Every high school student has had the story drummed into him: Dr. Charles Drew, the brilliant Negro medical researcher who discovered how to preserve human blood plasma so that it could be used for transfusions, is responsible for saving countless lives of wounded GIs during the Second World War. Five years after the war, however, White racism was responsible for Drew's own death.
The poignant story was first told by William Loren Katz in his high school textbook, Eyewitness: the Negro in American History (1967). On page 449 of the book Katz writes: "On April 1, 1950, Dr. Drew was injured in an auto accident near Burlington, North Carolina. Al- though he was bleeding profusely, he was turned away from the nearest 'white' hospital. By the time he was taken to another hospital, the scientist had bled to death."
Every major element in this story is untrue. First, Drew was hardly a "Negro." He was of mixed race, at least three-quarters White, as his photograph clearly reveals.
Second, his actual contribution to the technology of the modern blood bank was minimal. His work for the Red Cross Blood Bank was more logistic and administrative than scientific, and it involved nothing in the way of a scientific breakthrough or a major technical innovation.
Third, the claim that Drew bled to death after being turned away from a White hospital has been flatly contradicted by virtually everyone, including Blacks, with firsthand knowledge of his death. When Drew fell asleep at the wheel of his car on April 1, 1950, it ran off the road, threw him out, and rolled over him. He suffered massive brain damage and chest injuries. One leg was nearly severed.
He was rushed to Alamance General Hospital, where three White physicians worked desperately for two hours to, save his life. One of the witnesses to the emergency-room drama in the hospital on that morning was Dr. Charles Mason Quick, now a 67-year-old Black physician practicing in Fayetteville. In an interview in Greensboro last month, Quick told newsmen what he had seen. He says he wants to establish a North Carolina scholarship in memory of Drew "that would go a long way toward dispelling this terrible myth."
Another witness was Marvin Yount, the White administrator of the hospital. Yount demanded an apology from Katz for his false version of Drew's death, and in May 1971 Katz acknowledged his "error" in a letter to Yount. The latest edition of Katz's book has quietly dropped the story, but Katz has made no effort to undo the mischief already caused by the earlier editions.
Indeed, Katz, a Jew, earns his living peddling stories designed to make minorities look good and Whites feel guilty. He has been a major figure in the promotion of the "Black history" craze which has overtaken the U.S. educational system in the last 15 years, inventing Black gunfighters who won the West, a Black explorer who discovered the North Pole, Black military heroes responsible for America's freedom, and Black scientists who launched the scientific revolution of the 20th century.
In addition to Eyewitness: the Negro in American History, Katz has also written Teachers' Guide to American Negro History (1968), American Minorities and Majorities: a Syllabus of United States History for Secondary Schools (1970), The Black West: a Documentary and Pictorial History (1971), A History of Black Americans (1973), Minorities in American History (six volumes, 1974-5), and four other books dealing with the same general subject matter. He is also the editor of several series of monographs on Black history and is a member of the editorial board of the periodical Black Studies.
Last month was decreed "Black History Month," and so the February 1 issue of the Washington Post contained a feature article titled "Ancient African Heroines." The two principal heroines treated were Hatshepsut, an Egyptian queen of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and Cleopatra, who reigned over the same land 14 centuries later. The clear implication of the article is that the former queen was a Negress, and that the latter may have been. Actually, both were White women, and nothing that is known about either suggests the least Negro taint to her blood.
The Washington Post article begins with the not-so-subtle insinuation that the words "African" and "Negro" are synonymous: "Women of African descent - whether called Creole, Afro-American, black or even 'colored' - are typically depicted as women without a history... Unfortunately, works on the development and influence of African civilizations usually have been overlooked and relegated to near obscurity in the stacks, the achievements of ancient black women with them."
