WHEN WE WERE KINGS AND QUEENS Under their watchful direction and encouraging eyes, Africans were skillfully inventive in many ways. They developed enhanced tropical farming techniques that are still used to this day. They were good miners and metal workers, producing a steady supply of the gold that went into medieval European currencies and without which those currencies might well have been impossible. They were astute businessmen; they operated political and social systems with considerable flexibility and sophistication. They were superb sculptors and artisans.
In regard to United States slavery, only those in the southern tip of the African continent were they left in the hands of hunters and good-gatherers. Elsewhere Africans were too numerous and too much the masters of their environment to be overtaken.
The kingdom of Mali, which includes Timbuktu, was in the 14th century the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the Western Sudan.

Artist: Helen Turner Brown Medium Acrylic