Mzee Jedi Shemsu Jehewty, also known as Jacob Hudson Carruthers, Jr. (February 15, 1930 in Dallas, Texas – January 4, 2004 in Chicago) was an African-centered historian and educator. Early Days and Education Jacob Carruthers was born in and grew up in Texas and attended school at Phyllis Wheatley High School in Houston, TX, before going to Samuel Huston College where he earned a B.A in 1950. In 1951 he joined the United States Air Force (USAF) and after serving in USAF he enrolled for and earned a master's degree in government from Texas Southern University in 1958. Carruthers then went on to become the first Afrikan-American student to complete a doctorate in Political Studies from the University of Colorado in 1966. From 1961 to 1964 Carruthers taught Political Science at Prairie View College in Texas and later he taught at Kansas State College in Pittsburg, Kan. Moving to Chicago and the Center for Inner City Studies After two years of teaching Political Science at Kansas State College (1966-1968), Carruthers moved to Chicago where he would live and work for the rest of his life. In 1968 Carruthers joined the Center for Inner City Studies of Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). For the next thirty-two years Carruthers taught history and education at the Center for Inner City Studies, playing a critical role in the development of the graduate and undergraduate degrees in the Department of Inner City Studies Education (ICSE). The context created by the work of Inner City Studies with such formidable minds as Anderson Thompson, Robert Starks, and Conrad Worrill would lead to the development of the Afrikan-Centered intellectual movement that would eventually be known as the Chicago School of African-Centered Thought. Several Afrikan-Centered institutions would come out of this movement, the major ones of which Carruthers would be a driving force. Visiting Cheikh Anta Diop In 1975, one year after Cheikh Anta Diop, the famous Afrikan scholar-scientist and his protégé and colleague Théophile Obenga successfully defended the Afrikan origin of ancient Kemet at the UNESCO symposium in Cairo, Jacob Carruthers visited Diop in Senegal. At this visit, Ifé Carruthers writes: Diop impressed upon Dr. Carruthers the importance of the study of ancient Egypt and more importantly the need to center that study around the command of the Egyptian languages, commonly called hieroglyphics. Returning from this meeting Carruthers set about helping to establish the organisational base to centralise Kush