 11th century, the armies of Ghana made master trade routes extending from modern-day Morocco in the north to the coastal forests of West Africa in the South. Though the gold deposits brought much wealth to Ghana, the Niger River served as a source of fish, which was also a valuable medium of trade. Soon Arabs and Muslims began to exploit these trade routes. Late in the 11th century, a militant Muslim group destroyed Ghana but

Songhai, the third of the Great West African Empires, was centered on the largest bend of the Niger River and reached its zenith in the 15th and 16th centuries. The people of Songhai were fishing and trading people who dominated petty adjacent states but was overshadowed by the affluence of the Mali Empire to the west. Under the Sunni dynasty, Songhai expansion incorporated the eastern part of Mali into its empire in 1471. The Sunni dynasty was then succeeded by the Askia dynasty that made Tombouctou once again a thriving cultural center. In 1591, an assault by Moroccan forces equipped with firearms crumbled the Songhai Empire, which never recovered.

It is clearly seen that the history of the Africans is perhaps the greatest history of wealth and intelligence of any group of people in the medieval time period. Why then would a history so rich in culture and knowledge be denied to its descendants? Why is it so deeply embedded in our society that Africans are people without history? Europeans robbed, killed, and appropriated Africans from their own stable societies for personal use and wealth and brought them against their will to a land much, much more primitive than their own. This is how my people got to America where the majority population is of European or Caucasian decent. To allow such a lavish and illustrious history to be taught here, the majority would have to admit that their very own institutions implemented in our past and present society are the same institutions that interrupted, destroyed, and massacred the societies of intelligent Africans. Racism, greed, and selfishness imparted into the minds of these Europeans as they sailed to the coasts of Africa and saw the flourishing African kingdoms. And because their minds could not comprehend the language or understand

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Approximate Word count = 1216
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)