It depends on what you mean by black. There is a certain popular fascination with proving that ancient Egyptians were or were not "black". It is a pity that the few times someone asks a question about Africa in this subreddit, most of the time it is either about slavery or about the race of ancient Egyptians, and the latter is a topic that most Africanists (specialists in African studies) have a hard time communicating the reasons why it is actually misguided. I’ll try my best, and if you are interested u/khosikulu answered a related question long long time ago. You mention Cheik Diop’s 1974 “The African origin of civilization”. Cheik Anta Diop was a well-known philosopher, physicist, and politician from Senegal. Around the time he was writing, social movements like black power and the black nationalist movement were active in the United States, and most African nations had already become independent. Regrettably, the fruits of both the civil rights movement and of decolonization were still far from what was expected from these movements. In this context, it was natural for a movement seeking to re-center the history of Africa within the experience of Africans and the wider African diaspora to emerge. We nowadays call this worldview Afrocentrism, and though Diop never described himself as such, much of his writings became the basis for this reinterpretation of history. This ideology also made it into UNESCO's General History of Africa, and its presence in book 2, chapter 1 is one of the reasons why AskHistorians' booklist for Africa includes the disclaimer “Please note that much of the scholarship is upwards of 30 years old, and may not represent current consensus based on new evidence.” It is expected that a new volume which reviews this controversy will be published at the end of the year, and I am looking forward to it. Afrocentrism must be seen as a reaction to the Eurocentrism of the historical community in the 70’s. Things have changed, yet it was not so many years ago that professional historians would speak about “Western civilization” as the benchmark against which every other culture had to be measured. I am not saying that this no longer happens, but these days you are more likely to hear it from a conservative politician than from a young historian. Did you ever notice how older museums used to present a sort of "linear evolution" of human civilization? Something along the lines Egypt -> Greece -> Rome -> Europe? And why is Egypt so often presented separately from the rest of African history? Africa is a geographic convention, and of itself there is no doubt that Egypt is located in the continent. Well, Diop argued that actually, “Graeco-Roman civilization” took all its good ideas from Egypt; hence, from Africa. Some classicists took offense at this suggestion, no doubt traces of institutional racism and elitism in the ivory tower played a role, however what really took this theory into the realm of pseudo-history was conflating being African with being “black”, especially “black” as belonging to a monolithic “black civilization” common to every person whose skin tone was/is on the darker side. This is not to say that people with a darker hue have not been racialized by contemporary society, the effects of the transatlantic slave trade unfortunately are still present and discrimination is common on both sides of the Atlantic; yet, it is not possible to assume that the experiences of the every black person to have ever lived were common to what it currently means to be black. Moreover, looking for proofs of this theory, Afrocentric scholars often essentialize "blackness" by stereotyping the cultural, phenotypic, genetic, or intellectual characteristics of “black people". Your mileage may vary, but it is not uncommon to find Afrocentric aficionados discussing “subnasal prognathism”. Research results consistently show that there is more variation within human populations than between them. I am aware that race as a concept has a very peculiar meaning in countries such as the United States, yet as a social construction, it is historical malpractice to apply our cultural logic to a society foreign to it from the past. Back to your question, it is very likely that some of the Egyptian pyramids were designed and constructed by humans with a darker skin tone. We know that the 25th dynasty originated in Nubia; however, this doesn’t prevent other pharaohs or dynasties from also having a similar skin color. On the other hand, current Egyptians are extremely sensitive to images of Cleopatra that present her with a dark skin tone; blackness and Islam are a topic for another question. I understand the irritation that foreigners misrepresenting their proud past cause, nonetheless, I have never heard them complain about the lack of black extras in movies set in ancient Egypt; banning a TV series is too much for me. I personally find Afrocentrism annoying, but would I ban it? No. The reason I am writing this long text is to have an answer to which I can redirect future questions. Afrocentrists tried to substitute “white civilization” with “black civilization”, not realizing that neither of them exists at all. Clarence Walker is even more severe, calling it “Eurocentrism in blackface.” (Walker, 2001). For my part, I have tried to make it understandable why such a movement developed; nevertheless, there is no need to plagiarize from ancient Egypt in order to have African history to look up to. Egyptian history is African history, yet there is way more. The continent is so complex and diverse that it would be great loss for humanity to concentrate only on sphinxes and pyramids, and it does a disservice to countless African societies worthy of study on their own. Sources: Banner-Haley, C. P. (2003). Review of “We can’t go home again: an argument about Afrocentrism”, by C. E. Walker. The Journal of Southern History, 69(3), 663–664. DOI: 10.2307/30040016 Bernal, M. (2014). Black Athena. In R. O. Collins & R. Iyob (Eds.), Problems in African history : the precolonial centuries (fourth updated edition). Markus Wiener Publishers. Diop, C. A. (2014). The African origins of Western civilization. In R. O. Collins & R. Iyob (Eds.), Problems in African history : the precolonial centuries (fourth updated edition). Markus Wiener Publishers. Hall, B. (2011). A history of race in Muslim West Africa, 1600 – 1960. Cambridge University Press. Lefkowitz, M. & Rogers, G. (Eds.) (1996). Black Athena revisited. The University of North Carolina Press. Mauny, R. (2014). A review of Diop. In R. O. Collins & R. Iyob (Eds.), Problems in African history : the precolonial centuries (fourth updated edition). Markus Wiener Publishers. Walker, C. E. (2001). We can't go home again: an argument about Afrocentrism. Oxford University Press.