Description

Baba Dr. Wade Ifágbèmí Ṣàngódáre Nobles is the great great great grandson of Candace/Agnes, an enslaved African, born in 1810 on the Cook Plantation in Edgefield, South Carolina. Baba Dr. Wade is the namesake of Agnes’ oldest son, Wade, born in 1836, who was also enslaved in South Carolina. Through Mitochodral DNA testing, Baba Wade belongs to the Temne people of Sierra Leone. Along with his wife, Dr. Vera Lynn Winmilawe Nokwanda DeMoultrie, whose Mitochondrial DNA identifies her ancestry from the Jola people of Senegal, they have five children (Michael Chikuya, Omar Jahmal, Zetha Awura, Ayanna Yasmeen and Halima Bisa) and thirteen grandchildren (Talia, Mikal, Kristofer, Donovan, Johnathan, Deborah, Maasai, Afolarin, Moremi, Folasade, Yasmeen, Oni Chinyere, Zane Nicholas). Baba Dr. Wade Ifágbemì Sàngódáre Nobles was Initiated into the IFA spiritual system of Nigeria by Baba Araba Ifayemi Eleibuibon; enstooled as the Nkɔsoɔhene (development sub-chief) by Nana Keseku, Iand the elders of Akwasiho, Ghana; and recognized by Baba Credo Mutwa, the High Sanusi of South Africa as a two-headed lion with one head in Africa and one head in America. Baba Nobles is considered one of the leading architects in the development of the discipline of Black psychology in the USA. For over 50 years, he has studied classical African philosophy (Kemet, Twa & Nubian) and traditional African wisdom traditions (Akan, Yoruba, Bantu, Wolof, Kongo, Dogon, Fon, Lebou, etc) as the grounding for the development of an authentic Black psychology. Baba Dr. Wade is co-founder and Past President of the Association of Black Psychologists; the founder and former Executive Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family, Life and Culture, Inc.; Professor Emeritus (retired) in the Department of Africana (Black) Studies, at San Francisco State University; and one of the leading architects in the African centered educational movement. Baba Dr. Nobles is the author of over one hundred (100) articles, chapters, research reports and books; the co-author of the seminal article in Black Psychology, Voodoo or IQ: An Introduction to African Psychology and the author of Seeking the Sakhu: Foundational Writings in African Psychology, an anthology of over thirty years of African centered research and scholarship. His newest manuscript, The Island of Memes: Haiti’s Unfinished Revolution was described by Dr. Theophile Obenga as perhaps the most important book of the last five decades. Baba Dr. Nobles has lectured in Ghana, South Africa, England, Haiti, Cuba and served as a visiting professor in Salvador de Bahia and Sao Paulo in Brazil. His professional career, as a teacher, researcher, academician, and scholar has been a consistent and formal engagement in the on-going theoretical development and programmatic application of African (Black) psychology, Skh Tm, African centered thought, and cultural grounded scholarship to address the liberation and restoration of the African mind and world-wide development of African people. He is a Pan Africanist scholar and practitioner par excellence.