Brian D. Joyner

Office of Diversity and Special Projects

National Center for Cultural Resources

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

2003

African Reflections

on the American Landscape

IDENTIFYING AND INTERPRETING AFRICANISMS
ii African Reflections on the American Landscape

Table of Contents

Executive Summary.................................................... iv

Acknowledgments ..................................................... vi

Chapter 1 Africa in America: An Introduction........................... 1 

What are Africanisms? ...................................... 2

Scholarship on Africanisms................................... 3

African Dispersal and the African Diaspora. ..................... 9

Africans in America ........................................ 12

The Significance of Place.................................... 14

Conclusion ............................................... 16

Chapter 2 Identifying and Documenting 

Africanisms on the American Landscape ..................... 23

The National Register of Historic Places ....................... 24

Congo Square .......................................... 24

Smoketown Historic District .............................. 25

Christiansted Historic District ............................. 26

National Historic Landmarks ................................ 27

African Burial Ground Complex ........................... 27

Stono River Slave Rebellion Site............................ 28

Historic American Buildings Survey ........................... 29

African Baptist Society Church ............................ 29

Historic American Engineering Record ........................ 30

Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation ............................. 30

Places of Cultural Memory Conference ........................ 31

“Interwoven Traditions: Archaeology of the 

Conjurer’s Cabins and the African American Cemetery

at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations” .............. 32

“Africanisms Upon the Land: 

A Study of African Influenced Place Names of the USA” ........ 33

Conclusion ............................................... 34
National Park Service iii

Chapter 3 Interpreting African Cultural Heritage 

at Historic Sites........................................... 39

Gullah/Geechee Culture .................................... 40

Teaching with Historic Places: “When Rice Was King” ............ 41

Shotgun Houses at Martin Luther King, Jr.

National Historic Site....................................... 43

Parting Ways Archeological District ........................... 44

Zion Poplars Baptist Church ................................. 45

Poplar Forest Archeological Research.......................... 46

Conclusion ............................................... 47

Chapter 4 Appendix................................................ 53

Bibliography .............................................. 53

Africanisms in National Park Service

Cultural Resources Programs ................................ 56

Index.................................................... 61

Illustrations and Tables ..................................... 64
iv African Reflections on the American Landscape

Executive Summary

African Reflections on the American Landscape:

Identifying and Interpreting Africanisms highlights

West and Central African cultural contributions 

to the nation’s built environment that have been

documented and recognized in the cultural resources

programs of the National Park Service (NPS). This

guide to Africanisms forms part of the larger effort

of NPS and its partners to increase awareness of 

the role of various cultural groups in shaping the

American landscape.

Starting in the first third of the twentieth century, research 

on African Americans and their heritage increasingly focused

on Africa for cultural antecedents. Throughout the social

science fields, studies recognized that aspects of American

culture had African roots called “Africanisms.” Scholars examined the built environment of America and found it infused

with reflections of Africa. Geographical locations held West

and Central African names; structures reflected an African

building aesthetic; and the land had been reshaped to take

advantage of African technological and cultural knowledge.

Both scholars and preservationists recognize that Africanisms

should become better known in the historic preservation/

cultural resources field.

This publication is intended to support historic preservation

and cultural resources stewardship efforts of organizations

and individuals within their communities. It is designed for

the general reader, without a background in the study of

Africanisms or West and Central African history and cultural

practices. This document includes:

● An introductory essay that summarizes Africanisms and 

their origins;
● An annotated discussion of African-related historic properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places, designated as National Historic Landmarks, and documented 

by the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic

American Engineering Record (all programs of the National

Park Service);

● Examples of historic sites where African cultural heritage 

is interpreted;

● A bibliography of well-known publications on the 

topic; and

● A more complete list of historic properties documented 

by National Park Service cultural resources programs,

arranged by program and state. 

African Reflections on the American Landscape summarizes

highlights of the scholarship presented at the conference,

“Places of Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the

American Landscape,” which was held May 9 - 12, 2001 in

Atlanta, Georgia. It represents a follow-up to the conference

because it illustrates ways in which this scholarship can be

applied to historic preservation/cultural resources stewardship work. 

National Park Service v
vi African Reflections on the American Landscape

Acknowledgments

This publication is an outgrowth of the conference,

“Places of Cultural Memory: African Reflections 

on the American Landscape,” which was held 

May 9 - 12, 2001, in Atlanta, Georgia. The National

Park Service sponsored the conference in cooperation with other government agencies and private

organizations. The conference addressed the

influence of African cultural heritage on the built

environment of the Americas in four thematic

sessions and three panel discussions. (The conference proceedings are available through the 

National Park Service, National Center for 

Cultural Resources, 1849 C Street, NW [2251],

Washington, DC 20240-0001 and is available 

online at www.cr.nps.gov/crdi.) 

The “Places of Cultural Memory” conference developed 

from an idea posed by Falona Heidelberg, former Executive

Director of the African American Experience Fund at the

National Park Foundation. She was concerned that there was

much about African cultural heritage in the United States that

received scant attention from the historic preservation/cultural

resources field. Working in conjunction with Katherine H.

Stevenson, Associate Director, Cultural Resource Stewardship

and Partnerships of the National Park Service, Ms. Heidelberg

initiated a series of meetings on a proposed conference on the

tangible aspects of African American history.

As the conference program evolved, three consultants were

engaged to advise on the conference themes and prospective

speakers. The interest and support of Professor Joseph E.

Harris of Howard University, Professor LaVerne Wells-Bowie

of Florida A & M University, and Professor John Vlach of The

George Washington University provided the scholarly foundation for the conference program.
National Park Service vii

Antoinette J. Lee, Special Projects Manager, National Center

for Cultural Resources, was assigned the responsibility of

managing the conference development. Scott Whipple, now 

of the Maryland Historical Trust, coordinated the solicitation

and review of abstracts during the early planning stages of the

event. Later, Brian D. Joyner took over the compilation of

conference papers. As the conference evolved, Lee suggested

that NPS review historic properties with African connections

in National Register listings, National Historic Landmarks

designations, and HABS/HAER documentation projects. As

compiled by Whipple, Joyner, and Lee, the initial list was not

exhaustive, but provided examples of dozens of properties

associated with African cultural heritage that were already

documented and recognized. The list was annotated and 

distributed at the conference; it later formed the basis for 

this publication. 

Many individuals contributed to content of African Reflections

on the American Landscape. Audrey Brown, James Charleton,

Terry Childs, Edward Dunson, Michèle Gates Moresi, Bernice

Johnson-Reagon, Tara Morrison, Arleen Pabón, Anthony

Parades, Warren Perry, Martin Perschler, Tracy Rone, Erika

Seibert, Carol Shull, John Sprinkle, Barbara Tagger, Dan

Vivian, and Sheila Waker reviewed drafts and provided 

important comments on the document. Ann Gibson assisted

with the duplication of the African diaspora maps. Joseph E.

Harris gave his permission to use these maps in the publication. Michael Twitty generously loaned many books from his

own personal library. Finally, the participants in the “Places of

Cultural Memory” conference provided inspiring scholarship

and fielded eloquent discussions on Africanisms in America

leading up to and through the Atlanta conference.
National Park Service 1

Chapter 1

Africa in America: 

An Introduction

Since its origins, what is now the United States has

been a nation of immigrants. Its populace is derived

of people from countries all across the globe.

Hundreds of indigenous American Indian tribes

were already present in the sixteenth century when

several European groups and a sizable number of

Africans began to arrive. Later, groups from Asia,

the Middle East, Central and South America, and

many other corners of the globe arrived on the

North American continent and made it their home.

This phenomenon continues today, where new

Americans arrive in the United States, adapt their

cultures to the environment of the New World, and

transform the national culture of the United States.

Of all the ethnicities, West and Central African emigrants

comprised one of the largest groups to arrive in the United

States during the colonial era.* Seventeenth and eighteenth

century ship ledgers and insurance rolls teem with names of

the various West and Central African ethnic groups: Wolof,

Fon, Yorubá, Igbo, Fang, Mandinka, and Kongo, to name 

a few. African people were found throughout the American

colonies, from Maine to Florida, and Mexico to Canada. 

By 1830, the U.S. census indicates that 2.3 million of the 12.8

million people in the United States were of African descent.(1)

Given the large number of Africans in the United States,

African culture contributed greatly to the cultural and historical composition of America. The people themselves brought

scientific and technological knowledge systems from West and

Central Africa. African thought and creativity interacted with

European cultural practices and influenced the language and

the creative arts. More subtle influences include geographical

Free White

82%

1830 Census

Percent of the United States’

12.8 million person population

by race.

Source: United States Historical Census

Browser, compiled by the Inter-university

Consortium for Political and Social Research.

* “Emigrant,” as opposed to “immigrant,” is used to denote the forced migration of West and

Central Africans to the European colonies in America.

Free African

2.44% 

Enslaved African

15.56% 

*Less than one percent of population 

was alien (foreign born, not naturalized).

†Native Americans were not enumerated

in the census until 1870. 

Illustration 1
2 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Illustration 2:

Africanisms are “elements of 

culture found in the New World

traceable to an African origin” as

with the African gourd and animal skin covered fiddle (above

right) that, by the 1800s, had

evolved into the American banjo

(above left).

Photo courtesy of the Blue Ridge 

Institute and Museums

place-names with African etymologies. The imprint of Africa

on America is a major, and unique, factor in making this

American culture. 

To further the recognition of African influence on American

culture, the National Park Service published this document 

to summarize current scholarship, cite examples of Africaninfluenced places in its cultural resources programs, and offer

a resource list for groups and individuals interested in this

topic. The publication provides examples of African cultural

heritage in the United States and how Africanisms are interpreted at historic sites. The purpose of this publication is to

encourage a greater understanding of Africanisms, aspects 

of culture found in the New World with African antecedents.

In addition, it is hoped that this publication will encourage 

a stronger connection between historic preservation activity

and academic research in the study of Africanisms.

What are Africanisms?

As defined by Holloway in Africanisms in American Culture,

Africanisms are “elements of culture found in the New World

traceable to an African origin.”(2) Africanisms manifest themselves in numerous aspects of American culture. From language

to architecture, they surround us. Some are easily identifiable,

like Congo Square, now a part of Louis Armstrong Park in

New Orleans. Others, like dugout canoes in the Chesapeake,

are not as easily recognized. They show up in how Americans

cook and what they eat, for example, gumbo and rice. Other

foods like watermelon, black-eyed peas, sorghum, and millet

entered into American foodways from Africa. In the arts, jazz,

blues, and rock-and-roll are stamped with African influences,

as is bluegrass, with its signature instrument, the banjo, being

of African origin. As often as not, how a space was used is an

Africanism, as in the case of the African Burial Ground in

New York, or the use of a crossroad for a religious ceremony. 

Identifying Africanisms may require additional research and

analysis beyond a direct one-to-one connection with Africa.

The context for a place or an object may be recognized as

African American, but the African cultural connection will

need further illumination and documentation. Interpreting 

a site or park’s Africanity may mean explaining the migration

process by which the people found themselves in certain 

locations. It may also mean examining aspects of West and

Central African practices, as well as material culture. 
National Park Service 3

The study of Africanisms is tied to the study of African

American history, and more directly to the study of creolization of African and European cultures, which is the essence

of African American culture. The questions that creolization

raises are: when do cultures begin to meld and what is it 

that each brings to the confluence? As it concerns African

Americans, creolization encompasses the relationship of

African to African American, Afro-Caribbean to African

American, and African and Native cultures to European

culture, and vice versa. Historian and poet Edward Kamau

Brathwaite describes creolization as “a cultural action—

material, psychological and spiritual—based on the stimulus/

response of individuals within the society to their environment...to each other.”(3) Anthropologists James Deetz, in 

In Small Things Forgotten, and Grey Gundaker, in Signs of

Diaspora/Diaspora of Signs, use creolization as a way to

discuss African cultural reflections within American culture.(4)

Scholars, such as John Vlach, view America as having a triple

heritage—African, European, and Native American. The

resulting blended culture is crucial to interpreting American

material culture.(5) Thus, Africanisms are rarely “pure” transfers of African culture to the Americas, but a blending with

other cultures to produce the unique American culture. 

Scholarship on Africanisms

The study of Africanisms gained academic currency in the last

60 years with Melville J. Herskovits’ seminal work published

in 1941, The Myth of the Negro Past.

(6) Herskovits, an anthropologist, argued for the role of Africans in the development 

of the culture of the Americas. His research challenged the

widespread belief that there were no African roots in North

American or even African American culture. Herskovits’ work

was a response to the work of sociologist E. Franklin Frazier.

In his 1939 publication, The Negro Family in the United States,

Frazier theorized that African Americans lost any sense of

heritage or unique culture due to the devastating effects 

of slavery, although he acknowledged that African cultural

retentions were strong in Latin America and the Caribbean.(7)

Frazier’s point-of-view prevailed in much of scholarly work

until the rebirth of interest in African culture following the

rise of Black Studies programs in colleges and universities in

the 1960s and 1970s. 