The article then introduces Hatshepsut, but in case any reader has so far failed to make the desired assumption that the great queen was a "woman of color" (the term used later in the article in referring to Cleopatra), there is a portrait. It is supposedly an artist's rendering based on a photograph taken in Hatshepsut's tomb, but one can only suspect that the Washington Post's artist used Aunt Jemima as his model, rather than anything photographed in an Egyptian tomb.
The lie is given to the Washington Post by Hatshepsut's life-size
portrait statue, found in her temple at Deir el-Bahri, near Thebes, and
now residing in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Numerous portrait
statues of Hatshepsut's close relatives are also extant, and they all show
distinctly Europid features. Her nephew, the renowned Pharaoh Thutmose
III, regarded as ancient Egypt's greatest ruler, could pass easily as a
Swede or an Englishman.
QUEEN HATSHEPSUT, who ably ruled Egypt for
21 years during the 15th century B.C. and is the first great woman known
to history, has been dipped in the tar pot and converted into an instant
Black by the history-destroyers of the controlled news media. Hatshepsut's
portrait statue, carved during her life, is on the right. The Washington
Post artist's conception of her in a recent article is on the left.
Hatshepsut's mummy has not been identified with certainty, but the only
reasonable candidate, found in the tomb of her grandson Amenhotep II, has
long, slightly wavy, brown-blond hair. Blondness was not an uncommon trait
among the Egyptian nobility of Hatshepsut's time.
MUMMY believed to be that of Queen Hatshepsut
was discovered In 1 98 in the tomb of her grandson, Amenihotep II. The
hair, remarkably well preserved, is very light brown, almost blond. The
photograph is plate XCVII from the Catalogue General des Antiquites
u Egyptionnes du Muses du Cairo (Cairo, 1912).
Two other XVIIIth Dynasty mummies, both of which have been identified positively, are those of Yuya and Thuya, the maternal grandfather and grandmother, respectively, of Amenhotep IV, the famous Akhenaton. They are also the paternal grandparents of Akhenaton's cousin-wife, the beautiful Nefertiti. The mummies of both Yuya and Thuya have well-preserved, long, reddish-blond hair.
As for Cleopatra, though she was a queen of Egypt in the first century B.C., she was of pure Macedonian descent, ruling one of the many lands conquered by her great countryman Alexander three centuries earlier. On the matter of her race there is not the slightest doubt; her ancestry can be traced back to Alexander's marshal Ptolemy.
That does not stop the Washington Post from attempting to paint Cleopatra as a mulatta, citing William Shakespeare, of all people, as an authority, because he describes her as "tawny" in a play. (His Antony and Cleopatra opens with one of Mark Antony's friends complaining about Antony's infatuation with Cleopatra: "... His goodly eyes ... now turn the office and devotion of their view upon a tawny front ...") "Tawny," says the Washington Post, " often has been used, throughout history, for mulatto or mixed blood personages ....
The Washington Post goes from Cleopatra to "black Queen Tiy of Nubia noted as the mother of King Tut." Tiy was not Black, and she was not a Nubian; she was the daughter of Thuya and Yuya. Furthermore, she was not King Tutankhamon's mother, although she was related to him in a roundabout way; Tiy's daughter Nefertiti was the wife of Tutankhamon's father, Amenhotep, IV, but one of the latter's harem concubines was almost certainly Tutankhamon's mother, since Tut himself does show strong signs of a Negroid taint. Negro blood was introduced into more than one Egyptian royal family via harem slaves.
The article concludes with a boost for a "Great Kings of Africa" series
of paintings which, among other things, portrays Hannibal, the great Carthaginian
general, as a coal-black Negro. Reproductions of the paintings have been
distributed free -- "as a public service" -- to schools all over America
to promote "Black History Month."
HANNIBAL AS NEGRO a series of paintings of
"Great Kings of Africa" being circulated in America's public schools and
promoted by the controlled media depicts the great Carthaginian general
(274-183 B.C.) as a Negro (left). On the right is Hannibal's portrait statue,
now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
Why did the Washington Post do it? Ignorance is not a plausible excuse for the nation's second most prestigious newspaper, with the enormous files of reference material at its disposal. Its editor refused even to acknowledge a detailed letter from NATIONAL VANGUARD Editor William Pierce pointing out the errors and mis-representations in its article. Malice and greed, however, are plausible.
