Dear Editor:

It is amazing how little our people know about history. A well-known historian once said that history is our guide, for if we know what was, we would have a better understnding of what is, and be better prepared for what is yet to come.

Listening to the daily talk shows, many of the callers seen to have paranoia with others, particularly those who look exactly like them, but speak a different language — unmindful of the fact that the slave ships did not bring any Bahamians, Jamacians or Haitians, only Africans. Whether we accept it or not, that is an episode in our history.

What needs to be understood is that this country was founded on migration, beginning no doubt with the Mayan, Olmec, and Aztec. Then came the Arawak, Carib, and Lucayans. After the arrival of Chistopher Columbus, the indigenous people began to die out from disease and forced labour, of which they were not accustomed. Then after the arrival of the so-call Adventurers, a plan was set in motion for the enslavement of the Africans. They decided to go to Africa for more physical people.

Being religious and of the Christian faith, there was somewhat of a guilt among the slave masters to justify their actions against the slaves. In their minds, they had reduced the Africans to three-fifths of a human being.

They had forgotten that in the past, Europeans — particularly the Greeks — went to school in Africa, because at the time Africa had the world's only university: The University of San Coree at Timbuktu.

The slave masters had learnt the importance of an education. They realized that the older slaves with the knowledge would soon die and the knowledge would die out with them, so they made it a crime for anyone to teach the slaves. Now when the young slave grew up, it was easy to tell him that ancestors did nothing for the advancement of civilization, when in fact it was the slave masters who deprided them of an education. Now rather than learning to read hieroglyphs, the writing of their ancestors, they are making graffiti in a negative way. To me, that is a crime against humanity.

To reveal these things, one runs the risk of being called something that he is not, but the truth must be told, not only for the benefit of the sons of former slave owners, but also for the sons of former slave owners. They all have a right to know.

''....History....is indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." (Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — 1776-1788)

Yours sincerely,

Prince G. Smith

Freeport, G.B.