Thank you, Sincerely
K. Wes

Thank you for this great tribute to William Leo Hansberry and the summary of his collection on ancient African history. As a colleague in the Institute of African-American Relations and a long time friend of Hansberry, I have long been sad at the sparseness of information on this great man in this country. Your paper helps admirably to fill in this tragic gap. You might be interested in one anecdote from my connection with “Leo”, as most of his friends called him. He asked me to work with him at one point in 1955 or 1956 to help reorganize and systematize his very large collection. I spent a delightful afternoon with him going over documents and books, and of course listening to his frequent commentaries on details about Kush, Punt, Nubia, and other specifics he was so attracted to and knowledgeable about. But my own job was so demanding that I was unable to follow up.

A few years after his death I published a little book called “Understanding Africa”. Then, a few years later, my publisher (Thomas Y. Crowell) asked if I would write a general historical sketch of the African past. I did, and in 1972, my “History of African Civilization” was published. In the “Author’s Note” I revealed my deep debt to Hansberry; I should like to quote it verbatim:

“The book has a bias. It is based on the premise that the history of the Africans is a moving story, a story of the largely successful efforts of the Black African to create his own distinctive civilization in response to the African environment.

A careful and honest study of the efforts to reconstruct Africa’s history, especially the accelerating research since the achievement of independence by most Africans, corroborates this view. Yet only a few years ago it required an act of faith to assert that the Black African has a proud past. A few scholars and believers did,and were ignored or ridiculed. Today ample hard evidence is available to bear out this positive interpretation of African history, vindicating those whose assertions in favor of the African achievement met such skeptical response from the learned and scholarly men of Europe and America.

My own original attachment to this bias came from William Leo Hansberry, one of the most ardent of this small band of historians, whom I was honored to know for many years as a friend. The late William Leo Hansberry was Professor of History at Howard University, where he inspired many students to appreciate Africa’s past. He devoted himself tenaciously and with unswerving loyalty, throughout his life, to studying the African past. Normally a mild and deeply modest man, Leo Hansberry defended and argued the African case with passion and perseverance. Nor was his partisanship limited to the Africa of antiquity; he labored vigorously to assist African students in America, to arouse American interest in Africa, and to urge American support for the liberation and regeneration of modern Africa.

When he died, in 1965, Leo Hansberry left drafts of several major works on African history. When these works are published, his deep, empathetic understanding of African history, based on both knowledge and faith, will become much more widely known. They will expand the recognition that Hansberry’s long advocacy of the African cause had begun to receive toward the end of his nearly fifty years of scholarship and teaching.

This book is not the appropriate medium to convey Hansberry’s sensitive comprehension of the great panorama of Africa’s past. Yet his love for Africa, and his passion to see Africa, and its heritage, treated justly, had a deep and lasting effect on me, as they did on all who knew him well.

William Leo Hansberry was, in a very personal sense, one of the greatest men I have known. I hope this book will serve as a small tribute to his life, to the love he bore for Africa, and to the great achievements of the African past which he recognized and bespoke many years before it was fashionable to do so.

Words alone will not, can not express our families gratitude for you, your family, and the team of which, your scholarship service to humanity is secured. As a student of Professor Jewell R. Crawford Mazique; of which you are aware that, Mrs. Mazique was and admirer of this Ethiopian legacy, through being an admirer of Dr. William Leo Hansberry, from 1935; and a student directly, when she was completing her second “Masters”, at Howard in African Studies, in 1957. There is more that could be shared, however, thank you and “Teacher”, Mrs. Ford, for her assistance with this student, to become learned in my background about Africa’s importance, through Ethiopian “specs”.

May your works on Ethiopian studies, “merging” with Black studies, assist with science, technology, water and food security, be focus on introducing the vital importance of national reconstruction of Nubians is a holistic approach to culture. Again, thank you for the fine article written on the seminal importance of the foundational works of Dr. Leo Hansberry and a few of his students.

BaBu, Tarik Abdu ODUNO,M.R.E./gardner

Thank you for this, it really is an excellent article!

