Yosef Ben-Jochannan

Yosef A.A. (Alfredo Antonio) Ben-Jochannan (born December 31, 1918, Gonder, Ethiopia), also known simply as Dr. Ben, is an Afrocentric historian. He is most notable for his writings and teachings about the Black Jews and ancient Africa, and how Europeans, notably the White Jews, appropriated its culture and legacy.

Early life and education

According to his own biographical sketches, Dr. Ben was born, an only child, to a Black Puerto Rican Jewish mother named Julia Matta and a Black Ethiopian Jewish father named Kriston ben-Jochannan, a Falasha. Shortly after his birth, the Ben-Jochannan family moved to St. Croix, Virgin Islands. The young Dr. Ben enjoyed playing cricket, and working on the sugar plantation of his uncle. Dr. Ben was married to Gertrude M. England (d. 2010). He is the father of 18 children.

Dr. Ben was educated in Puerto Rico, Brasil, Cuba, and Spain, earning degrees in engineering and anthropology. In 1938, Dr. Ben earned a BS in Civil Engineering at the university of Puerto Rico and in 1939 a Master's degree in Architectural Engineering from the University of Havana, Cuba. He received doctoral degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Moorish History from the University of Havana and the University of Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Ben was a student of George James.

Career and later life

Dr. Ben immigrated to the United States in the early 1940s. He worked as a draftsman and continued his studies. In 1945, he was appointed chairman of the African Studies Committee at the headquarters of the newly founded UNESCO, a position from which he stepped down in 1970. In 1950 Dr. Ben began teaching Egyptology at Malcolm King College then at City College in New York City. From 1976 to 1987, he was an adjunct professor at Cornell University. Dr. Ben is the author of 49 books, primarily on ancient Nile Valley civilizations and their impact on Western cultures. One of the most famous of which is Black Man of the Nile and His Family. Dr. Ben is fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Ge'ez, and Arabic. He has a reading knowledge of ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics. In his writings, notably, We the Black Jews, he argues that the original Jews were Black Africans from Ethiopia, while the white Jews later adopted the Jewish faith and its customs. Dr. Ben currently lives in the Harlem section of New York City, where, beginning in 1946, he formerly ran a business organizing trips to Egypt for travelers to see the monuments of ancient Africa.

In the 1980s and 1990s Dr. Ben was much in demand on the public speaking circuit especially college campuses. Dr. Ben has made a number of appearances on Gil Noble's WABC-TV weekly public affairs series, Like It Is.

Dr. Ben is founder and high priest in the Craft of Amen-Ra and holds the title/rank of 360° Grand Master in the Craft of Amen-Ra. In February 1993, Wellesley College classics professor Mary Lefkowitz publicly confronted Dr. Ben about his teachings that Aristotle visited the Library of Alexandria as impossible since Aristotle was dead before the library's construction.

In 2002, Dr. Ben donated his personal library of more than 35,000 volumes, manuscripts and ancient scrolls to The Nation of Islam.

In May 2004 his son Nnandi Ben-Jochannan was shot and murdered in Harlem.

Selected bibliography

African Origins of Major "Western Religions"; We the Black Jews; Black Man of the Nile and His Family; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; New Dimensions in African History; The Myth of Exodus and Genesis and the Exclusion of Their African Origins; Abu Simbel to Ghizeh: A Guide Book and Manual

See also

• Afrocentrism
• Ancient Egyptian race controversy

External links

• African American Racism in the Academic Community