Thirty-five years ago the English writer George Orwell noted with irony in his novel 1984 that those who control the past also control the future. In his dark vision of our present era he saw government thought controllers continuously rewriting history to suit the political and social needs of the moment, changing the citizens' image of the past and, thereby, their attitudes toward the present and their expectations for the future.
Alas, grim reality has already outstripped Orwell's fancy. But it is not the government which has undertaken the task of revising Americans' understanding of the past -- at least, not the elected government in Washington, as bad as it is, but instead the self-appointed shadow government which stands behind it: the Sanhedrin of the masters of the controlled media. High, indeed, in the Sanhedrin sits Katherine Meyer Graham owner of the Washington Post; and important, indeed, is the role of her newspaper in the Sanhedrin's program of falsifying history in order to bring it into line with the needs of the moment.
One of the foremost of those needs is the undermining of the White man's racial consciousness. For those who sit in the Sanhedrin belong to the most racially conscious of all peoples, and they realize that in their consciousness lies their strength. Their rule can only be secure, however, so long as the majority race among whom they live as a parasitic minority does not regain its own self-consciousness.
Racial self-consciousness demands a consciousness of the history of one's people; if a people can be robbed of its history, then there will be no soil in which the roots of its racial consciousness can grow. That is the ultimate motive behind every aspect of the Sanhedrin's history-rewriting program.
February, by presidential decree, is Black History Month. That means, more than anything else, that schoolchildren all over America are being given special materials and special lesson assignments designed to raise their consciousness of the great artistic, political, literary, scientific, and philanthropic contributions to human progress made by Blacks throughout recorded history -- contributions which need to be emphasized over and above those of Whites and the members of other races, because White racism has distorted and minimized the treatment of Black achievements in the standard history curricula heretofore used in America's schools. That is the official rationale behind the school-centered activities of Black History Month, and most teachers and school administrators have accepted it without even blinking.
It is a fact, of course, that prior to the civil rights revolution two decades ago, school history texts said very little about Blacks, outside of their role as slaves in the U.S. South prior to the Civil War. But there was a very good reason for the omission: one can't squeeze blood from a stone or make a silk purse from a sow's ear -- at least, not if one plays by the accepted rules -- and one can't teach schoolchildren about non-existent Black achievements.
Blacks left to their own devices in sub-Saharan Africa prior to contact with Whites and other races simply didn't do anything worth noting: they never discovered the wheel or the axle, developed writing, learned to smelt metals, or domesticated animals for food. Introduced to the cultures of other races, they adapted some tools and crafts to their own needs, but they showed remarkably little ability to improve them or invent new things on their own. Enslaved, brought to America, and later freed and integrated into White society, they have continued to show as little aptitude for invention as they did in their natural environment.
Those Whites -- and others -- with a vested interest in the cause of political, social, and economic equality between Blacks and Whites, and those Whites with an emotional or religious need to believe in the intellectual equality of the two races, have made up for this deficiency in recent decades by the simple expedient of deliberately concocting a fraudulent history of Black achievement.
The counterfeiting process began in a relatively innocuous manner with a desperate search for every genuine Black who actually had done something creative or other- wise noteworthy, and then magnifying his achievements to the limit of credibility: Matthew Henson, Admiral Robert Peary's Black man-servant and valet who accompanied his master on the latter's Arctic expeditions, was magnified to co-discoverer of the North Pole; George Washington Carver, an agricultural researcher of modest talents who developed several new uses for the peanut, was magnified to a scientific innovator of the first rank; Crispus Attucks, a mulatto who incited a Boston mob against the local British troops in 1770 and was killed in the resulting riot, was magnified to a leader of the American Revolution. This, at least, gave Blacks a few role models of their own race and a source of racial pride, even though the latter was somewhat ill-founded.