Work like this is much needed, and I agree with you the that rift between African and Ethiopian studies needs to be bridged. It is very difficult for me to understand how they can be so far apart ( in terms of academic “fields”).

I have yet to take an African Studies/History course where Ethiopia–actually the Horn of Africa in general–is included in the discussion (beyond the mention of the Italian Invasion).
H

Thank you for your response re: my search for William Leo Hansberry’s work. I will follow up. Yesterday evening, I told my brother, William “Bill” Greaves ,how informative I found your writing about Hansberry. I also related to him what I had read either in your writing or in the course of reading another writer—(I lost track of the reference)—that Hansberry had left Harvard before receiving a Ph.D. I had speculated that this was due, perhaps, to his unwillingness to cow tow to some nonsense they might have wanted him to espouse in a Doctoral Dissertation. My brother corrected the speculative notion with the following: “The reason he did not receive his Ph.D. at Harvard was that he was advised, in writing! that there was no one around who knew as much as he did!” My brother added: “That was his Doctorate!” Checking into this, I found the exact quote of Earnest Hooton of Harvard: “no present day scholar has developed anything like the knowledge of this field that Hansberry has developed….” I love it! I felt strongly that I should relate this information to you in the hope that you will be able to amend your otherwise impressive record with this critical detail in future writing about him. Once again, thank you for a great report on the great scholar, and, in very real terms, African American hero, given the brilliant, mighty battle he patiently fought against horrific odds in a vicious, protracted ordeal.

Sincerely,

Donald C. Greaves

The distinguished historian Professor Joseph E. Harris of Howard University has edited two volumes of WILLIAM LEO HANSBERRY AFRICAN HISTORY NOTEBOOK. Volume I refers to PILLARS IN ETHIOPIAN HISTORY, while Volume II refers to AFRICA AND AFRICANS AS SEEN BY CLASSIC AL WRITTERS. These volumes are reproduction of Hanberry’s notes on African History. To my knowledge, these are the last and only volumes published about African History. Note that the edition of his historical notes by Professor Harris is a great tribute and acknowledgement to Hansberry. Ayele

Thank you for the very informative article by Professor Berkerie on William Leo Hansberry whom I met briefly through my brother, filmmaker William Greaves in the mid 1960′s. I am looking for the volumes on African History on which he (Hansberry) was working. Were they ever completed and if so, where can a copy be obtained, and if not completed, are the incomplete manuscripts available anywhere for review?

Sincerely,

Donald C. Greaves
646 309-7523

“During the past 100 years, and particularly during the past 50 years,” Dr. Hansberry explains, “Western scholars, particularly archeologists and anthropologists, have given special attention to the ancient civilizations in these regions and have reported their findings fully and effectively. But they have done so in the technical languages of the specialist. There is no doubt that this special information is available. But it is available only to specialists. It is also scattered in treatment and in present location. My hope is to pull all this information together, substantiate it by observation, and put it together in a work which the ordinary person can read and understand.”

I commend Professor Ayele Bekerie for continuing in the tradition of Professor Hansberry by making his research available and readable for the ordinary person to understand.

What we have today is a split between African Studies and Ethiopian Studies. Besides Ethiopian Studies is narrowly defined and tends to focus only on the hisory and culture of the highland Ethiopia. I think that we should revisit the approach of Hansberry in order to broadly and inclusively define what he termed Africana Studies. To me Hansberry’s great contribution to is his successful incorporation of the ancient African Past to the study and understanding of to the field of Africana Studies. Ayele

What the ancient Egyptians call the Land of Punt was a major source of incense (itan)to Egyptians. Therfore it is plausible that the term refers to all the countries in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia. By the way, the Egyptians use the word itan for incense. And itan is an Amharic word. Ayele

Great article. I am sorry to say I didn’t know anything about Leo Hansberry, being more of a French culture I am more familiar with Check Anta Diop. Thank you.

On “cultures of the Land of Punt (Eritrea and the Somalilands), 3000 BCE – 350 CE”. Does this mean that what the ancient used to call Punt is the current Eritrea and Somalia?