Time and again, I have heard or read the sweeping claim that black Africa has contributed nothing of significance to world civilisation. For some non-Africans, this conviction appears so deeply entrenched that whenever historical evidence emerges pointing to African ingenuity or achievement, it is instinctively dismissed as fabrication or, if reluctantly acknowledged, attributed to some civilisation beyond sub-Saharan Africa.
More than once, I have written about the efforts of European settlers in Southern Rhodesia to rewrite the history of the magnificent Great Zimbabwe monuments. Rather than acknowledge their true creators, they variously credited the structures to the Phoenicians, to King Solomon, or indeed to almost anyone except black Africans. Today, historians are virtually unanimous in recognising that the celebrated Zimbabwe ruins were constructed by the ancestors of the Shona-speaking people. Moreover, more than 400 similar, though generally less elaborate, stone complexes have been identified, predominantly in Zimbabwe but also in Mozambique, Botswana and northern South Africa. Together, they provide compelling evidence of a sophisticated indigenous black African civilisation.
Between 760 BC and 660 BC, Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of black kings from Kush, in what is now present-day Sudan. They constituted the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of one of the world’s greatest civilisations. Writing in the February 2008 edition of National Geographic, Robert Draper observed of these remarkable rulers: “They stood up to the bloodthirsty Assyrians, perhaps saving Jerusalem in the process.” Yet, despite these and many other notable accomplishments, the Black Pharaohs were all but erased from the historical record.
Closer to home, a flourishing African kingdom once dominated much of this region: the Maravi Kingdom—the name Maravi being the Portuguese rendering of Malawi. Portuguese accounts from the 1660s describe Maravi as a vibrant and influential kingdom whose people were celebrated as prosperous ivory traders, gifted healers, wise counsellors and accomplished metallurgists. Their expertise in iron smelting was particularly noteworthy. Yet, for many years, the prevailing assumption among scholars was that iron smelting in Africa must have been introduced from elsewhere. The distinguished archaeologist Peter Schmidt reached a very different conclusion. Rejecting the long-held diffusionist assumptions, he wrote: “The hypothesis for independent invention is currently the most viable among the multitude of diffusionist hypotheses.”
Today, however, I wish to highlight one more example of African brilliance that has received nothing like the recognition it deserves. It concerns a little-known slave who was born in 1849, blind from birth and with what is now recognised as autism. His name was Thomas Wiggins Bethune, the surname having been inherited from his owner, Colonel James Neil Bethune.
It soon became apparent that “Blind Tom”, as he came to be known, possessed astonishing musical gifts. Even as a toddler, he could imitate birdsong, animal calls and mechanical noises with uncanny precision. Whenever he accompanied his mother to the Bethune household, he listened attentively to the piano lessons given to the family’s children. When eventually allowed to touch the keyboard himself, he reproduced from memory everything he had heard, leaving the household utterly amazed.
Blind Tom rapidly developed an extraordinary ability to play entirely by ear. After hearing a complex composition only once, he could reproduce it flawlessly, eventually amassing a repertoire said to contain thousands of pieces. Sensing a lucrative opportunity, Bethune began exhibiting him under the title “Blind Tom, the Blind Negro Boy Pianist”, earning a considerable fortune from concert tours. Blind Tom performed extensively throughout the United States before taking his remarkable talent to Canada and Europe. In 1860, at only eleven years of age, he gave a recital at the White House for President James Buchanan, becoming, it is widely believed, the first African American artist ever to perform there.
Many distinguished observers considered Blind Tom’s artistry equal to, and in some cases superior to, that of the greatest piano virtuosos of the age, including Liszt and Rubinstein. Yet, because of both his race and his disability, he was frequently marketed not simply as a gifted musician but as an exotic curiosity. He could effortlessly perform by ear the demanding works of such musical giants as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin. Anyone familiar with these composers knows that their compositions are masterpieces of immense technical and artistic complexity. Yet numerous contemporary accounts record that, in concert, Blind Tom moved seamlessly through the works of Beethoven, Mozart and others, while audiences drew comparisons between his playing and that of Mozart himself.
Rather than celebrate his remarkable gifts, many white observers dismissed Tom as a man “not of sound mind”. He died in 1908, having generated enormous wealth for others while exercising scarcely any financial control or personal independence throughout his life.