"ours. By then I'd read Chancellor Williams, J. A. Rogers, and John Jackson--writers central to the canon of our new noble history. From them I knew that Mansa Musa of Mali was black, and Shabaka of Egypt was black, and Yaa Asantewaa of Ashanti was black--and "the black race" was a thing I supposed existed from time immemorial, a thing that was real and mattered." --