The Journal of African Civilizations, founded in 1979, has gained a reputation for excellence and uniqueness among historical and anthropological journals. It is recognized as a valuable information source for both the layman and student. It has created a different historical perspective within which to view the ancestor of the African-American and the achievement and potential of black people the world over.

It is the only historical journal in the English-speaking world which focuses on the heartland rather than on the periphery of African civilizations. It, therefore, removes the “primitive” from the center stage it has occupied in Eurocentric histories and anthropologies of the the African. The Journal of African Civilizations is dedicated to the celebration of black genius, to a revision of the role of the African in the world’s great civilizations, and to the contribution of Africa to the achievement of man in the arts and sciences. It emphasizes what blacks have given to the world, not what they have lost.

— Dr. Ivan Van Sertima