“A Return To Kemet!”

“A Return to Kemet!”

During the first week of this month, I was blessed, once again, to lead the study tour to Kemet. Do you know where Kemet is? Do you know what Kemet is?

I ask because I found out when my fifth book was published that most people did not know the Akan word “Sankofa.” I was blown away!

Not only did people not know what the word “Sankofa” meant or how to pronounce it (and I mean all kinds of people – from school teachers to people like my esteemed church history mentor from The University of Chicago). I was blown away because I soon discovered that most African Americans who were buying the book did not know what the word meant and were constantly questioning me at book signings as to where I got the word from, how to pronounce it and what it meant!

I was blown away because I thought most African Americans had seen or heard about Haile Gerima’s movie, “Sankofa.” I was wrong.

I knew most people did not know the Adinkra symbols used by the Akan people in Ghana. I have seen hundreds of African Americans wearing the Adinkra symbol, gye nyame. I have seen that symbol on earrings, necklaces, rings, bracelets and clothing worn by African Americans.

As I have talked with persons wearing that Adinkra symbol, however, I found out that they did not know many other – or sometimes any other – of the Adinkra symbols.

I did think, however, that African Americans had at least seen the movie, “Sankofa,” and knew what the Adinkra symbol of the Sankofa bird stood for and stands for. I was terribly wrong.

Having just experienced that “wake-up call,” therefore, I am not going to take it for granted that all of our readers know what Kemet is or where Kemet is! Kemet is the name that the Africans living in the country called Egypt today called their own land before the Greeks renamed their land “Egypt.”

Just as Blacks in Nubia and Kush had their names changed by the Greeks to “Ethiopian,” the Blacks who lived in the land of Kemet had the name of the place in which they called home changed to “Egypt.”

I started my trips to the Continent this summer on July the 3rd in Kemet and the first two weeks of the month here in Kemet have been both powerful and painful.

They have been powerful in that we were in Kemet from July 3rd through July the 14th. Those two weeks exposed twenty-seven African Americans to ancient, classical, African civilizations and the classes that I taught each day opened up for them many of the “mysteries” that the educational system in the United States of America omits in its various curricula!

Experiencing the historic sites and covering the theology and the religious beliefs of those who shaped Moses and Jesus’ understanding of the world has been a powerful experience. It always is!

The “painful” part of this month-long sojourn, however, has been the daily reminders (the constant reminders!) of my last trip to Kemet. I have not been back here in this country since Baba Asa Hilliard died here!

For the last ten years of my pastorate at Trinity United Church of Christ, Baba Asa (Dr. Asa Hilliard) would come to our congregation every February. He would lecture. He would teach. He would autograph books.
He would answer questions about the African experience, the African American experience and the world of classical African societies like Kemet, Nubia, Cush and Sumer. Most enjoyably, Asa would also worship with us! He and his wife, Patsy, became “regulars” at Trinity United Church of Christ.

For at least eight of those ten years that Dr. Hilliard came to our congregation, both the members of our congregation and the visitors who would come to hear his lectures kept asking him (and me) when we were going to lead a study tour to Kemet together!

In February of 2008, we settled on a date and we announced it before he began his lecture on the second Sunday of Black History Month. The day that we announced our jointly-led study tour, eighty persons signed up for the trip!

Dr. Hilliard and I divided up the workload in terms of lectures. He was to do half of the lectures and I was to do the other half. He finished his half before he fell sick! I was in the midst of doing my lectures when we had to rush him from the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Cairo to the hospital. The night he went to the hospital is the night (or the day) that he died!

Each day during this month as I have returned to Kemet, I see a sight, I visit sites and I am reminded of our trip together to this historic place. It hurts! This is my first time to return to Kemet since losing such an invaluable friend.

The trip to Kemet back in 2008 was also another one of my mentor’s last trips. Judge R. Eugene Pincham was with us as we visited all of the sites that we are visiting this month. Every time Judge Pincham got on the tour bus, he was singing, “The Lord God Has Brought Me From a Mighty Long Way!”
Judge Pincham’s son, Robert, is with us on this trip.

Seeing Robert wearing his straw hat reminds me of his father’s straw hat and his father’s gait, as he treads each day where his father walked two years ago. Now you can begin to understand why this trip to Kemet has been both powerful and painful.

I give thanks to God for the lives of Dr. Asa Hilliard and Judge R. Eugene Pincham. They have enriched my life beyond description and their lives (and deaths) make this trip a trip that I will never forget.

I leave here on the 14th of July to lead another study tour in Ghana, Togo and Benin. In many ways, that trip will also be a reminder of what happened here on the Continent two years ago!

When Baba Asa died in Kemet, Dr. Iva Carruthers accompanied Asa’s wife, Dr. Patsy Hilliard back to the States with Asa’s remains. My wife, daughter, Jeri, and I went on to Ghana where we met members of Trinity Church who were waiting there for us to lead a study tour in that country.

While we were in Ghana, Jeri pointed out to us that Patsy Hilliard was waiting for me to get back from Ghana in order to hold Asa Hilliard’s funeral services! She wanted me to preach Asa’s funeral.

The entire time we toured Ghana and while I was teaching in Ghana, my thoughts were on what final words of tribute I could possibly say to honor such a great man as Dr. Asa Hilliard. Returning to Ghana and going there from Kemet will open up that floodgate of memories also.

As I try my best to expose African Americans to the rich, cultural legacy that is theirs, I ask for your prayers. Putting a “hedge” around the pain in order to share the power of our story is “more than a notion” (to use the words of the old folks)!

Trying to “teach through the pain” has given me another glimpse of God’s grace and I thank God for that grace, as I remain,

Respectfully yours,

Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
Pastor Emeritus, Trinity United Church of Christ

© 2010 Copyrighted by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., All Rights Reserved.