My 7-Year Journey Creating the John Henrik Clarke Enhanced History Project:

How One Museum Visit Transformed into a Mission to Document 8,000 Years of African Excellence:

The Birth of the Clarke Project

The Clarke Enhanced History Project is my response to my first visit to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

I'll never forget, it was September 24, 2016—I was in Luxor, Egypt, on stage doing a presentation at a conference the ASA Restoration Project had coordinated. We brought together scholars who were excavating and restoring 25th dynasty tombs.

At the exact moment I was presenting in Egypt, 6,000 miles away, Barack Obama was presiding over the formal opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

The following month, I visited the museum.

Like millions of others, I was impressed:

• By the collections

• By the architecture

• By the layout and design of the exhibits

But one thing bothered me.

The history portion of the museum begins five stories underground.

As visitors stepped off the elevator, they walked through a darkened space with a low ceiling—a space designed to make them feel as though they were in a slave ship.

They were captives in the Middle Passage.

The Pain I Witnessed

As an artist with architectural aspirations, I'm always analyzing environments—looking at the design and how spaces impact the consciousness of people who move through them.

I watched elders moving through this small, dark space in the lower bowels of the museum. Many were in shock, in tears.

Their reactions were indicative of people who had little exposure to the horrors of the Maafa.

They weren't prepared because they were never taught about the European enslavement of African people.

I felt their pain.

Their anguish.

Their sorrow.

It hurt me to see our people dropped into this environment psychologically, emotionally and historically unprepared.

Speaking with curators and guides, I found many felt the same way.

I felt compelled to do something, though I didn't know what.

That desire stayed with me for 18 months until thoughts began forming in my mind. I shared my ideas with my angel investor, Debra Watkins, who had brought me to California monthly for nearly eight years.

Deborah is a consummate fundraiser who knows how to attract donations from well-heeled funders in Silicon Valley.

She told me to write up a proposal.

The John Henry Clarke Enhanced History Project

Thinking of Dr. Clarke and his dedication to documenting African history, I felt called to tap into his spirit and enhance the history of Africans in America.

I wrote a one-page proposal, gave it to Debra, who passed it to the president of the Hewlett Foundation.

After conversations and modifications, we received funding in January 2019.

With funding in hand, I began designing what I wanted the project to look like and the impact I wanted it to have.

Though I've spent four decades as a writer, public speaker, historian, and Kemetologist, I have no formal training in those arenas. I am, by training, an artist—specifically, a graphic designer with a love for architecture.

I took two years of architecture courses in high school and majored in architecture my freshman year at the University of Illinois before transferring to Howard and changing my major to design.

The Artist's Approach to History

I am an artist at heart.

That creative aspect allows me to be flexible and different from classically trained historians.

I'm not a trained historian—I'm an artist who uses art to write and talk about history.

I use graphic design and marketing skills to make history more palatable to the ahistorical.

I brought these skills to the creation of the John Henry Clarke Enhanced History Project.

I reached out to Free Benjamin, my creative partner since 2005, when she designed the initial displays for the first IKG Cultural Resource Center in Northeast DC.

Free is a very creative artist, much more talented in the art field than I am. I was doing design work in the 1970s before computers, so I never learned Photoshop or InDesign like skillful designers such as Free.

The Africa's Eyes Mural

We began working on the mural that would be the cornerstone of the project in 2019 —a graphic image representing 8,000 years of African excellence and success.

My motivation was to tell the story of African people before our world was turned upside down during the Maafa—to document 8,000 years of success and excellence.

That story begins in Africa, specifically in the Nile Valley, and documents our migration from the Nile to the Niger to the Potomac.

As with any new undertaking, we encountered setbacks:

1. In March 2020, COVID struck

2. The Thurgood Marshall Center, where the project would be housed, closed for over a year

3. But we continued working on other aspects of the project

We formally unveiled the Africa's Eyes mural—the 25-foot cornerstone of the project—on June 11, 2022.

Health Crisis

Five months after the unveiling, I had a heart attack.

Three months later, in March, my cardiologist told me the medications weren't working and suggested a heart transplant.

My mind said, "Nope, not going to happen."

I heard my mother's spirit telling me to ask if I might have picked up a bacterial infection digging in 2,700-year-old tombs.

