BLAKSTAR

Long ago, when we still had a sky, before the smog, before the wildfire smoke, before the light pollution, the expanse above looked very different than it does today. Every morning the sky would explode into a vibrant menagerie of color, under the strict guidance of a single golden flame that ruled the heavenly expanse above. But each night the flame grew weak, and fell from the heavens beneath the Earth. In its place a huge, dark tidal wave would rise up from the east and fill the sky with a silky blackness, and that's when things really got interesting!

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This cosmic sea of ebony glittered and rippled with tiny sparks of light that the ancients called stars. They came in all sorts of colors: red, blue, some were pink; while others were white. These stars would twinkle, dance and guide the way home. However there was one star that stood apart, different from all the rest, dark as night. A black star in a black sky. This single Black star was special, and could only be observed by the most skilled astronomers.

As fate would have it, over 5 millennia ago such skilled astronomers were found among the Dogon people residing in Kemet (Egypt). The Dogon regarded this star as special, and decided to follow its western position in the sky. So the entire tribe packed their bags and tracked the star's position to an area in West Afrika. They settled this area among the dry cliffs of the Bandiagara Escarpment in modern day Mali, and made it their home. They honored the black star with a name, "Emme Ya Tolo," thankful to it for leading them to a new home.

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Almost 5,000 years later, in the early 1900's, colonizing French anthropologists would stumble upon the Dogon people and study them and their knowledge. They were surprised to learn that the Dogon possessed such a vast knowledge of the stars, and could identify a celestial body invisible to the naked eye without telescopes. And even more shocking that the Dogon had identified what the Europeans called a "dark star", over 4000 years prior. These scientists would dub this black star, as a white dwarf they called "Sirius B".

It is during that same time, in 1919, that Marcus Mosiah Garvey would be inspired to name his shipping company designed to bring Afro-descended people back to Afrika "Black Star Line." It was as if the very star that led the Dogon people to West Afrika, would do the same for Marcus Garvey and lead him east, out of the United States to the western coast of Liberia. Truly a guiding light in the dark!

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Check back soon and I'll tell you more.

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