Thread by @JinkiesJerrica

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with Ron DeSantis banning Black history classes, know that the erasure of Black history is a common form of white supremacist violence

so common that Cecil Rhodes, as in Rhodes Scholarship, tried to destroy a medieval African city to hide the truth

#BlackHistoryMonth #BHM

the country, Zimbabwe, is named after the medieval city, Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe was made of stone, built by the ancestors of the Shona

when Cecil Rhodes colonized the land in the 1890s, he refused to acknowledge that Black people built the city

#BlackHistoryMonth

Cecil Rhodes hired archeologists to study the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, and each one reported the same answer: Black people built the city

with no scientific support for his racism, Rhodes opted to destroy evidence of the city’s Black origin

#BlackHistoryMonth

but Cecil Rhodes was merely following the example set by his peers back home in England

when Cecil Rhodes was colonizing the land of the Shona, the British empire led an attack on the Kingdom of Benin that erased the largest human-made structure ever built

#BlackHistoryMonth

Killmonger’s museum speech in this scene from Black Panther has made many people aware that the British empire stole the Benin Bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin

what many don’t know is that the British burned Benin City while stealing the Bronzes

#BlackHistoryMonth

Benin City was surrounded by the Walls of Benin, a series of walls four times the length of the Great Wall of China

but the walls were wooden, so when the Oba of Benin refused trade with the British, the British set fire to the walls, and sacked the city

#BlackHistoryMonth

and while destroying the Walls of Benin erased much of the history of that structure, the theft of the Benin Bronzes was an even greater erasure

the Benin Bronzes aren’t merely art, but the historical narratives of the people of Benin, cast in bronze

#BlackHistoryMonth

so when the British tore down the Benin Bronzes from the palace and other places in Benin City, it was the equivalent of ripping pages out of a history book there was only one of

that history is still lost as many of the Bronzes remain in British possession

#BlackHistoryMonth

so when Ron DeSantis and other republicans act to restrict the teaching of Black history in K-12 classes, they are perpetuating a form of violence intrinsic to white supremacy, a violence carried out against Black people for centuries

#BlackHistoryMonth