The questions that 

creolization raises are:

when do cultures begin

to meld and what is 

it that each brings to 

the confluence? 
4 African Reflections on the American Landscape

The search for and discussions regarding African influences

did not originate with Frazier and Herskovits, but the FrazierHerskovits debate played out against a developing backdrop 

of other scholarly endeavors. Historian Elizabeth Donnan edited a collection of ships’ records and other documents dealing

with the slave trade for the Carnegie Institution. Documents

Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, published in four volumes from 1930-1935, provided demographic

information as to the magnitude of the trade and destinations of Africans involved.(8) Anthropologist and author Zora

Neale Hurston collected folk tales, songs, and information on voodoo in an anthropological field study of southern African Americans in the late 1920s. The compilation,

Mules and Men, published in 1935, noted motifs in storytelling, and aspects of spirituality that resembled West

African antecedents.(9)

The federal government participated in documenting

Africanisms in a manner similar to Hurston’s field study. 

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook 

an oral history survey of over 2,000 formerly enslaved 

men and women in 17 states, from 1936 to 1938. The 

WPA Slave Narrative Collection is filled with primarily

first-person accounts from the formerly enslaved African

Americans. Drums and Shadows, a collection of interviews conducted by the WPA Georgia Writers’ Project with

African Americans on the Georgia coast, provided raw data

about the persistence of African heritage in their culture 

during the 1930s.(10) Later, George Rawick collected the narratives into 19 volumes and an additional supplement series 

of 12 volumes, called The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography.

(11) In 1949, Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Africanisms in 

the Gullah Dialect documented the West and Central African

language connections with the Gullah language spoken in

coastal South Carolina.(12) These efforts preceded the national focus on the issues of race and equality. However, social

forces would begin to commingle with academic scholarship.

The spirit of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s

spilled into academia. Responding to African Americans’

desire to see themselves represented in the history and culture of the United States, scholars began looking at slavery

for information about African American culture. Historian

Kenneth Stampp documented that slavery was not a paternalistic institution, but one of harshness and cruelty, which the

enslaved actively rebelled against, in his 1956 book, The

Illustration 3:

Bob Lemmons was born enslaved

in Texas around 1850. He travelled

with his master and cattlemen

during the Civil War searching for

new range, and claims to have

known border outlaws like Billy

the Kid. This photo was taken in

1936 at Carrizo Springs, Texas.

Photo courtesy of Farms Security

Administration photographs collection, 

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division.
National Park Service 5

Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South.

(13) This

sort of historiography represented a new trend, one focusing

on the actions of groups and individuals previously

without a voice in the historical record. In 1969, Philip D.

Curtin’s book The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, traced

from where the various West and Central African ethnicities came who made their mark in the Americas.(14)

Curtin’s work added vital demographic statistics to 

the study of Africans in the New World. Archeologist

Charles Fairbanks investigated slave cabins at the

Kingsley Plantation, Florida in 1969-1971. The excavation

documented the material culture of the enslaved African

American community. It focused on African American

material cultural practices and their confluence within the

larger society’s culture.(15) 

The 1960s and 1970s saw colleges and universities around the

country establish Black Studies programs, the first of which

was launched at San Francisco State University in 1967.

Concurrently, an increase of scholarship addressing African

American culture and its roots arose. Some scholars such as

historians John Blassingame, with The Slave Community in

1972, Eugene Genovese, with Roll, Jordan, Roll in 1974, and

Lawrence Levine, with Black Culture, Black Consciousness

in 1977, among others, examined the distinctive aspects of

enslaved African culture and suggested Africa as one of the

sources of that distinctiveness.(16) Anthropologists Sidney

Mintz and Richard Price argued for a New World precedent

for African American culture in their An Anthropological

Approach to the Afro-American Past, published in 1976.(17)

New research and new interpretations of slavery encouraged

scholars to examine how enslaved African Americans 

preserved elements of their African heritage and how that

manifested itself within the dominant culture.

Published in 1983, Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson

is arguably the most influential book on this topic since

Herskovits’ The Myth of the Negro Past.

(18) Thompson’s research

on art and culture in the Afro-Caribbean/African American

world encouraged an increased interest in Africanisms. In 1990,

Leland Ferguson published Uncommon Ground.

(19) Ferguson’s

research on colono-ware pottery in Virginia and the Carolinas

revealed evidence of cultural syncretism: eighteenth-century

material artifacts hold the imprint of West and Central African

pottery skills and Native American design adapted to regional

materials and European uses. 

Illustration 4:

Low fired, unglazed pottery

called colono-ware has been

found at slave quarters on 

plantations in Virginia and the

Carolinas. Recent scholarship

attributes its creation to an

African, as well as Native

American, pottery tradition. 

This mended shallow bowl, 

with a tooled rim and applied

flat base, was excavated at the 

Henry House, (Site 44PW293),

Manassas National Battlefield

Park, Manassas, Virginia.

Photo courtesy of Mia Parsons. 
6 African Reflections on the American Landscape
National Park Service 7

Illustration 5:

The African diaspora dates back close to two thousand years, and covers six of the seven continents. 

Map courtesy of Joseph E. Harris
8 African Reflections on the American Landscape
National Park Service 9

In 1991, Joseph E. Holloway’s Africanisms in American Culture

provided a collection of interdisciplinary essays on Africanisms

in the United States.(20) A professor of Pan-African studies,

Holloway documented scholarly views on the influences of

African culture on American and African American culture.

Historian and folklorist John Vlach gave additional credence to

African cultural retentions in the New World with his research

on African vernacular architecture and material culture. Vlach

reported their effects on African American and Afro-Caribbean

architecture in By The Work of Their Hands, in 1991, and The

Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts in 1978.(21) Historian

Mechal Sobel argued for reciprocal influences of African and

European material cultures in The World They Made Together,

published in 1987.(22) In 1992, historian Gwendolyn Midlo 

Hall published Africans in Colonial Louisiana that documented

the presence and influence of Senegambians and their culture

in the eighteenth century.(23) Scholarship by historian Joseph

E. Harris presented a comprehensive look at the African 

diaspora, particularly using maps detailing the origins and 

destinations of African emigrants over the course of centuries.

Furthermore, he argued for an inter-African melding, or syncretism, which recognizes the reflections of multiple African

cultures and common African concepts and ideals within the

Africa diaspora.(24) The cumulative effect of this scholarship

was to make Africa in America visible again.(25)

African Dispersal and the African Diaspora

Africans and their collective communities found around the

world constitute the African diaspora. The African diaspora

refers not only to the Americas, but also to global migration

over millennia. (Illustrations 5 and 5a, pages 6-8; Table 1, page

10) African communities can be found historically in Asia,

Europe, and Australia. Large communities exist throughout

the Americas (North, Central, and South) and the Caribbean.

Indeed, Coptic monks from Egypt and Ethiopia resided in

Rome during the Middle Ages. Moorish control in Spain

lasted 700 years. Moors were Muslim Africans from northwestern Africa. Their most stunning monument, Alhambra,

still stands in Granada. Habsi Kot was an Ethiopian fort in

India, which contained the tombs of soldiers and nobles who

fought with Malik Ambar, an Ethiopian commander who led

a force of Africans and Asians to defend India in the seventeenth century. The Indian Ocean slave trade scattered

Africans throughout Asia. Repatriate African communities

were created in the Seychelles, in Bombay, and in Africa, 

such as Freretown, Kenya.

Illustration 5a (left):

A phase of diasporic 

movement is a return of 

migrant groups to Africa. 

Map courtesy of Joseph E. Harris.
10 African Reflections on the American Landscape

*The parenthetical names refer to bibliographical sources for the regional names. 

Countries in West and Central Africa Affected by the Atlantic Slave Trade*

Sources: Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identity in the Colonial and Antebellum

South (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998); John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making 

of the Atlantic World, 1440-1800, Second edition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Eric R. Wolf, Europe and 

the People Without History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

Senegal

Gambia

Guinea Bissau

Guinea

Mali

Ivory Coast

Liberia

Sierra Leone

Ghana

Togo

Benin

Nigeria

Cameroon

Equatorial Guinea

Gabon

Congo

Angola

Madagascar

Mozambique

Tanzania 

*The island of Madagascar is located off of the southeastern coast of Africa. 

Mozambique and Tanzania are in southeast Africa.

Historical Regional Names for Areas 

of West and Central Africa, and their Coordinating Countries*

Historical Regional Name Modern Country Names

Angola Coast (Thornton) Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Angola

Gold Coast (All sources) Ghana

Bight of Benin (Gomez) Togo, Benin, part of Nigeria

Bight of Biafra (Gomez) part of Nigeria, Cameroon, part of Gabon

Lower Guinea (Thornton) Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon

Mozambique-Madagascar (Gomez) Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania

Senegambia (Gomez) Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea

Slave Coast (Wolf) Bight of Benin

Upper Guinea (Thornton) Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, 

Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia 

Central Africa (Wolf) Gabon, Congo, Angola

Windward Coast (Gomez) Sierra Leone, Liberia

West Africa (Wolf) Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, 

Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Benin,

Nigeria, Cameroon
National Park Service 11

Migration of Africans follows a pattern consistent throughout

the diaspora. This migratory process has four stages: primary

is the original dispersion; secondary is the move from initial

settlement; tertiary is migration from the second settlement;

and, circulatory is movement within several areas of diaspora,

including Africa.(26) Viewed in the light of this process, it is

apparent how a migration of people would mean migration 

of cultures. The more people moved around the diaspora, 

the more cultures were transmitted.

The Atlantic slave trade provided the means of migration for

the majority of Africans in the New World. The estimates,

ranging from 9.6 to 15.4 million Africans removed from West

and Central Africa, represent the largest forced migration of

people in history.(27) Many Africans in Latin America and the

Caribbean were relocated to North American colonies, from

Florida to New Hampshire. All of the American colonies had

African communities, enslaved or free. New York and Rhode

Island have freed African descendant communities dating

back to the 1700s, distinct from their southern counterparts.

Research shows that ethnic groupings in the southern United

States corresponded to specific labor needs. In these places,

the cultural retentions are strongest and are an abundant

repository for Africanisms. Virginia and Maryland held the

largest concentration of Africans in any one place in North

America over much of the country’s history.(28) South

Carolina had a black majority by the beginning of the eighteenth century. The vast majority of African descendant

people still reside in the southeastern section of the United

States. Because of this consistency in the population, vernacular traditions associated with the early populations persist in

these areas. The concentration of people of similar language

and cultural groups in the same geographic area set up ideal

circumstances for the retention of Africanisms.(29)

Some Africans voluntarily immigrated to America prior to 

the end of the Civil War. Cape Verdean seamen, for example,

began immigrating to New Bedford, Massachusetts and

working in the shipping trade in New England in 1860. After

1865, voluntary immigration from Africa and diasporic places

such as the Caribbean, England, and France rose. Some

recently freed African Americans left the South after the Civil

War. Black exodusters, as they were called, created their own

communities in California, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.

Cities such as New York, New Orleans, Washington, DC, and

Table 1 and 1a (left):

The area along the West Coast 

of Africa from which Africans

enslaved in the Atlantic slave

trade were drawn extends for

4,000 miles, from Senegal to

Angola. Within the area are several regions, whose boundaries

are not easily differentiated.

Moreover, the names used to

describe various regions have

varied over time. The list at bottom left provides some of the

more common names for the

general regions, and the specific

countries to which they refer.
12 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Chicago saw a post-war influx of people of African descent.

The Great Migrations of the 1920s moved African Americans

from the South into industrial cities like Cleveland, Detroit,

Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. The Immigration and Nationality

Act Amendments of 1965 accelerated this trend among diasporic African ethnic groups. There were earlier migrations

back to Africa in the nineteenth century—to Liberia, Sierra

Leone, and Nigeria—and to Canada as well—to the provinces

of Nova Scotia, Quebec, and British Columbia. 

Each African migrant group brought traditions that, while 

not identical, were similar and often had similar foundations.

