ABSTRACT
This commentary addresses the chapters that William H. Watkins and Kassie Freeman prepared for the Commission on Research in Black Education. It is obvious that most of the problems Africans are facing today in their quest for education, which is meant to lead to a better life, originated from political and social unrest generated by the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization. This “trade’’ in human beings introduced permanent warfare, which resulted in the dislocation of powerful and stable empires into small kingdoms. Traditional rules of succession were discarded. Only firearms opened the way to power. This situation facilitated European colonization. The African continent was divided into new political units separated by artificial boundaries. During the era of African enslavement, Europeansweremainly interested in providing human labor to their American colonies. With colonialism, however, the main goal was to useAfricans towork on their own land in order to provide badly needed raw materials to European industries. Railroad tracks were built just like needles reaching the far interior of the African continent, from where all kinds of goods were transported to the coast and then to Europe. New towns mushroomed on the coast and most of them became the capitals of
the newly created political entities and the cradle of the colonial schools Europeans established.
