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The Truth About Black People & Their Place In World History_Dr. Leroy Vaughn, MD, MBA
The RBG Melanin Paper: The Role of Melanin In the Afrikan Re-Education / Re-Afrikanization Process
Last Updated September 20, 2026
RBG Communiversity’s Black Liberation Movement (BLM) Studies Inventory
The First Black Power Conference (1967) and NEWARK UPRISING OF 1967
ICEBREAKER VIDEO
The First National Conference on Black Power (also called the First Black Power Conference) was held July 20–23, 1967, in Newark, New Jersey.
It took place days after the Newark Rebellion (July 12–17, 1967), which left 26 people dead and over 1,000 injured. The event was hosted at an Episcopal Church property (Cathedral House / Diocese of Newark) in downtown Newark. Its theme was “The Unity of Black People for the greater good of all.”
More than 1,000 delegates (contemporary reports range from roughly 900–1,100) attended, representing about 286 organizations and institutions from 126 cities across 26 states, plus Bermuda and Nigeria. Dr. Nathaniel (Nathan) Wright Jr., an Episcopal priest and activist, chaired the conference. It built on earlier planning that included a 1966 Black Power Planning Conference linked to Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Notable participants included Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones), H. Rap Brown (SNCC), Maulana Karenga (US Organization), Floyd McKissick (CORE), Gloria Richardson, Jesse Jackson, Charles 27X Kenyatta, Ossie Davis, and James Farmer, along with representatives from more traditional civil rights groups and nationalist organizations. Workshops addressed political power, economics, culture, education, welfare, community control, international solidarity (including opposition to the Vietnam War, support for Muhammad Ali’s draft refusal, and ties to Africa), and related topics.
The conference produced more than 80 resolutions emphasizing Black Power in political, economic, and cultural affairs. The central outcome was the Black Power Manifesto, which condemned “neo-colonialist control” of Black populations worldwide, called for a unifying “philosophy of Blackness,” urged community control of institutions such as education and welfare, affirmed self-defense, and called for a national dialogue on the idea of a separate homeland or greater political autonomy for Black people in the U.S. Other proposals (many adopted “in spirit”) included sports and consumer boycotts, increased Black political representation, rejection of certain birth-control programs, and support for Black-controlled institutions. A press conference was disrupted by participants seeking to exclude white media.
The Newark gathering marked a major organizational expression of the Black Power movement (popularized by Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture in 1966). It continued traditions of 19th-century Black conventions and early Pan-African congresses while shifting emphasis from integrationist civil-rights strategies toward self-determination, nationalism, and institution-building. Later Black Power conferences followed in 1968 and 1969; the Newark meeting is widely regarded as the most significant of the era.
This event is frequently referenced in discussions of Amiri Baraka’s work in Newark, the broader Black Power era, and efforts at community control and political organization in the late 1960s.
NEWARK UPRISING OF 1967
Learn more…NEWARK UPRISING OF 1967 Folder
Stolen Legacy By George G. M. James and RBG: The Street Scholar Who Freed Egypt’s Stolen Legacy | Africa Good Life
ICEBREAKER VIDEO
Before he was known simply as RBG, Marc Imhotep Cray, M.D. was scanning rare Black history books by hand and giving them away free through his self-built RBG Communiversity. In this documentary, we trace his mission through its founding constitution, its warrior code of conduct, and the single book he believed mattered most: George G. M. James’s 1954 classic, Stolen Legacy – Greek Philosophy Is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy. Walk chapter by chapter through James’s case that Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle drew their teachings from Egypt’s ancient Mystery School, and that the Memphite Theology, not Athens, is philosophy’s true source. This is a story of erasure, evidence, and one teacher’s refusal to let either fade. Subscribe to Africa Good Life for more untold chapters of Black history, told with the dignity they deserve.
Book Summary
Stolen Legacy By George G. M. James
Stolen Legacy (full title often given as Stolen Legacy: The Greeks Were Not the Authors of Greek Philosophy, But the People of North Africa, Commonly Called the Egyptians) is a 1954 book by George Granville Monah James (1893–1956).
Author and Context
James was a Guyanese-born educator who studied in Britain (Durham University) and the United States (Columbia University). He taught subjects including Greek, logic, mathematics, and philosophy at historically Black colleges, including the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. He was associated with Prince Hall Freemasonry. The book was published by the Philosophical Library in New York two years before his death.
Core Thesis
James argues that what is called “Greek philosophy” was not original to the Greeks but was derived (or “stolen”) from the ancient Egyptian Mystery System—an advanced body of knowledge in philosophy, science, religion, and the arts developed by the people of North Africa (the Egyptians). He contends that this appropriation created the false impression that Africa contributed nothing to civilization.
Key claims include:
- Greek thinkers such as Pythagoras, Plato, Thales, and others studied or drew heavily from Egyptian sources (citing ancient writers like Herodotus who noted Egyptian influence).
- Alexander the Great’s conquest and associated figures (including claims involving Aristotle) led to the looting or appropriation of Egyptian knowledge from libraries in Egypt, which was then attributed to Greek authors.
- Greek philosophy lacks originality; doctrines on topics like the soul, cosmology, ethics, and science trace back to Egyptian teachings.
- The book ends with a call for a “New Philosophy of African Redemption” to correct historical narratives, foster better race relations, and promote pride in African contributions.
It is considered an early work in what later became known as Afrocentric historiography, influencing or paralleling later writers such as Cheikh Anta Diop and aspects of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena.
Reception
In Black Studies, Afrocentric circles, and among readers seeking alternative narratives of African contributions, it has been popular and influential as a corrective to Eurocentric accounts. It is often described as groundbreaking or essential reading in those contexts.
Mainstream classical historians and philosophers have largely rejected it as pseudohistory. Common criticisms include:
- Serious chronological errors (e.g., claims about Aristotle and the Library of Alexandria, which was founded after Aristotle’s death).
- Heavy reliance on later Masonic or secondary sources rather than primary Egyptian texts or rigorous philology.
- Selective or inaccurate use of evidence, philosophical misunderstandings, and a tendency to treat cultural contact or influence as wholesale theft.
- Scholars such as Mary Lefkowitz (Not Out of Africa), Wilson J. Moses, Stephen Howe, Ronald H. Fritze, and others have characterized the work as tendentious and methodologically flawed.
Even some sympathetic or nuanced readers acknowledge historical inaccuracies while valuing its rhetorical or cultural aims in the context of mid-20th-century racial dynamics.
In short, Stolen Legacy is a foundational Afrocentric text that forcefully asserts Egyptian/African priority in the origins of Western philosophy. It remains widely circulated in certain educational and activist spaces (including resources associated with accounts like the one in the prior X post), while being viewed by most professional historians of the ancient Mediterranean as unreliable.
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