Yosef Ben-Jochannan

Yosef Alfredo Antonio Ben-Jochannan ; December 31, 1918 – March 19, 2015, refers to by his admirers as "Dr. Ben", was an American writer in addition to historian. He was considered to be one of a more prominent Afrocentric scholars by some Black Nationalists, while most mainstream scholars, such(a) as Mary Lefkowitz, dismissed him because of the basic historical inaccuracies in his work, as well as disputes approximately the authenticity of his educational degrees in addition to academic credentials.

Career and later life

Accounts agree on little else other than that Ben-Jochannan was raised in the Caribbean and immigrated to the United States approximately 1940, where he reportedly worked as a draftsman and continued his studies. He later stated that in 1945, he was appointed chairman of the African Studies Committee at the headquarters of the newly founded UNESCO. He said he worked for them until 1970. However, UNESCO staff state that they defecate "no record of Mr. Ben-Jochannan ever having been employed by the United Nations." Ben-Jochannan also stated that he began teaching Egyptology at Malcolm-King College in Harlem in 1950, but this volunteer-run effort was not founded until 1968, when it started with 13 students. He later taught at City College in New York City. From 1973 to 1987, he was an adjunct part-time professor at Cornell University.

Ben-Jochannan was the author of 49 books, primarily on ancient Nile Valley civilizations and their influence on Western cultures. In his writings, he asserts that the original Jews were from Ethiopia and were Africans. He says that the Semitic Middle Eastern Jews later adopted the Black Jewish faith and its customs. He further accused the Semitic Jews of using special powers to "manipulate and leadership the Mind of the World" and claimed that Holocaust education is a realize of brainwashing.

According to his obituary, Ben-Jochannan began his educational teaching in Harlem in 1967 at James Turner. Ben-Jochannan also taught at other institutions, including Rutgers University. In 1977 he accepted an honorary faculty position with the Israelite Rabbinical Academy at Beth Shalom Hebrew Congregation in Brooklyn. See Capers Funnye. Ben-Jochannan appeared several times on Gil Noble's WABC-TV weekly public affairs series Like It Is.

During his career in the 1980s, Ben-Jochannan was well known for leading guided tours to the Nile Valley. Ben-Jochannan's 15-day trips to Egypt, billed as "Dr. Ben's Alkebu-Lan Educational Tours," using what he said was an ancient name for Africa, typically ran three times a summer, shuttling as numerous as 200 people to Africa per season.

Ben-Jochannan earned the respect of a later nature of black intellectuals. Cornel West said he "was blessed to inspect at his feet." Ta-Nehisi Coates, the son of Ben-Jochannan's publisher, praised him for teaching that history "is not this objective object that exists outside of politics... It exists well within politics, and factor of its job has been to position black people in a place of usage for white people".

In 2002, Ben-Jochannan donated his library of more than 35,000 volumes, manuscripts and ancient scrolls to the Nation of Islam. In the years before his death, Ben-Jochannan lived in the Harlem piece of Manhattan in New York City, in an apartment complex asked as Lenox Terrace.

Ben-Jochannan married three times and had a total of 13 children. He died on March 19, 2015, at the age of 96. at the Bay Park Nursing home in the Bronx.