I, like many black high school students in the early 1960's, learned about Africa watching Tarzan, King Solomon's Mines , and Jungle Jim. I learned about Egypt watching the Land of the Pharaohs, Cleopatra and the Ten Commandants. I learned about Greek mythology watching Hercules and Jason and the Argonauts. I learned about the Moors watching Othello. I learned about the slave resistance to the Roman Empire watching Spartacus. I learned about American slavery watching Gone With the Wind.

I believed the claims of many eminent historians that blacks contributed little or nothing to history. By the 1970's I knew better. Thanks to the pioneering work of Carter G.Woodson, the pioneer black historian and educator, who fifty years earlier initiated what was then called Negro History Week, and other black and white scholars, the contributions of Africans to world history and African-Americans to U.S. history were permanently rescued from oblivion. Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, black educators Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois, black activists, Marcus Garvey and A. Phillip Randolph, black writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston, and modern day civil rights champions Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King had finally claimed their place in many history texts. The problem is they are still to often compartmentalized into separate and unequal chapters, such as "civil rights," or "slavery." This gives the false impression that black contributions are little more than a sideshow to the real workings of history.

This is nonsense. Black inventors, explorers, scientists, architects and trade unionists were major players in the development of American industry, Black abolitionists, religious and civil rights leaders profound influence on law, politics and ethics in America. Black artists, writers and musicians gave America and the world its most original and distinctive culture and art forms. Some Afro-centrists don't help matters. In an effort to combat the whitening of history, they made outlandish claims that blacks made all the major contributions to world civilizations. They reveled in the past grandeurs of African kingdoms, and empires and ignored the rich contributions that blacks made to American history. By distorting history to score racial brownie points, black and white idealogues left many blacks and non-blacks wondering just whose black history to believe.

These recent events are tragic proof that neither faction has done much to make Americans aware how much there is still to be learned about the black contributions to American history:

• Stephen Spielberg's film Amistad was a powerful reminder that the issue of slavery deeply influenced, law, politics, religion, and racial relations in 19th Century America, and continues to fuel racial strife today.
• The works of 19th and 20th Century black American classical composers such as Florence Price, Ulysses Key, and William Grant Still are played more frequently in concert halls and are recognized as a major part of classical music's development in America.
• A team of Howard University researchers currently examining a slave burial ground at a construction site in New York discovered that blacks in the North had developed a highly complex network of organizations, secret societies, and rituals to survive.
• In a recent interview the new Federal Communications Commission chairman, William Kennard, an African-American, listed several well-known buildings that his father and pioneer black architect Paul Williams designed in Los Angeles and nationally.

Thoughtful black and non-black scholars can step up the effort to uncover even more of these rich nuggets of history. Publishers can stop dumping black contributions into deserted corners of textbooks. School administrators and teachers can weave black achievements throughout all classroom curricula. Public officials can honor black achievements in history throughout the entire year. And corporations can promote black contributions not just on courtesy calenders, writing pads, and other small budget items to mostly black customers but in their advertising and promotional materials to all Americans. Celebrating black history as American history can boost the pride and self- esteem of young people of all colors, and show them they can achieve against all odds. This is the best way to answer the question: whose black history to believe?