The videoconference held at the United States (US) Embassy on Friday in the context of the Black History Month reserved at least one striking picture, to speak purely in terms of visual perception: on that occasion, save one or two fairer complexions and the staff of the embassy, one could barely see anything but jet-black or dark brown faces. Not to deny the major contributions of local white historians in the unearthing of coloured history in Mauritius, but the fact is still that not everybody lighter coloured seems to be at least concerned with those kind of events. Or does history belong to one group or the other?

The conference was an occasion to compare African-American History with our own history, casting the light on some shameful facts, often overlooked by common history.

?When you look to some history books, you wonder if there were any Blacks at all in America? on the other side of the screen, live from Washington, a white coffee scholar, the distinguished lecturer, Dr Thomas C. Battle, Director, Moorland-Spingard Research Center, Howard University, had yet invited his Mauritian audience to a conference over the struggles of the ?peoples of African descent to achieve freedom and equality during the age of emancipation?.

Thomas C. Battle thus stresses on the massive influx of populations from the Caribbean that makes Black people (standing for 10% of the American population) a mixed group, with influences from the French and Spanish controlled regions of America, as ?most enslaved Africans were deported to places like Brazil.? Which also explains why the struggle of African Americans, by far a minority in the States, had not been as early successful as the revolt in Haiti.

We could even follow by quoting Luigi Luca Cavlli-Sforza from a purely genetic angle in his brilliant essay on ?Genes, peoples and languages? : ?It is easy to calculate that the genome of a people who received a constant genetic flow of 5% per generation from its neighbors would keep only 70 % of its original genome after three centuries. This is the average value of admixture for African Americans.?

That said, the conference - never gave a one-man lecture but an open discussion from the outset - was a rare opportunity to skim through the complexity of African American History and its father figures in the limited hour and a half span. It was also an occasion to compare it with our own history, casting the light on some shameful facts, often overlooked by common history.

Reacting to Georgy Easton on the role of the Quakers in the freeing and educating of African Americans during the past centuries, Thomas C. Battle introduces some nuances. ?Christianity was also a tool to control people (?). We must not forget that the enslaving class was also a Christian class (?) Christians in the US had to find a way to justify enslavement?? though Blacks espoused much the foundations of Christianity as would later reflect the struggle of Pastor Martin Luther King.

The debate was also an occasion to cast another light on the emancipation movement. Following the pertinent intervention of writer Benjamin Moutou, Thomas C. Battle recognizes that the emancipation movement in the British colonies, started in the early 1800s, was more motivated by politics than moral issues. ?The US, after its independence, was a strong rival economy heavily relying on enslavement. It would be naïve to think that Britain had just suddenly changed its position on slavery.?

But the ?tremendous? roles of left-wing activists as the legendary Paul Robeson or the French born Creole Alfred Du Bois, who at some time was close to the communist ideology, have also to be underlined as our colleague Henri Marimootoo puts it. The struggles of African Americans for emancipation and equal civil rights did not thus date from Rosa Parks? refusal to give in her bus seat to a White.

There were recurrent surges of violent, racial confrontations in which mobs of whites and blacks battled each other in US towns and cities, particularly during the Jim Crow (segregation) era, spanning from the late 1870s to the 1950s.

The struggle would also manifest itself through the constant priority given by the Black families to education, a will that is ?less perceptible nowadays?, though, as remarks the social worker, Lindsay Morvan, a recent census revealed that ?about 80% of African-Americans have earned at least a high school diploma and 65% are in the Labour force?.

Other contributors included Diana Bablee, chairperson of the National Heritage Trust Fund, Dr Chineah, of the Tertiary Education Commission and the Civil Rights activist, Jean-Claude Bibi.

The Black History Month, which normally ends in Febuary, is not over, ?thanks? to cyclone Gamede. Those who wanted to attend the series of film shows celebrating African-American History in the US at the Indira Gandhi Center for Indian Culture, Phoenix, can still do so as the whole schedule (see inset) has been postponed for next week due to bad weather conditions.

EVENT

Black history in Technicolor

■ The series of films celebrating African American History will be finally screened at Indira Gandhi Centre for Indian Culture, Phoenix, from 5th March to 9th March. Evening sessions (at 7 p.m.) comprise :

Monday : ?The Rosa Parks story ?

Tuesday : ?Glory ?

Wednesday : ?Sounder ?

Thursday : ?Malcolm X?

Friday : ?Ray ?

Morning sessions for the youth

Tuesday at 11 a.m. : ?Akeelah and the Bee?

Wednesday at 11 a.m. : ?Selma, Lord, Selma?

Friday at 10.15 a.m. : ?Citizen King?.

Entrance is free.