Seeking a Greater Restoration

I was born not long before Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. Despite the riots in Detroit and Watts, there seemed to be a hope that human brotherhood and the beloved society would end racism and racial injustice. Somewhere between April 4th, 1968 and the mass incarceration of low level black drug offenders in the Regan, Bush, and Clinton years, more revolutionary voices were heard in our communities. Public Enemy albums sold like hotcakes. Minister Louis Farrakhan led the Million Man March. Afrocentric scholars raised debates across college campuses. Now, I think we are witnessing another shift in disaffected voices of African-Americans, it is a call for restoring a greater black past.

This can be seen in the rising popularity of Kemetic consciousness where brothers and sisters are looking to ancient Egyptian themes and thought. Moorish Science, one of the earliest expressions of black Islam, celebrates the North…