Teddy Vann

I started my career in high school sports, and I was in Harlem one summer doing a, you know, covering a basketball tournament, and I met this man.

His name is Teddy Vann, rest in power.

And he had a daughter who was one of the up-and-coming stars in the New York City at the time, and he introduced us.

And I was going around covering different tournaments, and he was like, "My daughter's a really good player." But he and I hit it off.

Thank you, Ivan Van Sertima.

But also that there were people already here.

As I was going down my Ivan Van Sertima rabbit hole, thanks to Teddy Vann, I also ran into Mansa Abu Bakr, B-A-K-R, the king of Mali who sailed the ocean blue before Columbus.

He had commissioned 200 ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean because he knew that there was something across the ocean.