My doctor hadn't considered how my occupation might have impacted my health. He referred me to an infectious disease specialist who ordered a complete blood workup.

I was diagnosed with brucellosis myocarditis—inflammation of my heart muscle due to a bacterial infection I had picked up in Egypt.

The doctors hadn't diagnosed it because nobody in this area had ever had this infection before.

According to my cardiologist, there had only been four documented cases of people having this infection in their heart muscle:

• Two Afghan sheep herders

• A Greek farmer

• And me

The solution was six weeks of amoxicillin to kill the bacteria, but I was left with heart damage that resulted in congestive heart failure with low ejection fraction.

Life Lessons from Illness

I've only been hospitalized three times in my life, each time at 17-year intervals, and each time representing when I needed to make a shift in my work.

It seems I needed to be hospitalized as I was too "hard-headed" (as my grandmother would say) to make that shift voluntarily.

In 2022, it was time for me to transition from the ASA Restoration Project and redirect my attention to where it was needed most – here at home.

As my health improved, my creativity was restored.

Anyone who's an artist will tell you that ideas don't come to you—they come through you. Ideas exist in a nebulous realm which we call "nothing," but from a creative sense, "nothing" is the source of everything.

When you're in a creative mode, you go into this realm of nothingness and create. Those things you create in this nebulous realm, you then recreate in the physical world.

That's how I've been able to work on everything I've done—my writing, all my projects.

During my illness, I thought I was dealing with long COVID, but I was actually experiencing the effects of this bacterial infection, probably picked up around 2019 or early 2020.

It's a slow-growing infection that can take up to a year to manifest. During that time, my mind wasn't clear. I couldn't visualize the way I had for most of my creative life.

Once I got on the other side of it, the information and creativity started flowing again.

I started downloading ideas, sketching them out, passing them to Free who brought them to life.

The Perfect Timing

Something kept delaying the opening, which frustrated us.

But now I realize I didn't control when this project would open—it was supposed to open when the time was right.

And that time is now.

This project is opening exactly when it's needed, as we witness the erasure of Black history in federal offices by the current administration and its efforts to "make America hate again" by putting white men in charge of the narrative and erasing the contributions of people of color and women.

They've removed references to:

• The Emmett Till memorial

• The Buffalo Soldiers

• The Tuskegee Airmen in the Pentagon

• And references to Jackie Robinson and his military career

We are witnessing, in real time, the erasure of African contributions to American history and culture.

Our Responsibility

The John Henry Clarke Enhanced History Project is being released at this specific time to help us realize we must assume responsibility for digging up our own history.

We must:

• Document what we uncover

• Present our discoveries to everyone in our community

• Stop relying on federal government agencies to tell our story, or give us permission to tell our stories

If we can't educate in schools, then turn your home into an educational facility.

Turn your barbershop, beauty shop, churches, and Masonic temples into educational facilities.

Do what was done during segregation—assume responsibility for educating ourselves, freeing our minds, and freeing every Black life that matters to us.

The time for sitting on the fence is over.

The time for wondering whether you should be involved in preserving and protecting your history is over.

If you have to think about it, I don't need to build with you. I'm interested in building with people who understand what time it is and are willing to devote their lives to fighting this fight.

With the John Henry Clarke Enhanced History Project, we've created a sacred space where:

• Knowledge is valued

• Ancestors are acknowledged

• Knowledge can “flow like gold washed down from the mountain”

That last statement is a quote from Carter G. Woodson, carved on the back of his statue at 11th and Rhode Island Avenue.

Join Us April 12, 2025

The project formally opens on April 12th on the second floor of the Thurgood Marshall Center at 1816 12th Street Northwest.

This location has been IKG's home for nearly 20 years.

Our goal is for this to be a space where people can enhance their understanding of African history before going to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture—so they will have context.

With context, everything flows naturally.

All pieces fit together, and we're in a better position to know what we're supposed to know and do the things we've come to Earth to do.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the Clarke project.

Anthony Browder

Founder of IKG Cultural Resource Center

PS.

If you liked this newsletter and want to find out more about the John Henrik Clarke Project, check out this FREE mini course: The John Henrik Clarke Enhanced History Project

You can also join me on my Tour to London and Paris in July 2025

And on my field Trip in Washington DC: Egypt on the Potomac