Cultural traditions, folding on to one another, began to intermingle. Several scholars cite a melding of African cultures in

the Americas that took place among peoples from three main

West African cultural zones: Upper Guinea, Lower Guinea,

and Angola Coast.(30) Many of the people from these zones

had interaction through trade and warfare prior to their 

re-introduction in the Americas. Prolonged exposure in the

crucible of slavery further encouraged the process. The

Caribbean and South American colonies had a predominance

of Africans, and this fusion clearly affected the vernacular

culture. Catholicized pre-Christian European feast days and

festivals mixed with West Central African religious culture

evolved into Carnivale in Brazil, Madri Gras in New Orleans,

and Carabana in Toronto. Shotgun houses appeared in

Louisiana with the arrival of free African immigrants from

Haiti. A two-room housing form emigrated to the Caribbean

with peoples from Bight of Benin, and merged with the Arawak

Indian ajupá or bohío to form the Haitian caille. According to

prevailing scholarship, the spatial volume of the shotgun and

its Haitian prototype is identical to the housing type preferred

by the Yorubá in Nigeria, West Africa.(31)

Africans in America

From the earliest settlements in the United States, diverse

groups of people lived and worked in interdependent relationships that melded cultural, technological, and social traditions

into a distinctive outlook that is American culture. With this,

the New World became just that, a “new world,” replete with

new institutions, beliefs, and knowledge systems developed

from the interaction of nationalities and cultures. The new

culture reflected the input of the various participants in the

growth of the colonies into a nation.
National Park Service 13

Africans have had a continuous presence in the Americas for

more than 400 years.(32) Alonso Pietro was pilot of the Niña

on the first voyage. A free African reportedly sailed with

Columbus on the second voyage in 1493 as well.(33) Other

Africans were among the Spanish exploration party that landed

in the Carolinas in 1526 and were on hand after the English

settled at Jamestown in 1619. The first documentation of free

Africans in America was in 1662, in Northhampton, Virginia.(34)

Upon their arrival, Africans participated in the building 

of a nation. Joseph E. Harris notes: 

[p]erhaps the greatest contribution of Africans abroad 

was labor, which facilitated the accumulation of capital,

the advancement of technology, the internationalization 

of banking and insurance, and the general administrative 

organization, especially in the West...(35)

African Americans did more than clear forests, dredge

swamps, and serve as domestic help. Africans who arrived

with the early settlers were blacksmiths, farmers,

and potters, as well as sailors. African knowledge

systems allowed for the development of commercially viable products, with which the wealth of a

nation was built. 

Many of the crops developed in the Americas for

exportation were unfamiliar to the Europeans

trying to cultivate them. Moreover, the crops were

foreign to the region as well. However, enslaved

African groups had experience with several of the different

crops and technologies. As slavery became an entrenched

institution, those in search of labor sought out Africans from

regions with specific agricultural experience. The success of

rice production in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana was

due to the tidal floodplain system of rice cultivation used in

the Senegambia region. From 1730 to 1800, during the height 

of rice production, a significant number of Africans were

imported from rice growing regions in West Africa. In

Louisiana and South Carolina, the birth of the indigo industry

coincided with the arrival of West Africans in 1721.(36)

Through daily activities and interactions, Africans made an

imprint on American culture. African styles of cooking

merged with European and Native American foodways. The

use of rice, a staple of the West African diet, in the Americas 

is an Africanism. Other crops not developed for exportation,

Illustration 6:

This illustration shows areas of

rice cultivation in West Africa.

The areas correspond with the

origins of Africans brought to

South Carolina during the height

of rice production in the U.S.

Map courtesy of Judith Carney.
14 African Reflections on the American Landscape

like black-eyed peas and yams, were added to the European

American palate. Archeological research at places such as

Poplar Forest in Virginia, tells us much about the dietary and

medicinal practices of Africans a generation or so removed

from Africa. Single pot meals, like gumbo and jambalaya, 

are indicative of culinary Africanisms. The cooking utensils

have African roots as well. Colono-ware, terracotta vessels

used for cooking and storage, are found throughout Virginia

and South Carolina. Research has identified a West Central

African pottery tradition practiced in the United States, 

concurrent with the American Indian tradition.

African words and grammatical patterns permeate American

English. “Okra” is an Akan word, and “gumbo” is a Bantu

synonym. “Goober” and “jazz” are words derived from West

African terms. Most famously, the Gullah dialect bears vocabulary and grammatical links to the Bantu language group. The

creolization of English as spoken in the United States has much

to do with the African influence upon the language. This influence would later show up in the idioms of blues, jazz, and

rock-and-roll. African-derived place-names mark Suwanee

Old Town, Florida and Wando River in the Gullah/Geechee

region of South Carolina. 

The Significance of Place

Place, according to Yi-Fu Tuan, is defined by the experiential

perspective people have of a space.(37) The experiences of

those who occupied an area are what makes that place significant to them, and in its interpretation to others. In the early

years of United States, the ability to define one’s space was

limited to those with the means to wealth and power. African

Americans were frequently without either, but through a sense

of place, borne of collective experiences, found other means. 

Living spaces were one way to mark place. Archeology in locations from the Caribbean to New England have found derivations in the footprints of housing constructed by transplanted

Africans and that of European housing. The room sizes—

12 feet wide for each room in Afro-Carribean and African

American built places, as opposed to the 16 feet standard of

European American housing—differ, creating more intimate,

protected places.(38) Porches were adapted to European architecture in the Caribbean as a means to manage the heat of

the tropics. They were the bridge between public and private

space, and also served as an additional room for storage.

Illustration 7:

According to some western

African beliefs, seashells, 

like those found on a burial

mound located in Mount Olivet

Cemetery, Washington, DC, 

1944 can represent water, 

the place where the spirits 

of the dead reside. 

Photo courtesy of the Farm Security

Administration photographs collection,

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs

Division
National Park Service 15

Swept earth “yards,” commonplace in West, Central, and East

Africa, were widespread in the Caribbean, the Appalachians,

and in the southern U.S. through the beginning of the twentieth century. These yards help define the ends of the outside

world and the beginning of a personal, experience-influenced

space.(39)

The significance of a location did not necessarily lie in the

physical space itself, but in how the space was used. What

happened in these places also gives them historical value.

Churches in historically black neighborhoods can be repositories for information on early African descendant peoples.

African American Christianity has decidedly different overtones than that practiced in European American communities.

The rituals have a basis in West and Central African spiritual

practices, which encouraged dancing, lively singing, and 

a call-and-response style of participation. Also, “church” 

did not always take place in a church or physical structure.

Other domiciles or forest and wooded areas served as places

to congregate.

At several archeological sites around the nation, cosmograms

have been found in and beneath dwellings, most recently in

Brooklyn, New York. According to Central African belief

systems, cosmograms are graphical depictions of the universe.

They were drawn in the soil, on walls, or on pottery. In its

most basic expression, a cosmogram is a cross (+), with the

horizontal line representing the divide between the world of

Illustration 8:

Interpreted through western

African cosmology, the bottles

and jars atop a sharecropper’s

grave in Hale County, Alabama,

1938 symbolize the connection

between the living and the dead. 

Photo courtesy of the Farm Security

Administration photographs collection,

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs

Division

Illustration 9:

Swept yards were common in

rural areas in the South. The

practice is traced back to West

Africa. Caroline Atwater, pictured

tending to her yard with the

branch from a tree in 1939, 

maintains a tradition dating 

back hundreds of years. 

Photo courtesy of Farms Security

Administration photographs collection,

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division.
16 African Reflections on the American Landscape

the living and the world of the departed. The vertical line

shows the height of worldly power above the horizon, and 

the height of spiritual power below it.(40) In the case of the

Lott home in Brooklyn, corncobs used to construct a cosmogram were discovered in the attic where the enslaved

inhabitants resided.(41) 

Personal effects and other items at gravesites and other funerary practices from Ghana to Angola found correlative practices throughout the eastern seaboard and the southern states.

(Illustrations 7 and 8, pages 14 and 15) Descriptions of funerals

and graves at the African Burial Ground in New York pointed

to distinctly African funerary practices. Contemporary accounts

of chanting and drumming and remains of pottery and/or

seashells found on the graves date to the late seventeenth/early

eighteenth centuries.(42) 

Conclusion

People of African descent have been partners in the creation

of America and American culture from its outset. The sheer

numbers of African people who arrived in North America

either from the Caribbean or directly from Africa to North

America dictate a sizable role in the cultural development of

America. African culture contributed greatly to the development and enrichment of the culture now identified with the

United States. 

Africanisms must become much more visible to historic

preservation/cultural resources practitioners. In order to 

reach this visibility, preservationists must direct their efforts

toward non-European historical sources. They must gain 

a better understanding of the various African ethnic groups

and where their initial and subsequent settlements in America

placed them. 
National Park Service 17

1. The Historical United States Census Data

Browser gives 2,300,031 and Michael Gomez

gives 2,328,642 for the number of Africans in

America in 1830. This represents 18% of the 

population in the United States. See “The

Historical United States Census Data Browser”

web site, available through the Inter-university

Consortium for Political and Social Research at

http://fisher.lib.virginia. edu/census: February 12,

2002; Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our

Country Marks: The Transformation of African

Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South

(Chapel Hill and London: University of North

Carolina Press, 1998), 22, table 2.4.

2. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American

Culture (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1991), ix.

3. Edward Kamau Brathwaite, The Development 

of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (Oxford, UK:

Clarendon Press, 1971). Grey Gundaker addresses

creolization theory in her essay, “Discussion:

Creolization, Complexity, and Time,” in Historical

Archaeology 34(3)2000: 124-133.

4. James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An

Archaeology of Early American Life (New York:

Anchor Books, 1996); Grey Gundaker, Signs 

of Diaspora/Diaspora of Signs: Literacies,

Creolization, and Vernacular Practice in African

America (Oxford, UK and New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998). 

5. John Michael Vlach, The Afro-American Tradition

in Decorative Arts (Athens and London: University

of Georgia Press, 1990), 125; John Michael Vlach,

By the Work of Their Hands: Studies in AfroAmerican Folklife (Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1991), 201-206. Cf. Merrick

Posnansky’s discussion of African and Indian

knowledge exchanges in the Caribbean and

Ferguson on slavery and racism in the Chesapeake

Tidewater region. Posnansky, “West Africanist

Reflections on African American Archaeology,”

in Theresa Singleton, ed., I, Too, Am America:

Archaeological Studies of African-American Life

(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,

1999), 21-37; Leland Ferguson, Uncommon

Ground: Archaeology and Early African America,

1650-1800 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1992), 41-44.

6. Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past,

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1941).

7. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the

United States (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1939). Frazier’s work was a

response to W.E.B. Du Bois’s examinations into

African American culture and life. Cf. W.E.B. 

Du Bois, The Suppression of the Slave Trade,

1638-1870 (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard 

University, 1896); idem, The Philadelphia 

Negro (New York: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1899);

idem, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: 

A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903).

8. Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative 

of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 4

volumes (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution

of Washington, 1930-1935).

9. Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Philadelphia

and London: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1935).

10. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows:

Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal

Negroes (Athens and London: University of

Georgia Press, 1940).

11. George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: 

A Composite Autobiography, 31 volumes

(Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press,

1972-1979).

12. Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah

Dialect (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1949).

13. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution:

Slavery in the Ante-bellum South (New York:

Knopf, 1956).

14. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade,

A Census (Madison: The University of Wisconsin

Press, 1970).

ENDNOTES
18 African Reflections on the American Landscape

15. Charles Fairbanks, “The Kingsley Slave Cabin 

in Duval County, Florida,” in the Conference on

Historic Sites Archaeology Papers (n.p., 1975), 30-59.

16. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community:

Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford,

UK and New York: Oxford University Press,

1972); Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The

World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon,

1974); Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture, Black

Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from

Slavery to Freedom (Oxford, UK and New York:

Oxford University Press, 1977). These are not the

only scholars of note on the topic of slavery. Nor

are they the only scholars of slavery with contributions to the study of Africanisms. Charles

Joyner, Ira Berlin, Sterling Stuckey, Charles Dew,

and many more, have contributed substantially

to the examination African American culture and

its African antecedents. See the bibliography for

more citations. 

17. Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, An

Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American

Past (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of

Human Issues, 1976). Mintz and Price argued

that Africanisms did not “survive,” reviving the

notion that African American culture was created

without the influence of Africa. The book has

been re-released, with additional information

and a new title, The Birth of African-American

Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1992).

18. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit:

African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy

(New York: Random House, 1983).

19. Ferguson, Uncommon Ground.

20. Holloway, Africanisms in American Culture. 

21. Afro-American Tradition was originally published

by the Cleveland Museum of Art to accompany

an exhibit in 1978. See Vlach, The Afro-American

Tradition in Decorative Arts (Cleveland:

Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978). Idem, The 

Afro-American Tradition; idem, By the Work of

Their Hands.

22. Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together:

Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century

Virginia (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1987).

23. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial

Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole

Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge,

LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1992).

24. Joseph E. Harris, ed., The Global Dimensions of

the African Diaspora (Washington, DC: Howard

University Press, 1982); Joseph E. Harris, Africans

and Their History, (New York: New American

Library, 1972).

25. For many years, Africa and her ethnicities were

not a part of the early story of American culture.

A view of Africa (and Africans) as a receiver, 

not donor, of culture was pervasive, beginning 

in the eighteenth century. The “culturally rich”

portions of Africa, Egypt and North Africa, were

cleaved from it, aligning Egypt with Europe and

North Africa with Arabia. The perception of SubSaharan Africa as a savage continent in need 

of enlightenment allowed for the paternalistic

beliefs that, among other things, gave credence 

to the notion slavery would serve as a civilizing

tool. For brief discussions on the invisibility of

Africa in history, see Nnamdi Elleh, African

Architecture: Evolution and Transformation (New

York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1997) 4-6; Harris,

Africans and Their History, specifically the chapter

titled “A Tradition of Myths and Stereotypes.”

26. Harris, ed., “Introduction,” in The Global

Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Washington,

DC: Howard University Press, 1982), 8-9. 

27. The estimates for the total number of Africans

imported as chattel into the New World range

widely. A lack of complete records and the continued illegal importation of enslaved Africans

beyond the cessation of slavery throughout

colonies in North America and the Caribbean

skew the numbers. Commonly held totals and

estimates ranged from 15 to 20 million people,

until the publication of Philip Curtin’s book 

The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Curtin’s

groundbreaking research puts the estimate at 

9.6 million. His statistics are widely used by
National Park Service 19

scholars as the best available estimates. Since The

Atlantic Slave Trade, others, such as sugar technology historian Noel Deerr and economic historian Joseph Inikori suggested higher totals of 12

and 15.4 million, respectively. Hugh Thomas sums

up much of the scholarship and statistics in

Appendix 3 of his book, The Slave Trade. He estimates 11,328,000 arrived in the New World, with

a total of 13 million leaving West African ports.

See Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 87, table 23;

Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the

Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1997), 804-805, 861-862. Cf. Gomez,

Exchanging Our Country Marks, 18, who confirms Curtin’s figures with a comparison to 

other studies; Noel Deerr, History of Sugar, 2 vols.

(London: Chapman and Hall, 1950); Joseph

Inikori, The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade:

Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the

Americas (Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1981).

28. The number, 673,037 free and enslaved Africans

in Virginia and Maryland, is based on the 1830

estimated census data. The number of Africans 

in the Chesapeake region is consistently

higher than any other area in census records

from 1710 to 1860. See “The Historical United

States Census Data Browser” web site,

http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census; Gomez,

Exchanging Our Country Marks, 295.

29. Levine argues that although the different languages among the various ethnicities required

adaptation techniques, there was a cultural 

commonality among the enslaved West Africans,

and that it persisted and evolved. See Levine,

Black Culture, 3-5. 

30. John Thornton argues for a cultural syncretism

among the West and Central African ethnic

groups. Harris acknowledges the inter-African

cultural melding that took place. John K.

Thornton, Africa and African in the Making 

of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, second edition

(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press, 1998), 187-192; Harris, “A Comparative 

Approach,” in The Global Dimensions of the

African Diaspora (Washington, DC: Howard

University Press, 1982), 113-114. Cf. Harris,

Africans and Their History for discussions 

of interaction between various ethnic groups

within West and Central Africa. 

31. Vlach, in “The Shotgun House: An African

Architectural Legacy,” outlines the development

and transmission of the shotgun house form

from the Yorubá in Nigeria to French Africans

arriving in Louisiana with the Haitian caille

during the early eighteenth century. See Vlach,

By the Work of Their Hands, 185-213.

32. For an alternate perspective, see Ivan Van

Sertima, They Came Before Columbus: The African

Presence in Ancient America (New York: Random

House, 1976). In his work, Van Sertima offers an

argument for pre-Columbian contact between

East and West Africans and Mezo-Americans in

Central America, relying on historic records, and

examination of monumental sculpture and similarities between Aztec and Egyptian calendars.

Van Sertima’s research is controversial and has

been disputed by other scholars, but is worth

noting, because it cites two different periods of

potential interaction over several centuries. 

33. For Pietro and other Africans on board with

Columbus, see Thomas, The Slave Trade, 87.

34. Kwame A. Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,

eds. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and

African American Experience (New York: Basic

Civitas Books, 1999), 783.

35. Harris, “A Comparative Approach,” 123.

36. See Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 124. 

37. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective

of Experience (Minneapolis and London:

University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 8-18.
20 African Reflections on the American Landscape

38. See Vlach’s discussion on African-American

housing, in The Afro-American Tradition, 122-138;

also see Arleen Pabón, “Por La Encendida 

Calle Antillana: African Influences on Puerto

Rican Domestic Architecture,” in Places of

Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the

American Landscape. Conference Proceedings,

May 9-12, 2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC:

Department of the Interior, National Park

Service, 2001), 139-143.

39. See Richard Westamcott, “Gardening, Yard

Decoration, and Agriculture Among Peoples 

of African Descent in the Rural South and 

in the Cayman Islands,” in Places of Cultural

Memory: African Reflections on the American

Landscape. Conference Proceedings, May 9-12,

2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC: Department

of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), 

135-138. Cf. Westamcott, African American

Gardens and Yards in the Rural South (Knoxville:

University of Tennessee Press, 1992).

40. In his discussion on cosmograms, Thompson

describes the different iterations of cosmograms,

to include crossroads. According to Thompson, 

it was where one went to gain favor from the

cosmos and to reach ones ancestors. Forked

sticks could also serve as a cosmogram. See

Robert Farris Thompson, “Kongo Influences 

on African-American Artistic Culture,” in

Africanisms in American Culture, Joseph E.

Holloway, ed., (Bloomington and Indianapolis:

Indiana University Press, 1991), 152-157. 

41. For more on the Lott home findings, see 

H. Arthur Bankoff, Christopher Riccardi, and

Alyssa Loorya, “Remembering Africa Under 

the Eaves,” in Archaeology 54(3)(May/June 2001):

36-40; Brent Staples, “To Be a Slave in Brooklyn,”

in New York Times Magazine (June 21, 2001): 

34-37.

42. Shells were found on some coffins, and the 

presence of pottery on at least one other. See

Warren R. Perry, Jean Howson, and Ruth Mathis

“New York’s African Burial Ground Mortuary

Complex in Diasporic Perspective,” in Places 

of Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the

American Landscape. Conference Proceedings,

May 9-12, 2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC:

Department of the Interior, National Park

Service, 2001), 147-150.


National Park Service 23

Chapter 2

Identifying and 

Documenting Africanisms 

on the American Landscape

Through its cultural resources programs, the

National Park Service has identified and formally

recognized many historic places associated with

African cultural heritage. African-related historic

properties have been listed in the National Register

of Historic Places, designated as National Historic

Landmarks, documented through the Historic

American Buildings Survey/Historic American

Engineering Record, and addressed in conferences,

such as “Places of Cultural Memory: African

Reflections on the American Landscape.” This

chapter provides a preliminary list of such historic

places and summarizes their connection to 

African culture.

The properties that have been recognized by NPS cultural

resources programs include those that: 

● are representative of ethnic heritage, as in the case of

Congo Square 

● embody distinctive characteristics, such as the shotgun

homes in the Smoketown Historic District 

● are associated with events and persons that have made 

significant contributions to the broad patterns of our 

history, such as the Stono River Slave Rebellion Site, and 

● may yield or are likely to yield information important in 

prehistory or history, such as the African Burial Ground. 

The list suggests the types of historic places that communities

might consider for formal documentation and recognition.
24 African Reflections on the American Landscape

The National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the nation’s inventory of historic districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects

significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture at the national, state, and local levels. The

National Register contains almost 75,000 properties and with

nearly 1.2 million historic resources within those properties.

Congo Square

New Orleans, Louisiana

As a gathering place for the enslaved population of New

Orleans, Congo Square’s significance lies in the events that

took place there. On Sundays, enslaved people congregated at the plaza, just across the street from the French

Quarter, as a respite from their daily toil. The dance and

music ceremonies performed at Congo Square are integral

to much of contemporary African American popular

culture, and American popular culture. Descriptions of

the dances, instrumentation, and songs, most notably by

architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe during a visit in 1819,

correspond with West African antecedents. The National

Register nomination makes frequent reference to the

importance of Africa to this place.(1)

The founding of the colony of Louisiana by the French

dates to 1702, and the first people of African descent

arrived in 1719. By 1728, the Africans were almost exclusively from the Upper Guinea region, specifically Senegal

and Gambia, which provided a homogeneous African identity.(2) Spanish rule in Louisiana dates from 1763 to 1800 and

during this time the use of the Congo Square by Africans may

have begun. The Spanish regime was more progressive than

the French or English in their treatment of the enslaved Africans

and was willing to allow them more autonomy and free time.

Today, the plaza still embodies the African influence. It 

is paved with an overlapping circular pattern in the brick 

courtyard intended to imitate the dances performed by

Africans.(Illustration 10) As stated in the summary of the

National Register nomination, “[t]his public open space is 

significant as the site, during the early 19th century, of traditional slave dances consciously preserving African dance patterns and musical instruments.” Congo Square, as a public

space, serves as a cultural landscape, important for its ethnic

heritage in the culturally diverse city of New Orleans.

Illustration 10:

An aerial view of Congo Square

in New Orleans shows the circular pattern intended to mimic the

dances, as described by Latrobe,

of the Africans who spent their

leisure time there. 

Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Department

of Culture, Recreation and Tourism
National Park Service 25

Smoketown Historic District

Louisville, Kentucky

The Smoketown district is located in the easternmost section

of central Louisville. An ethnically diverse neighborhood since

its inception, Smoketown is an African American community

that predates the Civil War. Originally, the area was settled by

Quakers, followed by people of German descent, which were

the most dominant cultural group until the late 1800s. The

neighborhood saw an increased influx of African

Americans after the Civil War, making it the

largest continuously occupied African American

community in Louisville. Its longevity exceeds

that of two other communities serving people of

African descent, Browntown and Little Africa, in

other sections of the city. 

The city and neighborhood were places of tertiary

migration. People came from all over the South

due to the belief that abolitionist General John

Palmer, commander of the Union forces in the area, would

emancipate all African Americans present in Louisville on 

July 4, 1865. This migration continued, providing labor for the

burgeoning industrial complex in Louisville. Smoketown was

bordered by several factories, including a tobacco processing

factory, which was the largest industry. 

Smoketown has a large number of shotgun houses, a popular

house type in industrial Louisville following the Civil War. 

The shotgun is derived from a Yorubá housing type via Haiti.

The Yorubá house melded with the Arawak Indian ajupá

or bohío to create the Haitian caille. From Haiti, it came to

Louisiana with the influx of free Africans. Shotgun houses are

narrow (roughly 12 feet wide), 2 to 3 rooms deep, aligned with

the gable and front door facing the street, which are distinctive

parts of the design. Theoretically, one could open all the doors

Illustration 11:

The 700 block of E. Breckenridge

Street contains examples of

camelback shotgun houses and

single shotgun houses in the

Smoketown Historic District in

Louisville. 

Photo courtesy of Roy Hampton

Illustration 11a:

On the 900 block of S. Hancock

Street, double shotgun houses sit

side by side in the Smoketown

Historic District. 

Photo courtesy of Roy Hampton
26 African Reflections on the American Landscape

of the house, fire a bullet through and not disturb anything,

hence “shotgun.” The shotgun house form traveled from

Louisiana, up the interior waterways to Kentucky, Ohio, and

Missouri with African Americans from the lower South. This

housing type became popular in industrialized southern urban

areas following the Civil War, when housing was needed in

densely populated areas.

According to the National Register nomination, shotgun houses

could be found as early as 1855 in this section of Louisville. The

Encyclopedia of Louisville notes that the city of Louisville has

four types of shotguns: single, double (two single-shotgun

houses combined under one roof), camelback (with an additional story over the back room), and double camelback.(3)

(Illustrations 11 and 11a, page 25) Presently, the shotgun house

makes up approximately ten percent of the city’s housing stock.

Christiansted Historic District

St. Croix, Virgin Islands

The Danish were the first of the European countries to develop

a successful commercial endeavor on the island of St. Croix.

Enslaved Africans played a significant role in the

development of the port town of Christiansted.

They were employed as artisans and assisted in

the construction of the many buildings found in

the district. Hipped roof, single-story rectangular

buildings with porches dot the landscape of

the district. (Illustration 12) The building type is

reminiscent of housing types from Ghana. The

Africans in Christiansted passed through the

Danish slave forts in what is now Ghana.(4)

Through the labor of enslaved Africans, the Danish were able

to establish a successful sugar production and export enterprise with the Danish West India and Guinea Company. Sugar

cane cultivation has North and West African antecedents.

There was also a substantial free African population, which

played an important role in the development of the town.

“Free Gut” is a residential area that was established for free

blacks. According to the National Register nomination, the

enslaved population reached over 27,000 as compared with

approximately 5,000 European settlers and planters. With the

sizable African descendant population, Christiansted Historic

District is a primary migration stage. It potentially holds significant historical information about the lives of Africans

immediately arrived from West Africa.

Illustration 12:

A northwest view of Market

Street shows hipped roof houses

in the foreground and the background in Christiansted Historic

District, St. Croix, Virgin Islands,

circa 1976. 

Photo courtesy of Samuel N. Stokes
National Park Service 27

National Historic Landmarks

Designated by the Secretary of the Interior, National Historic

Landmarks are nationally significant historic places because

they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or

interpreting the heritage of the United States. 2,341 historic

places bear this distinction.

African Burial Ground Complex 

New York, New York 

Illustration 13a:

A tack-decorated coffin lid with

“HW,” with the date 17[3]8 was

found during excavations at the

African Burial Ground National

Historic Landmark. 

Photo courtesy of Dennis Seckler

The African Burial Ground Complex holds an estimated

10,000 to 20,000 people of African descent interred since the

early eighteenth century. The Burial Ground was in use from

approximately 1712 to 1785.(5) It was rediscovered during the

construction of a federal office building.(6) Administered by

U.S. General Services Administration, the site is marked with 

a commemorative plaque and statue called “Triumph of the

Spirit.” New York was the first place of contact with America

for many of those interred. Therefore, the evidence found 

at the Burial Ground was interpreted through the lens of

Africanisms. 

The Burial Ground was an African place in New York.

Anthropological research reveals the effects of the strenuous

work regimes, dietary patterns, and genetic background 

of some of the earliest Africans in America. Archeological

information illuminates the funerary practices of the various

people: whether they were buried with or without a coffin, 

the orientation of their bodies to the cardinal points denoting

religious affiliation, the personal objects that were interred

with them, and the types of ceremonies that were conducted

at the gravesite. All of these practices reveal much about the

Illustration 13:

Archeological investigation 

at the African Burial Ground 

has uncovered numerous 

examples of grave markers, 

such as headstones and 

cobbles. 

Photo courtesy of Dennis Seckler
28 African Reflections on the American Landscape

ethnic background of those interred. (Illustrations 13 and 13a,

page 27) The significance of the site is the link of cultural 

practices and items interred to West African people who 

were recently transported to the Americas.

Stono River Slave Rebellion Site

Near Rantowles, South Carolina

On September 9-10, 1739, a group of 20 enslaved Africans

gathered near the Stono River and commenced one of the

most serious slave insurrections in the colonial period. The

rebellion traveled from farm to farm, gaining recruits, and

killing slaveholders along the way to its intended goal,

Spanish-controlled St. Augustine, Florida. The slaveholders 

in the area eventually put down the rebellion some 12 miles

south of its origin. At the conclusion of the rebellion, more

than 60 British settlers died, and 40 of the estimated 80

enslaved Africans perished in the days and weeks following

the revolt.

According to contemporary sources, the Rebellion was 

led by an Angolan named Jemmy and contained a number 

of Angolans in the original group. The National Historic

Landmark documentation cites a report that the band of

insurrectionists marched “like a disciplined company.”

Accounts of the period note a banner, which the insurrectionists rallied around and from which they derived a source

of confidence. Peter Wood, in Black Majority, references

African traditions where some secret societies viewed banners as having protective abilities.(7)

The significance of a core group of people from the same

general cultural zone cannot be underestimated. As a point 

of primary migration, South Carolina imported many Africans

directly from Africa. Thus, cultural retentions were strong in

South Carolina. Many of those sold into slavery were captives

of wars between the rival African groups. They may have also

shared mutually understandable languages. This familiarity

allowed for a cohesiveness that was crucial to the relative

success of the rebellion. Unlike other rebellions, there was no

information leak or betrayal to the planters by any enslaved

Africans in the Stono area. The insurrection led South

Carolina to pass some of the most restrictive slave codes in 

the colonies. The National Historic Landmark property is

being reevaluated for possible inclusion of the area where 

the Rebellion was finally stopped.
National Park Service 29

Historic American Buildings Survey

The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documents

important architectural sites throughout the United States 

and its territories. The program is an integral component of

the federal government’s commitment to historic preservation. HABS documentation, consisting of measured drawings,

large-format photographs, and written history, plays a key

role in accomplishing the mission of creating an archive of

American architecture and engineering.

African Baptist Society Church

Nantucket, Massachusetts 

The African Baptist Society Church, or African School as it

was also known, is the oldest remaining building in Nantucket

associated with peoples from West Africa. As late as the end 

of the Revolutionary War, one-third of the African descendant

population in Massachusetts had been born in Africa, creating

an African cultural presence in the commonwealth. The building is located on land bought in 1826 for $10.50 in a neighborhood called Newtown. The section of Newtown where 

the church resides was known as “Guinea.” The name historically refers to a broad region of West Africa, ranging from the

Senegal River in Senegambia to Cameroon, covering much 

of the area from which enslaved Africans came.(8) Throughout

the eastern seaboard, references to black sections of towns

that were called “Guinea” can be found. 

Illustration 14:

The African Baptist Society

Church was measured and drawn

as a part of the Historic American

Building Survey program to

record architecturally significant

buildings throughout the nation. 

Drawing courtesy of HABS

Illustration 14a:

The 1968 photo of the African 

Baptist Society Church shows 

the church sitting in contrast 

to other buildings in its 

surroundings. 

Photo courtesy of Jack Boucher, HABS
30 African Reflections on the American Landscape

In Clay Lancaster’s The Architecture of Historic Nantucket, 

the African Baptist Society Church is cited as “noteworthy... 

built at the corner of Pleasant [Street]...to serve the colored

colony to the west.” Presumably built by members of the

society, the building is unique to Nantucket, but bears resemblance to housing types found in the South where there were

larger concentrations of people of African descent.(9) Photos

of the surrounding homes and buildings show no structures 

of similar design. (Illustrations 14 and 14a, page 29) 

The use of “colony” to describe the black population infers

that they were free, or at least had some degree of movement.

Slavery was abolished by the Massachusetts legislature in 1783,

and according to William Piersen’s Black Yankees, as much 

as 40% of the state’s African population may have been free 

by 1764.(10)

Historic American Engineering Record

The Historic American Engineering Record

(HAER) documents important engineering 

and industrial sites throughout the United States

and its territories. The program is an integral 

component of the federal government’s commitment to historic preservation. HAER documentation, consisting of measured drawings, largeformat photographs, and written history, plays 

a key role in accomplishing the mission of creating an archive of American architecture and 

engineering.

Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation

Thibodaux, Louisiana

Sugar production came to Louisiana in 1794. It

was introduced to Louisiana from the Caribbean,

where it had been commercially successful for the

French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Danish. Laurel

Valley Plantation is an example of a complete

sugar-producing complex. The plantation contains

a great deal of vernacular architecture of African

derivation. In addition, knowledge systems transferred from

the Caribbean, the Atlantic Islands, and Africa made sugar cultivation possible.(11)

The Boudreaux family settled on what was the Laurel Valley

Plantation in 1831, seeking a fortune from the profitable, but

labor-intensive sugar cane crop. The family eventually sold 

Illustration 15:

An orthographic architectural

drawing of double Creole quarters notes the adaptation of a

porch to the double pen-type

vernacular housing. 

Drawing courtesy of HAER

Illustration 15a:

This photograph illustrates 

a row of the Creole quarters

housing at Laurel Valley

Plantation. 

Photo courtesy of Jet Lowe, HAER
National Park Service 31

Illustration 16:

This view illustrates a row 

of shotgun houses at Laurel

Valley Plantation. 

Photo courtesy of Jet Lowe, HAER

the property to Joseph Tucker in 1834, who expanded the 

production of the plantation. Laurel Valley eventually encompassed 5,000 acres. Tucker depended on the labor of enslaved

Africans, increasing his number from 22 in 1831 to 160 by 1852. 

Much of the original slave housing was destroyed by a later

plantation owner and was replaced with double creole “T”

quarters (a two-level, double pen house with a porch built 

in beneath the roof line) for workers. A “street” of double

shotgun houses with porches, both African vernacular adaptations, includes 26 houses.(Illustrations 15, 15a, and 16) The

shotgun houses are indicative of an established Africanderived housing type, while the creole quarters point out 

a hybrid, merging architectural traditions that created a 

distinctive Southern housing type.

Places of Cultural Memory Conference

“The Places of Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the

American Landscape” conference was held May 9-12, 2001 

in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference presented recent scholarship on Africanisms in the built environment. It brought

together preservationists and academicians interested in

developing a fuller understanding of the influence of

African cultural heritage on the landscape of the Americas.

The papers are compiled as a single volume, Places of 

Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the American

Landscape, Conference Proceedings, May 9-12, 2001, Atlanta,

Georgia (Washington, DC: Department of the Interior,

National Park Service, 2001), and are available on-line at

http://www.cr.nps.gov/crdi/conferences/conflinks.htm. 
32 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Two of the presentations are summarized below.

“Interwoven Traditions: Archaeology of the Conjurer’s

Cabins and the African American Cemetery at the 

Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations”

Presented at the “Places of Cultural Memory” conference 

in Atlanta, Georgia, Kenneth L. Brown’s paper speaks to the

importance of understanding material culture as interpreted

by the enslaved Africans, not just searching for items of

African origin or design. Brown conducted archeological

research on excavations of the slave quarters of two plantations in distinctly different locations, Texas and South

Carolina. The excavations revealed cosmograms, graphical

depictions of the universe according to West and Central

African religious beliefs, at both sites. However, instead of

a drawing or inscription on pottery, for example, the cosmograms were buried beneath cabins. 

The cosmograms found at the Jordan Plantation, Brazoria

County, Texas used various items, from thermometers to brass

Confederate military buttons and coins (dimes and quarters).

According to Brown, these lie outside of direct African interpretation, but are examples of adaptation of western material

culture for African religious practices. The items were located

in deposits at the four cardinal directions. Another interesting

aspect of the Jordan Plantation site was that it showed a mix 

of two West and Central African cultural groups, BaKongo

and Yorubá.(12)

According to Brown, the cosmogram found at the Frogmore

Manor Plantation, St. Helena Island, South Carolina had

fewer European American elements and could more readily

be interpreted in West African contexts. The cosmogram was

located under what is believed to be the Conjurer/Midwife’s

cabin at Frogmore Manor. Although glass, seashells, and nails

were present, just as in the contents at the Jordan plantation,

Brown notes the cosmogram deposits at the Frogmore

Plantation have a more “African appearance” to them. The

most notable distinction was the use of a fully articulated

chicken and cow (save for its tail) in two of the four deposits.

Cattle represent wealth in some African cultures, such as 

the Fulani in Nigeria, and chickens provide protection from

spirits. Bottles and colono-ware with bottoms broken out

were found along with the animals.(13)
National Park Service 33

The findings at the two plantations provide a means of comparison for research on similar locations throughout the

South, and in places where African descendant people settled.

In the Caribbean and South America, West African beliefs are

common aspects of spirituality, and are more prevalent than 

in North America. Santería in Cuba, and Vodun, or Voodoo 

in Haiti, are examples of West African based beliefs, creolized in a Christian context. They are part of ongoing African

reflections in the New World, which are being strengthened

with the immigration of West African practitioners of traditional religious beliefs. Today, with increased numbers of AfroCaribbean and African people moving to America, there is 

the potential for further cosmograms and items of worship to

appear in art and as material culture artifacts, as well as those

found “hidden from plain view.”(14)

“Africanisms Upon the Land: 

A Study of African Influenced Place Names of the USA”

In her paper, Annette Kashif examines the place-naming practices of African descendant people. Toponyms are reflections

of a person or group’s power and dominion over a place. In

the instances where African descendant people held influence

over the landscape, it follows that the names would hold

African connotations. These places ranged from towns to

rivers and swamps. Linguistic characteristics have proven less

dependent on time and place to maintain a cultural relationship to Africa. Language patterns survive beyond the direct

influence of original speakers, past their presence in a place.

Therefore, Kashif’s analysis goes beyond a one-to-one connection with African toponyms and places. This examination of toponyms encourages a broader interpretation of

Africanisms, delving into more deep structure analysis, requiring further understanding of linguistic patterns of West and

Central African languages.

Kashif offers three types of toponyms by which she classified

the place names: 

● place names derived from African words (African homophone), such as the Wando River in the Gullah/Geechee

region of South Carolina, which is also the name of a river 

and a city (Kwando) in Angola

● place names from a mixture of words from several African

language groups or an African and non-African word (African

hybrid) such as Black Pocosin Mingo (15)
34 African Reflections on the American Landscape

● African semantic content transfers (African calques) such 

as Nicodemus, Kansas, named for an enslaved African prince

who purchased his freedom. Semantic transfers are not

limited to inspirational figures, but can be an ethnic or linguistic reference, a duplication of another toponym, or a commentary on the human state-of-affairs.

According to Kashif, African American speech patterns are

different from those of their European counterparts, due to

the linguistic influences of the African languages that became

creolized with English. These reflections show up in all

aspects of American English inflected by African-derived

speech. They include the names of places and the significance

of what the names meant to those giving them. Using this sort

of analysis, examination of place names in areas with influential African descendant communities should uncover additional Africanisms. 

Conclusion

The examples given above are intended to offer preservationists examples of the influence of African cultural heritage on

the American landscape. It is hoped that these examples will

encourage preservationists to re-examine cultural resources in

their communities or under their purview to determine what

may hold the imprint of Africa. From large public places to an

individual house, the possibilities for identifying Africanisms

are great. For every African Burial Ground, there is a cemetery

with African-inspired grave decorations. For every shotgun

district in Georgia, there is another row of such residences 

in a long abandoned industrial section in another location.

Africanisms reside in all of those places where people of

African descent were involved in the development of a community, from its physical structures to its cultural lifeways. 
National Park Service 35

1. While visiting New Orleans in 1819, Benjamin

Henry Latrobe described and drew the instruments used and dances taking place in Congo

Square. John Vlach makes the connection with

the instruments to Africa in his book, The AfroAmerican Tradition in Decorative Arts (Athens

and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990),

24-26. Cf. National Register of Historic Places,

Congo Square, New Orleans Parish, Louisiana.

National Register #92001763.

2. Following the lead of Roger Bastide, Midlo 

Hall believes that the influence of the enslaved

Africans from Congo was overstated to the 

detriment of those from Senegambia. Hence, 

the name “Congo Square” may not be most 

representative of the dominant African ethnic

group in New Orleans at the time. The formal

name of the area recognized as Congo Square 

is Beauregard Square for Confederate General

P.T.G. Beauregard, but it has been known as

Circus Public Square and Place des Negres as

well. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial

Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole

Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rogue:

Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 291-293,

see f.n. 26.

3. See John Kleber, ed., The Encyclopedia of

Louisville (Lexington: The University Press of

Kentucky, 2001), 818-819.

4. Slave forts along the coast of modern Ghana,

controlled by different European powers

throughout their histories, were points of exportation for the Atlantic slave trade. The Danish

established coastal trading posts by 1670.

Frequently, captives were taken from the surrounding countryside, held in the forts until the

ship was filled, either in the present port or by

moving to another port along the West African

coast. See Kwame A. Appiah and Henry Louis

Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of 

the African and African American Experience

(New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 830; 

Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without

History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

of California Press, 1982), 208-212.

5. First documented reference to the Burial Ground

comes in a letter from Chaplain John Sharpe 

in 1712. In 1785, land development proposals for

the common land indicates the Burial Ground

was no longer in use. See National Historic

Landmarks, African Burial Ground Complex, New

York, New York. National Historic Landmarks

#93001597.

6. The African Burial Ground Memorial effort 

has a tumultuous history. Only a portion of the

Burial Ground is available for visitation, the 

rest being covered by the federal office building. Community pressure preserved the site from

total destruction, and led to the Memorial, a

statue “Triumph of the Spirit” and an Interpretive

Center. The hundreds of remains, presently with

the W. Montague Cobb Bio-Anthropology

Laboratory at Howard University in Washington,

DC, are to be returned to their final resting-place.

7. Secret societies operate as organizing polities 

for some West and Central African ethnic groups.

See Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in

Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the

Stono Rebellion (New York: W.W. Norton &

Company, 1975), 315, 316, see f.n. 30, 317. Furthermore, ethnicities serve to bind members of clans

to one another. A socially inferior family would

be obligated to follow the lead of a superior one,

determined by relationship of a family to the

founder of local group. Cf. Charles Balandier,

Daily Life in the Kingdom of the Kongo (New York:

Pantheon Books, 1968), 180-209, 213-226.

8. Historically, Guinea has been conceived of in

two sections. Upper Guinea, according to

Thornton, extended from the Senegal River to

Cape Mount in Liberia; Lower Guinea was

located between the Ivory Coast and modern

Cameroon. The modern country of Guinea

borders Guinea Bissau and Gambia on the 

north, the Ivory Coast and Liberia to the south, 

and Mali and Ghana to the east. See John K.

Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making 

of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, second edition

(Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1998), 187-192.

ENDNOTES
36 African Reflections on the American Landscape

9. Clay Lancaster, The Architecture of Historic

Nantucket (New York and London: McGrawHill, 1972), 242.

10. William D. Piersen, Black Yankees: The

Development of an Afro-American Subculture 

in Eighteenth Century New England (Amherst:

University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 22.

11. The cultivation of sugar cane has Afro-Caribbean

and African antecedents. Muslims introduced

sugar to North Africa during the eighth century.

North and West Africans provided the necessary

labor for the sugar boom throughout the

Mediterranean, including Spain and Portugal.

Most sugar cultivation took place in East Africa,

but substantial industries flourished in Morocco,

and later in the Atlantic islands of the Azores, the

Canaries, Madeira, and Cape Verde, off the west

coast of Africa. Christopher Columbus brought

cane cuttings with him to Hispanola on his

second voyage to the Americas in 1493. Familiarity

with sugar cultivation and need for a larger work

force found Portugal importing Africans to the

Americas to work on plantations. African agricultural skill made possible the production of

sugar cane in the Caribbean and United States.

Africans from the Upper Guinea region had agricultural experience with difficult crops, such as

indigo and rice, prior to sugar cane. See Hugh

Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the

Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870,(New York: Simon

and Shuster, 1997), 135-137. Africana offers a

summary of sugar and its relationship to Africa.

See Appiah and Gates, ed., Africana, 1800-1803. 

12. The inter-African cultural melding is consistent

with trends in places of secondary and tertiary stages of migration. Brown discusses the 

use of BaKongo nkisi, a protection amulet or

Conjurer’s kit, and a possible amula, or symbol 

of reverence to Ogun, a Yorubá deity, in the 

cosmogram beneath the Jordan Conjurer/ 

Midwife’s cabin. Deposits found beneath the

Praise House may represent a creolized cosmogram with a Christian aesthetic, having a crucifix

as the center and deposits radiating to the cardinal directions. Also, the similarity and compatibility of cosmograms to the Christian cross

cannot be overlooked. Congo and Angola were

exposed to Christianity prior to the Atlantic Slave

Trade. The Praise House was the place for communal worship on the plantation for the African

descendant people, found frequently in the

coastal Carolinas and Georgia. There is also a

cemetery that may contain further evidence of

these African reflections. See Kenneth L. Brown,

“Interwoven Traditions: Archaeology of the

Conjurer’s Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor

Plantations,” in Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape.

Conference Proceedings, May 9-12, 2001, Atlanta,

GA (Washington, DC: Department of the

Interior, National Park Service, 2001). 

13. See note 7 in Chapter 3 for the significance of

glasses and jars in funerary practices.

14. Brown, “Interwoven Traditions,” 109. For more

information on African religious beliefs in the

New World, see Holloway, ed., Africanisms in

American Culture.

15. Kashif found only one hybrid, Black Mingo

Pocosin, a swamp bordering Virginia and North

Carolina. Annette I. Kashif, “Africanisms Upon

the Land: A Study of African Influenced Place

Names of the USA,” in Places of Cultural

Memory: African Reflections on the American

Landscape. Conference Proceedings, May 9-12,

2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC: Department

of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), 27.

National Park Service 39

Chapter 3

Interpreting African Cultural

Heritage at Historic Sites

African-American cultural heritage is increasingly

included in the interpretation of historic sites open 

to the public. This chapter describes examples of

interpretive programs that address Africanisms.

Some African-related messages are more direct than

others; some follow more conventional models;

others require new means of analysis. Ultimately,

using Africanisms in the interpretation and

management of historic sites and places will 

enhance the understanding of America itself.

Historic sites that are located in areas where African

Americans settled earliest may have stronger cases for

Africanisms. The refreshing of African culture by new 

arrivals over the course of centuries builds a strong 

foundation for the study and interpretation of Africanisms.

The primary stage, the place of original dispersion, for most

people of African descent in North America is the Eastern

seaboard and the South—New England, the Chesapeake, 

the Carolinas, Florida, and Louisiana. 

Some Africanisms may require additional research and analysis beyond seeking a direct connection with Africa. The context may be recognized as African American, but the African

cultural connection needs to be documented and clarified,

such as with shotgun house districts, independent black

towns, and the names of geographic landmarks. Others, such

as rice cultivation and processing have distinctly African roots

that have been obscured. Interpreting a site’s Africanity means

explaining the migration process by which the people find

themselves in locations, as well as what culture they brought

with them. The migration patterns, therefore, may influence

the nature of Africanisms found at historic sites. 

Some sites that are not listed here have African roots and

origins, but their cultural context in the United States does 
40 African Reflections on the American Landscape

not come through New World African descended communities. The Washington Monument in Washington, DC is such

an example. Noted American classical architect, Robert Mills,

designed the nation’s monument to George Washington. The

Washington Monument is an obelisk, a four-sided spire with 

a triangular top. This monumental architectural style first

appeared in Karnak, Egypt, around B.C. 1500, and was used to

honor dignitaries. The function of the Washington Monument

is consistent with that of its ancient predecessors.(1)

Gullah/Geechee Culture 

Gullah/Geechee culture stretches from the Carolinas to 

northern Florida, leaving a distinctive mark on the historical

traditions in the coastal region. Included are the Sea Islands

off of South Carolina and the Golden Crescent of Georgia 

and Florida. The term “Gullah” is believed to be a homophone for “Gola” or Angola, and refers to those in the 

South Carolina Sea Islands. “Geechee” refers to those in 

the Georgia Sea Islands, and has a pejorative connotation 

of “country” or “hick.” The Gullah/Geechee people possess

linguistic traits, artisan skills, and agricultural and cultural

practices attributable to African knowledge systems retained

by those descendants. This survival is due to the relative geographic isolation of the areas and the concentrated and late

influx of Africans from the same cultural zone. Gullah/Geechee

culture is a repository of Africanisms and should be evaluated

in light of African culture. 

National Park Service interpretation programs have included

Gullah culture and people. The National Park Service funded

ethnographic/ethnohistorical oral histories at Kingsley plantation on Ft. George Island, Florida, and conducted ethnohistorical research at Cumberland and Amelia Islands in Georgia.

It also has conducted an ethnohistorical study of African

Americans at Snee Farm, Charles Pinckney National Historic

Site, South Carolina. Research centers, such as the Avery

Research Center for African American History and Culture at

the College of Charleston and the Penn Center on St. Helena

Island, which hold valuable information on Gullah culture,

also contribute to this effort.

Most recently, the National Park Service initiated the Low

Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study, a study mandated by Congress. The purpose of the study is to evaluate
National Park Service 41

Gullah/Geechee culture with an eye toward preserving and

interpreting it in areas within the Park Service’s purview. To

that end, the National Park Service is conducting meetings

with Gullah communities, providing an overview of scholarly

literature on the culture, producing a GIS report on places 

of importance in the Gullah/Geechee region, and compiling 

a demographic overview of the region. A full report detailing

these activities is scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2002.

Teaching With Historic Places: “When Rice Was King”

National Register of Historic Places 

[www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp]

The National Register of Historic Places has developed nearly

100 classroom-ready teaching lesson plans in its Teaching with

Historic Places program. These

lesson plans use National

Register-listed properties to

instruct readers about specific

themes, events, and significant

people in American history. 

The lesson plans are available

on-line, offering another way

to experience a historic place 

or a national park.

The Teaching with Historic

Places staff revamped the lesson

plan “When Rice Was King” to

reflect the African contributions

in the development of the rice

industry in South Carolina. 

The lesson plan discusses the

South’s growing dependence on

enslaved labor, specifically as it involved rice, South Carolina’s

premiere crop through much of the eighteenth century.

(Illustration 17) Chicora Wood was one of the most successful

rice plantations in Georgetown County. By 1860, Chicora

Wood served as the home base for a network of seven rice

plantations throughout the county for processing rice for

market. Using scholarship derived from the National Park

Service’s “Places of Cultural Memory: African Reflections on

the American Landscape” conference, Teaching with Historic

Places acknowledges the long-standing African expertise in

rice cultivation in South Carolina.

Illustration 17:

The map shows Chicora Wood

Plantation in relation to the surrounding rice producing areas. 

Map courtesy of Teaching with 

Historic Places, National Register 

of Historic Places
42 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Scholarship in the last 40 years points to rice cultivation and

processing in South Carolina as having West African roots.

The Portuguese cultivated rice and used enslaved labor in

Brazil in the sixteenth century. Rice was introduced to the British North American colonies 

in the early part of the 1600s. However, it only

became a successful cash crop for South Carolina

once planters increased importation of Africans

from the rice growing areas of West Africa.(2)

At Chicora Wood, and other plantations in the

coastal Carolinas, a technique of manipulating

tidal flows using embankments and sluice gates 

to attain high levels of productivity in the flood

plains of rivers and streams was practiced. Large wooden

mortars and pestles were originally used to husk the rice, and

winnowing baskets separated the husked kernels from their

covering. Eventually, the process became mechanized, but the

basic method of pounding, flailing, and winnowing remained

the same. (Illustration 18) “When Rice Was King” uses Judith

Carney’s essay from the “Places of Cultural Memory” conference to make the connection between West African rice production, the enslaved Africans used to plant rice, and the

development of these techniques in South Carolina. These

developments made South Carolina one of the leading rice

exporters in the world. 

The diet of American southerners reflects the influence of

Africans who served as cooks on plantations. Rice went from

a subsistence crop for the enslaved to a regular part of the

Illustration 19:

The kitchen at Chicora Wood

Plantation is separate from 

the house, mitigating the heat

during the warmer months. 

Photo courtesy of Charles Bayless

Illustration 18:

The processing of rice evolved

from a manual process to a

mechanized one, using winnowing houses and rice mills

shown here in Georgetown

County, SC. 

Photo courtesy of Charles Bayless
National Park Service 43

American diet. The detached kitchens on larger plantations

such as Chicora Wood may also reveal an Africanism. The

kitchen was kept separate from the big house on plantations,

in part, to mitigate excessive heat in the main house during the

warmer months. West and Central African groups, such as the

Asante in Ghana, cook outside of the domicile in a courtyard

space designated for communal use.(3) (Illustration 19) In addition, separate kitchens lessened the chance of destruction of

the home due to fire. 

The planting techniques, the processing of rice, the introduction of rice to the American palate, the outbuildings, and the

separation of kitchens from the house at Chicora Wood are

due to African influence and underscore the knowledge transfer that took place.

Shotgun Houses at 

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

Atlanta, Georgia

Preservation of shotgun house districts has become a popular

and profitable activity. One of the better known examples is

the grouping of double shotgun houses near the

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in

Atlanta, Georgia. According to the “Martin Luther

King, Jr. Historic Site, Cultural Landscape Report:

Birth-Home Block” released in 1995 by the

National Park Service, these houses were built

starting in 1905. Located in the Sweet Auburn

District, the shotgun houses are part of the

century-old African American enclave. Originally

developed in the 1870s for middle-class white

homeowners, the old Fourth Ward, in which

Auburn Avenue was located, had become an integrated neighborhood by the turn of the twentieth century. 1910

saw Auburn Avenue homes filled with middle-class African

Americans, including the family of the Reverend A. D. Williams,

maternal grandfather of Martin Luther King, Jr. The five double

shotgun houses on the Birth-Home block grew to eighteen by

the 1930s.(4) The shotgun houses continue to be inhabited by

African Americans.

In the 1980s, the Historic District Development Corporation

(HDDC) rehabilitated this shotgun row and other houses 

(in addition to adding new construction) in the adjoining

Sweet Auburn district. HDDC views the shotgun houses as

Illustration 20:

Shotgun houses are prevalent in

the Sweet Auburn neighborhood.

This illustration shows a double

shotgun house in the Martin

Luther King, Jr. Historic District. 

Photo courtesy of Cheryl Shropshire
44 African Reflections on the American Landscape

vital parts of the community and seeks to preserve its history

as a place of settlement and a holder of cultural traditions 

for African Americans by encouraging elderly community

members and families to remain in the houses. HDDC conducts heritage tours of the neighborhood that reference

shotgun houses as an Africanism. The double shotgun house,

the predominant type in Sweet Auburn, is particular to, but

not exclusive to Georgia. (Illustration 20, page 43)

Parting Ways Archeological District

Plymouth, Massachusetts

People of African descent established independent towns,

which bear imprints of African heritage. Parting Ways,

Massachusetts was a settlement of former enslaved Africans

who won their freedom by fighting in the Revolutionary War.

The site is marked by a sign at the side of the road, honoring

and listing the names of the original inhabitants, one of which,

Quamany, is an Akan day-name for a boy born on Saturday.(5)

Found among the ruins of the side was pottery similar to the

colono-ware vessels found in South Carolina, Virginia, and 

the Caribbean. The large jars were used to carry and store

tamarind, a West African fruit grown in the Caribbean.(6) The

footprints of the house ruins correspond with those found in

Caribbean villages where African people built their own

housing. (Illustration 21a)

Illustration 21:

This grave marker commemorates the four inhabitants 

of Parting Ways. Recent 

scholarship indicates that 

the actual burial sites may 

be nearer to the homes.

Photo courtesy of Tex Avery

Illustration 21a:

This photograph shows an 

excavation of the Plato Turner

home at Parting Ways. 

Photo courtesy of Tex Avery
National Park Service 45

A small cemetery across the road from the home site holds

slate gravestones. However, the actual gravesites of the 

inhabitants are believed to be closer to the housing ruins.

(Illustration 21) Mounds near the location of the houses were

marked with broken bottles and jars, reminiscent of Akan

ritual compounds.(7) The name itself, Parting Ways, is representative of an African semantic transfer, a practice of naming

places for emotions, experiences, actions, and attitudes. 

Artifacts from the site are on display at the 1749 Court House

and Museum. Further interpretation is provided by Parting

Ways: the Museum of African American and Cape Verdean

History, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of those interred at the site. Its web site, 

www.partingways.org, contains additional interpretation.

Parting Ways is listed in the National Register of Historic

Places. Administered by the town of Plymouth, the settlement

demonstrates the retention of African cultural practices

evident in archeological sites and cemeteries.

Zion Poplars Baptist Church

Gloucester, Virginia

The woods could be a place of worship, of either West African

deities or Christianity, without the restraints of European

worship.(8) As African Americans adopted Christianity, the

faith took on aspects of its practitioners’ past beliefs. An

expression of faith for some African American Christianity

was more extroverted, involving participation from the congregation and a call-and-response style of preaching. Dancing

and music were active parts of the service. This form of

worship diverged sharply from that of their European counterparts. Brush arbors, or bush harbors as they were sometimes known, were where enslaved Africans could practice

their form of Christianity clandestinely. 

With this in mind, the congregation of Zion Poplars Baptist

Church built their church after the Civil War beneath seven

poplar trees which were united to form a single base. This

location resonated with the congregation for Christian and

West and Central African reasons. The site was viewed as a
46 African Reflections on the American Landscape

natural miracle—the ideal place to commune with God—

and a familiar location. On what had been a location to

secretly practice religion was built a public place to continue

their religious observance. (Illustrations 22 and 22a)

The congregation built the church, situated it and the community graveyard beneath the poplars, and named the church 

for those same trees. This choice of location denotes an

Africanism and is valuable for interpreting Zion Poplars to

tourists and the community at large, as is documented in the

National Register of Historic Places nomination for Zion

Poplars Baptist Church. 

Poplar Forest Archeological Research

Near Lynchburg, Virginia

Located near Lynchburg, Poplar Forest was Thomas Jefferson’s

other plantation, besides Monticello. He inherited both properties through his father-in-law, and was one of the largest

holders of enslaved Africans in central Virginia. Jefferson

allowed the Africans at Poplar Forest the freedom to travel,

frequently to and from Monticello, and to produce and sell

the fruits of their labor on their own time. Through this commercial activity, Jefferson’s enslaved Africans were able to 

supplement their diets and incomes.(9)

An examination of the North Hill and Quarter portions of the

plantation revealed subfloor pits, used as storage areas within

housing structures. This practice, according to Poplar Forest

archeologist, Barbara Heath, may have roots in West Africa

Illustration 22a:

Zion Poplars Baptist and 

its surroundings represent 

a continuation of West 

African religious practices. 

Photo courtesy of Natalie Robertson

Illustration 22:

The poplars serve as a place of

shelter and of worship for the

congregation of Zion Poplars

Baptist. 

Photo courtesy of Natalie Robertson
National Park Service 47

with the Ibo of Nigeria.(10) In addition, there is on-going

archeological investigation on personal items found that may

have West African antecedents.

The vegetal remains recovered from the subfloor pits contained edible and non-edible plant material, as well as bones

from non-domesticated animals, which fell outside of what

was known to be provided to the Quarter’s inhabitants. In

some cases, the plants differed from those used for European

dietary and medicinal purposes. The findings suggest African

knowledge systems at work. Heath cites Merrick Posnansky’s

research on transfer of African knowledge to the Caribbean,

stating that plants from the same family were used similarly by

Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. Posnansky points to the

collaboration of African and Native American knowledge of

plants and pharmacopoeia in adapting African practices to

New World plant types.(11) Heath infers that the same transfer

took place in Virginia.

Conclusion

The study of African influences in America is being incorporated into the stories of historic sites. The narratives and histories reflect the views of the communities they serve and the

institutions that manage them. The addition of Africanisms to

the interpretation will alter how the visitors view the site, and

possibly attract new visitors altogether. Increased visitation

and new audiences benefit these places in many ways, not the

least of which is financially, as heritage tourism is one of the

fastest growing sectors of the tourist economy.

The range of vernacular cultural contexts that is shaped by

Africanisms speaks to the pervasiveness of African descendants and their collective culture in the United States. As

Africanisms are researched and added to the interpretation at

more historic sites, all historic site administrators are encouraged to evaluate their cultural resources for African influences.
48 African Reflections on the American Landscape

ENDNOTES

1. In the original Washington Monument design,

Mills included Neo-classical elements that were

not consistent with traditional Egyptian obelisk

design. The top of the Monument was nearly flat

and there was a pantheon encircling the base.

Two other monuments to George Washington

were erected, in Baltimore and Richmond, both

with Neo-Classical designs and both attributable

to Mills (there is debate as to his having designed

the one in Richmond). In 1879, after a lengthy

delay due to the theft of stone donated by the

Vatican and a lack of funding, the National

Monument Society decided to leave the 300 ft.

uncompleted and top it with a statue. George

Perkins Marsh, U.S. ambassador to Italy and a

student of Egyptian architecture, advised the

Society against the statue. The ambassador

argued for standard Egyptian proportions of 10:1

height to base and advised against the circular

temple base. He recommended that a pyramid

adorn the top, as called for by traditional design.

At the time of its completion in 1884, the

Monument rose 555 feet high and was the tallest

structure in the world. The use of the obelisk

form links America, a relatively new nation at the

time, to an ancient prosperous civilization. 

For more on Mills and the Washington

Monuments, see Carroll Orchards, “Notes 

& Comments: Robert Mills, Architect and

Engineer,” in Architectural Record 40 (6)

(December 1916): 583-588; H. E. Pierce Gallagher,

“Robert Mills, 1781-1855: America’s First Native

Architect,” in Architectural Record (May 1929):

478-484. For more on Egypt, obelisks, and the

connection to the Washington Monument, see

Nnamdi Ellah, African Architecture: Evolution

and Transformation (New York and London:

McGraw-Hill, 1997) and Susan Denyer African

Traditional Architecture (New York: Africana

Publishing Co., 1978). Cf. David Lowenthal,

George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation

(Seattle and London, UK: University of

Washington Press, 2000), 356.

The obelisk as an African architectural form

predates European, Greek, or Persian contact

with Egypt. Its introduction to the United States 

comes though a Western European cultural

context. Obelisks have been removed from Egypt

to the West since Augustinian times. Thirteen of

the remaining twenty-one obelisks in the world

are located in Rome. Only five exist in Egypt, and

the rest are scattered throughout the world, in

London, Paris, Istanbul, and most recently, New

York. In the 1800s, obelisks were considered part

of the Neo-Classical vocabulary. It would be 

safe to presume Mills, a white South Carolinian,

interpreted the form through Western European

culture, and not African. Furthermore, the North

African origins of the architectural form do not

coincide with the West African origins of the

Africans brought to the New World, putting it

outside of the definition of Africanisms given by

Holloway. However, there is no doubt as to the

African origins of obelisks and the continuity of

use as memorial monumental architecture. 

Future research into Africanisms may include

the Washington Monument, and places like 

Opa-Locka, Florida, known for its Moorish

architecture. Built originally for European

Americans, the African American community

has assumed stewardship of the buildings, and

view themselves as best able to maintain its

integrity, due to the cultural connection with

Africa.

2. Daniel C. Littlefield states in Rice and Slaves 

that 40% of enslaved Africans entering South

Carolina during the time rice was a premiere

export crop were from regions of West Africa

that were rice-producing for 1,000 years prior 

to European contact. Growing rice means having

a knowledgeable labor force. As Littlefield states,

“being familiar with a crop is a different matter

from being familiar with the cultivation of a

crop.” Southern Europe had limited rice production at the time, primarily in Italy, not a country

actively involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The

strain of rice present in the Carolinas was consistent with an Asian variety introduced to the New

World by the Portuguese, but the cultivation

techniques used are different from those used in

Asia. The Carolinas never used the transplanting

method popular throughout Asia. 
National Park Service 49

The increased numbers of Africans from what

was known as the Windward Coast corresponds

with a shift from rain-fed cultivation to tidal-fed

cultivation, which proved successful for Carolina

planters. There were geographical and climactic

similarities—sub tropical conditions and floodplains like those in Mali along the Niger River,

Senegal and Gambia near the Senegal River, 

and in Ghana. Judith Carney argues technologies

were transferred from the region to the Carolinas,

such as mortars and pestles for hulling and polishing, and flails and winnowing baskets for 

separating the hulls from the grains. For more

detailed analyses of African rice production in

the United States and the New World, see Peter

H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial

South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono

Rebellion (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

1975); Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity 

and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina

(Urbana and Chicago and Urbana: University

of Illinois, 1991); Carney, Black Rice: The African

Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas

(Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard

University Press, 2001). Cf. Carney, “Rice, Slaves

and Landscapes of Cultural Memory” in Places 

of Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the

American Landscape. Conference Proceedings,

May 9-12, 2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC:

Department of the Interior, National Park

Service, 2001), 43-61.

3. See John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House:

The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel

Hill and London: University of North Carolina

Press, 1993), 43; Abimbola O. Asojo, “Traditional

African Architecture and Its Impact on Place

Making: Case Studies from African and AfricanAmerican Communities,” in Places of Cultural

Memory: African Reflections on the American

Landscape. Conference Proceedings, May 9-12,

2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC: Department

of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001);

Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground:

Archaeology and Early African America,

1650-1800 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1992), xxii-xxiii.

4. The five shotguns are the first of nine built by the

Empire State Investment Company. See Lucy A.

Lawliss, ed., Martin Luther King, Jr. National

Historic Site Cultural Landscape Report: BirthHome Block, (Atlanta, GA: National Park Service,

1995), 16, fn. 21. For more detailed historical

information about the shotguns, the Birth-Home

site and the surrounding neighborhood, see

Cultural Landscape Report, 11-47; National

Register of Historic Places, Martin Luther King,

Jr. Historic District (Boundary Increase), Fulton

County, Georgia. National Register #0000741.

