posted 20 August 2004 03:36 PM            

See the following though[Please avoid the political content of the article it's not up for discussion],but what should be observed is the relevance of the ancestry to Disaporian community as a whole.

See the following:
http://www.estevanico.org/ddavis.html

The Estevanico Society: Genetic Marker Letter

Copy of email letter sent to Bill Wright from Donal Davis in January 1999.

Hello Mr. Wright,

I?m Donal Davis, born in Marlin, Texas. I was elated to find the Estevanico Society on the web. I have a unique interest in Morocco, moors, and Berbers.

You see, when I was in the Navy, I was told that I had Mediterranean Anemia (Coolie?s Anemia), which is rare in American blacks. I was asked about Italian or Jewish ancestry, but I have none. So for many years, I put it out of my mind after notifying the rest of my family of the genetic defect. But some years later, I happened to visit Morocco. Aside from the natives constantly mistaking me for a Berber from the south, I learned of a connection some African Americans may have to Morocco through the slave trade. Estevanico was even sighted as the most famous example.

Since I now believe this would explain my unusual genetics, I am on a crusade to learn all that I can about Estevanico and other moors, black Berbers, Tuaregs, and whoever else may have likewise been captured and sent to the new world.

I know it?s a shot in the dark, but it?s all I have. Thanks, just having the web site has been helpful.

Donal Davis

dodavis@ibm.net

Women claims she has Tuareg ancesty:

Genocide suit takes aim at Lloyd?s of London
by KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 4/1/2004

With the aid of technical advances in science, African Americans can now use DNA analysis to trace their genetic ancestry and determine which regions of Africa their families originally came from.
?Genealogy is not a hobby for African Americans,? notes Antoinette Harrell-Miller, founder of the Louisiana-based African American Genealogy Connections. Harrell-Miller, whose DNA test analyses show that, through her mother?s line, she is related to the Tuareg ethnic group of Niger, is also a plaintiff in a new genocide-based DNA lawsuit that was announced on March 29.
Harrell-Miller and seven other African Americans who have traced their genealogy to nations like Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger have announced a $1 billion lawsuit against Lloyd?s of London, FleetBoston Financial Corp., and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.
The case, which was filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks punitive damages against companies it alleges conspired with the U.S. government to commit acts of genocide, rape, kidnap and murder against African people, in violation of international law.
This case is different from previous slavery reparations cases, notes Deadria Farmer- Paellmann, the original plaintiff in the 2002 class action reparations lawsuit Farmer-Paellmann v. FleetBoston, who is now also a claimant in this suit. This case is based on the Proxmire Act, the U.S. law that legalized the United Nations? Crime of Genocide (UNCG) law.
The UNCG states that the systematic murder, injury, forceful transfer of children, use of laws to prevent the births of future generations or use of laws intended to cause the physical destruction of members of a specific national, ethnic, racial, or religious group are acts of genocide. The Proxmire Act calls for fines of up to $1 million for each claimant who can prove genocidal acts were committed against a relative.
Each of the eight claimants in this lawsuit could petition for $1 million for their personal benefit, but this $1 billion suit seeks to have the companies contribute to a fund that would pay for DNA tests for those African Americans who want to take them and finance an educational fund that would help Africans in the diaspora understand their ethnic origins.
Edward D. Fagan, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said the case will use DNA evidence to establish scientific links between the ancestors of the plaintiffs and regions in Africa where major British and U.S. companies profited from the kidnapping, forced transportation and enslavement of Africans in the Americas. Fagan, who is famous for winning $5 billion against German corporations who profited from slave labor during the Nazi era and some $1.25 billion from Swiss banks who discounted Jewish bank records during World War II is also the legal representative for Black South Africans who are suing Swiss, French, German, English and U.S. banks who profited from the exploitation of Blacks during apartheid.
In this case, DNA links will show that during the trans-Atlantic slave trade these companies profited from businesses that paid for, insured, and transported specific ethnic people to the Americas. It will show how, in the United States, official laws and customs were created to obliterate Black people?s connections to their various African ancestries and specific ethnic memories.
?Everyone knows that during the Middle Passage, they used to keep people who spoke the same language apart, so there?d be no chance of an uprising,? said Farmer-Paellmann, who recently received DNA test reports from the Washington DC-based firm African Ancestry Inc. which link her to the Mende people of Sierra Leone. ?But even after that, they would list us in U.S. Census Slave Schedules as ?mulatto,? ?negro,? ?male,? ?female,? and maybe give an age. But they would not list the ethnic group or region we came from, even though they knew where we came from - because they?d bought us based on the skills our ancestors knew in Africa.
?That was simply deliberate,? she said. ?That was because our connections to our ancestors were supposed to have been destroyed forever. Listing our ethnicity wasn?t important; it didn?t matter because we were essentially insignificant.?
?We had to create our culture - at least, we tried to create it during the 1960s,? Maxine McCrea Montana recalled. Montana says she tried to use the African dance she learned from working with the Calabash Dance Theater to understand her African heritage. ?We would just base it on West African traditions, because that was all we knew. But now, with DNA testing, we will be able to determine exactly where we came from.?
Montana is also an assistant to Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely, the recognized ideological heir to Harlem?s famed Queen Mother Moore, who went to the United Nations as early as the 1950s to charge the U.S. with genocide and to petition for help in gaining reparations for slavery.
?Lloyd?s of London aided and abetted in the commission of genocide against enslaved Africans along with others including the United States government,? Farmer-Paellmann said in a prepared statement. ?We were referred to as cargo on shipping records, not by our names, nationality or ethnic groups as other immigrants to the Americas were. [Those] early acts of genocide recur each time a Black child is born in America not knowing their African ethnic and national group.?
Eleven-year-old Bernard Temple, the son of Harrell-Miller, says that now that he knows where his mother?s people are from he feels he has a stronger sense of identity. ?I wanted to be able to claim my identity back since it was stolen from me,? he explained, while dressed in the traditional clothes of the Tuareg. ?I wanted not just my identity, I wanted my customs, my language and my traditions. I want all that back.?
Bernard and his family are now planning a summer trip to four different countries in Africa, but his mother says their first stop will be Niger, the nation their DNA links them to.

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posted 23 August 2004 05:28 PM            

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Originally posted by ausar:
Off the subject of ancient Egypt but I found some article I found extremely interesting. It appears that more than western Africans were kidnapped in the disapora.

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Actually Ausar, it's not really off the subject...and even though I hate repeating myself...

African Americans: A Pan-African people

The north western slave port at Goree Island, Senegal was only one of several points of departure for Africans being taken to the United States. There were other points as well, stretching as far southward as the present state of Angola. These ports of departure were used for transporting Africans from the African interior - a vast interior...

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"A strong, unchecked demand for brute labor in the West Indies and on the continent of America grew until it culminated in the eighteenth century, when Negro slaves were crossing the Atlantic at the rate of fifty to one hundred thousand a year. This called for slave raiding on a scale that drew upon every part of Africa-- upon the west coast, the western and Egyptian Sudan, the valley of the Congo, Abyssinia, the lake regions, the east coast, and Madagascar. Not simply the degraded and weaker types of Negroes were seized, but the strong Bantu, the Mandingo and Songhay, the Nubian and Nile Negroes, the Fula, and even the Asiatic Malay, were represented in the raids...

-- The Negro by WEB DuBois, University of Pennsylvania Press (c) 2001, pp149;154-5

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African Americans have the unique distinction of being related to the vast majority of African ethnic-linguistic groups, not solely on the basis of a common race, but by blood ties and families. This is a profound reality...