..Africans who were neither Muslims nor Christians were classed as “pagans” and therefore required to disavow their culture and to regard practically all African institutions as “backward” or savage. The Blacks in their own right became non-persons, members of a race of nobodies, so hopeless that self-realization as personalities, even as subordinate status, could only be achieved by becoming Muslims or Christians.

Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization