BACKGROUND
"Enslaved Africans sold to North America came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.All of these people brought with them their own ideas about life, their own cultures, and their own cosmology. Many of them spoke different languages, worshiped different gods, and had different ways of socializing their children. So once they crossed the Atlantic, the problem that they confronted was how to forge, so to speak, a oneness, how to create some common ground out of this very diverse and heterogeneous background. So even though Africa is the most heterogeneous of the continents, the Black people who created the United States came from a variety of backgrounds and cosmologies. They began creating a culture when they began the process of establishing some basis for communicating with one another, interacting with one another, and forging a future.
In spite of the cultural differences, there appear to have been some basic cultural understandings, that is to say, the people shared some very broad principles. Almost all Africans believed in a Supreme Being, or Supreme God, and several lesser gods. Many came from societies that we would consider matriarchal, many came from societies that practiced polygamy, many came from societies where thoughts reside in, and could be communicated by means of, a variety of locales, rivers, trees, and so on. In America, in English, such rivers and trees would be called symbols, but the thought patterns of these Africans could not be expressed in English. These broad principles and symbols probably created the basis for the shaping of this common ground.
But in tracing roots to Africa we must be careful about our generalizations, because Africa consisted of, even today, as many as 800 different cultures, each with its own traditions, values and ways of doing things. Certainly Africans share many cultural elements, but with enormous variations, so a lot of generalizations that are made are very careless, presenting a picture of Africa that is static and homogeneous. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Ghana is not Angola, and Angola is not Tanzania"
HISTORY & CULTURE OF AFRICA
SLAVE PICTURES
- READY FOR HARVEST A solitary black woman in dignified pose dominates the scene in Ready for Harvest, painted by South Carolina artist Alice Huger Smith.
- SLAVES LEFT TO DIESlaves Left to Die is a woodcut illustration from the book, The Boy Travellers on the Congo, published in 1888. Accompanying the illustration is a description of why slave owners killed captives while travelling. .
- PORTRAIT OF A BLACK REVOLUTIONARY SAILORThis portrait of an unidentified Revolutionary War sailor was painted in oil by an unknown artist, circa
1780. Prior to the war, many blacks were already experienced seamen, having served in the British navy and in the colonies' state navies, as well as on merchant vessels in the North and the South.
- LIVING AFRICANS THROWN OVERBOARDHeading for Jamaica in 1781, the ship Zong was nearing the end of its voyage. It had been twelve weeks since it had sailed from the west African coast with its cargo of 417 slaves. Water was running out. Then, compounding the problem, there was an outbreak of disease. The ship's captain, reasoning that the slaves were going to die anyway, made a decision. In order to reduce the owner's losses he would throw overboard the slaves thought to be too sick to recover. The voyage was insured, but the insurance would not pay for sick slaves or even those killed by illness. However, it would cover slaves lost through drowning.
- PLAN OF A SHIP TRANSORTING SLAVES 1789detailed description of the Brookes and information about the ship's trading history. Copies of the plan were distributed widely, including to members of England's Parliament. The illustration showed 482 men, women, and children tightly packed into the Brooke's hold. The accompanying description stated that, according to records, as many as 609 slaves had been transported within the same space on the same ship.
- A NEGRO HUNG ALIVE BY THE RIBS TO A GALLOWSThis disturbing image was created for a book entitled, Narrative of a Five-Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. The author, Englishman John Gabriel Stedman, was hired by the Dutch to help quell slave uprisings in their South American colony. In his "narrative" he describes the plants and animals he encountered, as well as how he and fellow soldiers tortured runaway slaves who had been recaptured.
- REVENGE TAKEN BY THE BLACK ARMY 1805In 1805, two years after the death of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Marcus Rainsford published "An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti." Many of the book's illustrations were engraved after Rainsford's own sketches. "Revenge Taken by the Black Army" depicts actions taken against the French in Saint Domingue's war for independence from France and slavery.
- KI`DNAPING A FREE NEGRO TO BE SOLD INTO SLAVERY 1834This woodcut from 1834 depicts a free black being kidnapped by slavers. The demand for slaves to labor on southern cotton plantations made kidnapping of free persons a common practice.
- SLAVE WITH AN IRON MUZZLE 1839When persons being held as slaves were accused by their masters of insubordination, or of eating more than their allotment of food, they might expect to be fitted with an iron muzzle. In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano described his first encounter with such a device in the mid-1700s.
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