Igniting The Fire, Brings The Light, From Invisibility to Academic Viability & Excellence

A young African American man had a vision to bring forth an education system that he himself had never experienced. The existing education institutional system never addressed his self esteem, nor encouraged his quest for academic excellence. People of color were never looked upon or considered note worthy of recognition in or out of the classroom setting; for that matter, society in large part erased the acknowledgement of people of African origin, along with all others peoples of color. They, along with the majority of people of color, have been fundamentally omitted from historical text, therefore declared invisible in the annals of time and thereby denied their rightful and deserved greatness. What was assigned to them in historical studies has been minuscule in nature and often demeaning. He recalled this disparity having begun to take hold/surface around the third grade in his public school lesson plan. What was often highlighted was Slavery; the Civil War; Emancipation by President Lincoln; Jim Crow and the Civil Right Movement. Africans were deemed never to have any history of any significance nor importance, for that matter, prior to their contact and eventual enslavement by Europeans. That is quite the contrary as Renaldo would subsequently come to realize, as he sort to educate himself on whom were the true African peoples of the world. It was his past educational encounters, which were to later ignite this dream to create a Charter School platform in honor of the African University known as Sankore, located in the town Timbuktu of the Mali Empire. Declared to be the world’s first university of higher educational learning.