Reclaiming Our Shared Story A Call for Unity Across the Black World

Unity is not about being the same. Unity is recognizing that we are branches of the same sacred tree. Wherever we stand today in Africa, the Americas, Europe, or elsewhere we are descendants of survivors and inheritors of greatness. When we come together, we are capable of transforming our future and restoring our full history.

By Vivian Abiedu

For too long, the history of Black people in Africa and across the diaspora has been fragmented, manipulated, and weaponized. Colonial powers understood that the easiest way to weaken a strong people is to divide their memory. And so, they shattered our story into pieces: Africans on the continent, African Americans in the West, Afro Caribbeans in the islands, all taught to doubt the legitimacy of the others.

Today, we face the consequences of that strategy.
Suspicion. Disconnection. Competing claims of belonging and identity. But what if this is exactly what those who benefitted from our oppression wanted. What if the arguments over who is more authentic, who came first, or who is indigenous to what land are preventing us from seeing the bigger truth

We are one people.

Black civilizations in Africa shaped human progress from the Nile Valley to West Africa, from the Great Lakes region to the southern kingdoms. Our ingenuity built powerful societies like Kush, Mali, Benin, Dahomey, Kongo, and Great Zimbabwe. Our knowledge influenced distant lands through trade, scholarship, and spiritual practice.

Across the ocean, our family endured forced displacement, cultural suppression, and economic exploitation. Yet they survived. They created new languages, new rhythms, and new traditions that continue the spirit of our ancestors. One branch suffered mass deportation. Another branch suffered colonization and internal dispossession. Both branches resisted extinction. That resistance binds us together.

The real threat has never been each other. We must be cautious with narratives that accuse entire African communities of being foreign to Africa or cast doubt on people who identify themselves as descendants of Africa in the Americas. These stories often come from misinformation campaigns that thrive on confusion and pain.

True liberation requires truth. Not replacement of one erasure with another. The forces that harmed Black people remain visible in the modern world:
Colonial economic systems that never truly ended.
Education that ignores our contributions to civilization. Global media that rewrites our history and identity. If we dedicate our energy to attacking one another, we hand victory to the systems that divided us in the first place.

Here is our calling.

First, shared research. We must support credible history rooted in archaeology, language, genetics, anthropology, and our own oral traditions.

Second, mutual respect. We must honor the lived identities of all Black communities whether they are in Lagos, Kingston, Atlanta, Bamenda, London, Johannesburg, or Bahia.

Third, collective empowerment. We must build political, cultural, and economic unity across continents, because our strength is multiplied when we act as a family and not as isolated villages.

Unity is not about being the same. Unity is recognizing that we are branches of the same sacred tree. Wherever we stand today in Africa, the Americas, Europe, or elsewhere we are descendants of survivors and inheritors of greatness. When we come together, we are capable of transforming our future and restoring our full history.

Not us versus them. But all of us versus injustice and ignorance. This is our time to reclaim our story in full. Not broken pieces. Not competing fragments. A unified legacy with a unified future. We are one people rising.

Vivian Abiedu