Magnification was not enough for the egalitarians, however. They began labeling as "Black" everyone whose ancestors had ever had a passing acquaintance with the tarbrush. Charles Drew, a U.S. physician who served with the Red Cross Blood Bank during the Second World War and is given credit for helping to develop the technology of blood and plasma transfusion, was one of them. Drew, a man of mixed race, had so little Negro ancestry that he was easily able to pass as White.
When Blacks themselves began getting into the counterfeiting act, the results became ludicrous. They discovered, for example, that both Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn were Blacks, whose true ancestry had been concealed by White racists; why they failed to claim Mozart and Bach as well remains unknown. One might have guessed that such excesses would embarrass the White and Jewish inventors of Black history, but apparently they didn't; the counterfeit Black achievers continued to increase in number, but the counterfeiters looked further back in history to find their candidates for a dip into the tar pot -- back to an era from which portraits and other tell-tale evidence were less likely to have survived.
And they looked to the continent of Africa, where they might more plausibly claim that various historical personages were Black. Actually, they usually have been more indirect and devious than that: instead of making explicit claims, they simply have implied that "African" is synonymous with "Black" -- a trick which has not been particularly hard to pull off before America's credulous school-children. Thus, the African civilizations of ancient Egypt and Carthage have become the achievements of Black culture-creators in the lesson materials distributed in the schools during Black History Month.
The hoax reached a new level of effrontery and mendacity recently with the publication of a series of "educational" Black history posters by Anheuser-Busch, Inc. Titled "Great Kings of Africa," the large, colorful posters, each featuring an African ruler of the past and a few paragraphs of biographical text, have been distributed in thousands of schools all over America. Each ruler is portrayed as a Black, with fully Negroid features and coloring. Among them are Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, and Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt who won the love of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. The text on Cleopatra's poster informs the reader that she is "often erroneously portrayed as Caucasian."
Yes, indeed. One such portrayal of Cleopatra (who, of course, was not
Egyptian at all, but Macedonian, and a direct descendant of Alexander the
Great's general and successor, Ptolemy) is her contemporary portrait statue,
now in the British Museum.
BLACK HISTORY POSTER distributed to America's
schools by Anheuser-Busch, Inc., portrays Cleopatra as a Negress. Text
on the poster says that she is "often erroneously portrayed as Caucasian."
Another poster in the Anheuser-Busch series shows the Carthaginian general
Hannibal as a Negro. America's teachers shrink from exposing this fraud,
from fear of being labeled "racists."
The real Cleopatra had her image preserved in a portrait statue, now in the British Museum. She was Macedonian, a descendant of one of the generals of Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt in the fourth century B.C. Unfortunately, America's school children aren't taught enough genuine history to know that.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that America's big businessmen -- Anheuser-Busch is only one of many large corporations which have sponsored Black History Month -- have become participants in the fraud. After all, they have never been noted for a sense of social or racial responsibility. Their aim in life is to make money and avoid trouble with the government, and they have learned that catering to minorities at least helps with the latter.
What is deeply disturbing is the abject cowardice of the academic establishment. Every historian worth his salt knows that neither Hannibal nor Cleopatra had the least trace of Black ancestry; and even though the educational level of America's educators has declined sadly, there are many high school principals and high school history teachers who also know it. Their silence is shameful.
It may seem a small thing, this caving in to the counterfeiters of history, but think what it means: all over America, in every school district in the land, those who have been entrusted with the education of our children have said, in effect, that they will teach lies rather than risk being labeled "racists." It is a national phenomenon, part of a long-term national trend, and it tells us that the nation is dying. It also tells us that, regardless of the methods we personally may choose to use, we must be on the side of the Seattle Ten; we must take up their fight, and, one way or another, we must destroy the evil against which they struggled.