Anderson Thompson Weheme Peri Kush is a metronome by which we measure African rhythms in time and space. His reading, teaching and writing practices, delinked from vulgar careerism and shaped by often thankless work of connecting people and ideas, mapped pathways for so many of us. See human experiences as connected, not fragmented.
Connect others. Move simply. Inject circumspectly. Defend the African way. Afterward, I excitedly introduced myself and commented on the book he had under his arm, an original hardback copy of The Rebirth of African Civilizations. We fell into the rite-of-passage talk of dedicated men of print. That night, I got my first of a quarter century of intergenerational mouth-to-ear transmissions from his encyclopedic mind and, as I would learn later, my first cold blooded vetting to join his apogee circle of nationalist bibliomaniacs that included John Henrik Clarke, Yosef ben Jochannan, Larry Obadele Williams Maa Kheru , Kweku Larry Crowe, Adisa Makilani, Conrad Worrill, Asa G.
In fact, it was Anderson Thompson who literally led me by the hand to members of the Kemetic Institute, beginning with the towering Jacob Carruthers Maa Kheru. Baba Andy had done what he always did: Expanded the network of Pan Africanists, Black Nationalists and African people, connecting us to common, collective liberation work. His name remains a shibboleth, a password: If you knew him, doors could open from Kemet to Sudan to Brazil, from the hardest core street level organizers and scholars to the doors of gymnasiums and gates of ball fields to the highest levels of the Library of Congress.
Anderson Thompson, scribbled notes in hand, peripatetic purveyor of place, was highly respected among those who know. From that moment on, I tried my best to observe and model Baba Andy as much or more as anyone. To hear and learn the sources of his thinking and teaching practice, from his connection with educators such as Margaret Burroughs, Barbara Sizemore and so many others. As a result, more young people can now speak of hearing him outline and discuss, impromptu and without notes, long comparative intellectual genealogies, annotating as he went.
His model remains my model: Never without writing tools, a cache of books and ephemera, and the little slips of paper upon which, his close comrades would often tease, he had written down the history of the entire world. What he worked on worked on him. Steel sharpens steel. Like any Jegna, Baba Andy revealed his depth as his students acquired theirs.
