The Road Not Taken

John Ralph Rice was born five years after the Second World War on October 12, 1950, in Newark, New Jersey. I was educated in Newark, New Jersey, at Essex County College, the University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey, and the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. I am the great-grandson of African American slaves who were freed after the American Civil War in 1865. My ancestry prior to my great-grandparent’s lineage in South Carolina is unclear; however, in a recent interview in September 2009 by my great nephew, Al-Tariq Ibn Shabazz, I said, “I knew the relationship between African American females and the American white slave master was well known, and so I viewed the whole proposition as a system of sacrilege.” Thus becoming, in the words of Carter G. Woodson, “the miseducation of the Negro.” Upon graduation as a massage therapist (2004) many doctors, intellectuals, scholars, and activists around the world know my name and in every home in my family as well. I devoted my life to peace and change one week after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and my view of the world’s health problems became clear to me when I accepted transcendentalism as a philosophy in my professional years. I often said Sigmund Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis played a major approach to my client’s problems on their first visit to my clinic. My passion for healthy lifestyles became rooted in acupressure, and the vision I bring to my work as a massage therapist is scientific. I believe in an empirical reality; that is to say, a patient’s symptoms has mental, not physical, causes and the unconscious part of the mind has a strong influence on behavior. I still consider myself to be a Renaissance man and here are my most important writings: 1) The John R. Rice Narrative 2) Rape, The Secret Assault on Women, 3) The Judgment of History, The Race For Freedom, From Slavery To Manhood, 4) The African American Spirit and The Search For Its Destiny, 5) The Voices in East Harlem 6) Africa’s Greatest Triumph, 7) The African American Body Politic, and 8) The Prison Door are donated to the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark. “Imhotep would be proud.”