5. The inscription on the maker reads “Here 

lie the graves of four Negro slaves: Quamany,

Prince, Plato, Cato. These men fought in the

Revolutionary War and were freed at its close.

The cemetery is located in the original 94 acre

plot of land which was deeded to them by the

U.S. government when they were given their

freedom.” The town was once named New

Guinea. See James Deetz, In Small Things

Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American 

Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 205-206.

6. Deetz offers that the shape of the jars is consistent with types associated with West African

pottery traditions. Deetz cites no specific area or

group, however Ferguson’s research points at a

Nigerian tradition in colono-ware. Preliminary

research into unofficial documents held by

Parting Ways: the Museum of African-American

and Cape Verdean History, may indicate the

inhabitants were from modern Guinea-Bisssau

via Cape Verde, offering a Caribbean connection

to the U.S. See Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten,

148; Furgeson, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology

and Early African America, 1650-1800, 1-32.

7. Multivalency—how objects take on different

meanings for different social groups—must be

considered in the interpretation of Parting 

Ways. Bottles and jars found at graves throughout the Caribbean and southern America have

been reevaluated with western African funerary

practices in mind, as opposed to being interpreted as refuse or litter. The spirits of the dead 
50 African Reflections on the American Landscape

reside in water, according to Kongo beliefs, and

the vessels—jars and bottles—typically represented water. They would have holes in the

bottom to indicate their association with the

burial mound. Coins and, on occasion, food

offerings have been found at gravesites. In a 

discussion with Deetz, Vlach states the burial

deposits are reminiscent of those found in

modern Ghana. See Deetz, In Small Things

Forgotten, 207-209; see also Thompson’s essay

“Kongo Influences on African American Artistic Culture,” in Holloway, ed., Africanisms in

American Culture (Bloomington and Indianapolis:

Indiana University Press, 1990) 148-184.

8. It is believed by some West African cultures 

that spirits reside in the bush. Some wooded

areas are kept just for these spirits or deities, to

ensure their favor, as in the case of Ogun, the

Yorubá deity responsible for ironmongery.

Similarly, Poro-Sande organizations (male and

female secret societies) held sacred groves. The

groves were used for puberty rites of passage 

for young initiates. The groups, found throughout Upper Guinea (Senegal, Gambia, Sierra

Leone, and modern Liberia) served as social,

political, and organizing polities. Sandra F.

Barnes, “Introduction: The Many Faces of

Ogun,” in Africa’s Ogun, Old World and New

(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1990); Margaret Washington

Creel, “Gullah Attitudes Toward Life and Death,”

in Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American 

Culture (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1990) 76-78.

9. See Barbara J. Heath, Hidden Lives: The

Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s

Poplar Forest (Charlottesville: University Press 

of Virginia, 1999), 50-52. Idem, “Bounded 

Yards and Fluid Boundaries: Landscapes of

Slavery at Poplar Forrest,” in Places of Cultural

Memory: African Reflections on the American

Landscape. Conference Proceedings, May 9-12,

2001, Atlanta, GA (Washington, DC: Department

of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), 69-81.

10. Anne Yentsch discusses the use of storage cellars

for food, and to hide and protect possessions.

Heath cites this discussion in Hidden Lives. See

Anne Yentsch, “A Note on a 19th Century

Description of Below Ground ‘Storage Cellars’

Among the Ibo,” in African-American

Archaeology 4 (1991):3.

11. See Posnansky’s comments in Merrick

Posnansky, “West Africanist Reflections 

on African American Archaeology,” in 

Theresa Singleton, ed., I, Too, Am America:

Archaeological Studies of African-American 

Life (Charlottesville: University Press of

Virginia, 1999), 32.


National Park Service 53

Chapter 4 / Appendix

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National Park Service 55

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56 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Africanisms in National Park Service

Cultural Resources Programs

This list represents a compilation of the

properties documented and/or recognized 

by the National Park Service’s cultural

resources programs (National Register 

of Historic Places, National Historic

Landmarks, Historic American Building

Survey/Historic American Engineering

Record) as possessing Africanisms. It is not

exhaustive, but the list points out that there

are dozens of properties already documented

and recognized as associated with African

cultural heritage. Additional investigation will

likely yield more entries. 

The National Register of Historic Places

The following National Register properties

are associated with Africanisms. This list is

based on the publication, African American

Historic Places, Beth Savage, ed. (Washington,

DC: The Preservation Press, 1994) and the

files of the National Register of Historic

Places. 

Each entry is listed by state, followed by a

brief statement of how it is associated with

Africanisms.

Arkansas 

Hampton Springs Cemetery (Carthage, Dallas

County) contains black sections that illustrate

African antecedents.

Delaware 

Smyrna Historic District (Smyrna, Kent County)

documents the African presence since the

mid-nineteenth century in a small black 

settlement.

Florida

MacFarlane Homestead Historic District

(Coral Gables, Dade County) is a traditionally

African American residential neighborhood

within Coral Gables that is populated with

shotgun houses, ca. 1933 and after, among

other vernacular forms.

Georgia

Ashby Street Shotgun Row Historic District

(Americus, Sumter County) is located in an

African American neighborhood called

McCoy Hill, which contains three shotgun

houses that date from ca. 1908-1912.

Behavior Cemetery (McIntosh County) is an

African American burial ground on Sapelo

Island associated with the settlement of

Raccoon Bluff and Hog Hammock, the sole

African American community still resident

on Sapelo Island. The cemetery is over 100

years old and is likely to yield information 

on African American burial practices. 

Bethlehem Historic District (Augusta,

Richmond County) is an African American

neighborhood of Augusta with ca. 1870s

shotgun and double shotgun houses and

swept yards.

Brightwell Shotgun Row (Athens, Clarke

County) contains six shotgun houses in an

unusual back-to-back formation in the

Newtown section of Athens, a traditionally

African American neighborhood.

Covington Historic District (Newton County)

includes shotgun houses and swept yards 

in the African American neighborhood of

Covington. 
National Park Service 57

Dawson Historic District (Terrell County) 

is an African American neighborhood 

with shotgun houses and swept yards.

Hog Hammock Historic District (McIntosh

County) is listed in the National Register 

of Historic Places for its association with 

traditional cultural properties and Gullah

language and traditions. It is considered 

to be one of the last viable coastal black 

communities in Georgia.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic District

(Atlanta, Fulton County) in Sweet Auburn 

is an African American neighborhood with

shotgun houses, in addition to the King 

birth home.

New Corinth Baptist Church (Americus,

Sumter County) is a 1884 African American

church and cemetery. Burials are in cement

crypts without an overall organization

pattern and could yield information on

African burial practices.

Rocksprings Shotgun Row Historic District

(part of Shotgun Houses of Athens-Clarke

County MPS, Athens, Clarke County) contains

six shotgun houses in a row on Rocksprings

Street, ca. 1925.

Sand Hills Historic District (Augusta,

Richmond County) developed as an African

American residential neighborhood with,

among other forms, shotgun houses and

swept yards.

Indiana

Old Richmond Historic District (Richmond,

Wayne County) was once called “Little

Africa.” It was heart the of Richmond’s 

free black community.

Kentucky

Harrison Historic District (Franklin, Simpson

County) is an African American neighborhood that contains shotgun houses, among

other vernacular forms. 

Smoketown Historic District (Louisville,

Jefferson County) is an African American

neighborhood in Louisville that possesses

shotgun houses, among other vernacular 

residential forms.

Louisiana

Congo Square (New Orleans, Orleans Parish)

is a reflection of African heritage. This was

where Sunday slave dances were held and

African dances and music were performed.

Melrose Plantation (Melrose, Natchitoches

Parish) was owned by a formerly enslaved

woman, Marie Therese Coincoin. It contains

architecture designed by transplanted

Africans for their use. 

Massachusetts

Parting Ways Archeological District

(Plymouth, Plymouth County) was a settlement of emancipated Africans during the 

late eighteenth century and includes remains

of housing types and gravesites that have

West African roots. 

Prince Hall Mystic Cemetery (Arlington,

Middlesex County) is the last extant cemetery

associated with Prince Hall Masons. Prince

Hall Masons was formed in 1775 in Boston as

the first African American Masonic group in

the United States. The cemetery was dedicated in 1868 and may yield archeological

information on African burial practices and

how African Americans influenced Masonic

burial practices.

Mississippi 

Holy Family Catholic Church Historic District

(Natchez, Adams County) is an African

American neighborhood with shotgun

houses, among other vernacular and high

style forms. 

Woodlawn Historic District (Natchez, Adams

County) is an African American neighborhood with shotgun houses. 
58 African Reflections on the American Landscape

New Jersey 

Gethsemane Cemetery (Little Ferry, Bergen

County) was founded in 1860 for Hackensack’s

African American community. Archeological

studies may yield information on African and

African American burial practices.

New York 

[The] African-American Cemetery

(Montgomery, Orange County) is a slave 

and African American cemetery.

Mount Moor African-American Cemetery

(Clarkstown, Rockland County) is an African

American cemetery that dates to the midnineteenth century.

Tobias C. Ten Eyck House and Cemeteries

(Coeymans, Albany County) is a plantation

with ca. 1790 slave cemetery, subsequently

used by the local African American 

population. 

North Carolina

Ayden Historic District (Ayden, Pitt County)

includes shotgun houses in community’s

black neighborhoods. 

Puerto Rico 

Manati Municipality Hacienda Azucarera 

La Esperanza (Manati, Manati Municipality)

was Puerto Rico’s wealthiest sugar plantation.

Today, it is an archeological site that illustrates the life and culture of aboriginal 

people and its colonization and settlement 

by people of European and African decent.

South Carolina 

Chicora Wood Plantation (Georgetown 

vicinity, Georgetown County) was a riceproducing plantation during South Carolina’s

rice boom. It served as the home plantation

for R.F.W. Allston’s rice producing complex,

producing 1.5 million pounds yearly of rice 

by 1860. The plantation contains outbuildings

fashioned according to African cultural practices and earthworks for a system of rice

planting of West African origin.

Daufuskie Island Historic District (Hilton

Head, Beaufort County) is one of southernmost Sea Islands, accessible only by boat. 

It is significant for its first settlement 1805-

1842 and extant tabby slave huts. The second

settlement occurred during Reconstruction. 

It is significant for its home to “shouts” 

with African traditional antecedents and

Maryfield Cemetery with African traditional

burial practices.

Eddings Point Community Praise House

(Frogmore, Beaufort County) is the central

place in religious and social lives of black 

Sea Islanders. It includes buildings characteristic of the “vernacular praise house 

architectural form” and home to shouts.

Mary Jenkins Community Praise House

(Frogmore, Beaufort County) is a place 

where shouts were held.

Trapp and Chandler Pottery Site (Kirksey,

Greenwood County) is an antebellum pottery

factory employing free and enslaved African

Americans who influenced manufacturing

processes. 

Tennessee 

Bailey Graveyard (Commerce vicinity, Wilson

County) is a mid-nineteenth and twentieth

century cemetery with African American

burials that could yield information on

African burial practices.

Texas

Freedmen’s Town Historic District (Houston,

Harris County) includes a number of shotgun

houses and is known as the “Mother Ward

for Black Houston.”

Queen City Heights Historic District (Dallas,

Dallas County) includes a ca. 1915-45 residential neighborhood with shotgun houses.
National Park Service 59

Wyatt Street Shotgun House Historic District

(Waxahachie, Ellis County) is a row of small,

single-family dwellings dating from ca. 1918 

in Waxahachie’s historically black neighborhood. The house plans are attributed to

African roots. 

Virgin Islands

Christiansted Historic District (Christiansted, 

St. Croix) is the site of the earliest colonization of U.S. Virgin Islands where enslaved

Africans and free blacks played a major role

in the design and construction of buildings

and structures in the area. It includes the

“Free Gut” residential community for free

African Americans.

Virginia 

Holbrook-Ross Street Historic District

(Danville Independent City) is a residential

area that includes shotgun houses. 

Zion Poplars Baptist Church (Gloucester,

Gloucester County) is an African American

church and cemetery built by former

enslaved Africans in 1894. The location 

of the church may have been chosen based

upon beliefs derived from West African 

religious practices.

National Historic Landmarks

The following National Historic Landmark

properties are associated with Africanisms.

Each entry is listed by state and includes 

a brief statement of what makes it an

Africanism.

New York

[The] African Burial Ground (New York, New

York County) is an urban burial ground used

ca. 1712-1785 and contains remains of some 

of the earliest generations of Africans in

America. It has potential to yield important

information about African Americans in the

eighteenth century.

South Carolina

[The] Stono River Slave Rebellion Site

(Rantowles, Charleston County) is the location of one of the most serious slave insurrections in U.S. history. Reports indicate the

rebels were led by enslaved Angolans and

adhered to Central African martial practices,

due possibly to Central African kinship

bonds.

The Historic American Buildings Survey

The following Historic American Buildings

Survey properties are associated with

Africanisms.

Each entry is listed by state and includes 

a brief statement of what makes it an

Africanism.

District of Columbia

Mt. Zion United Methodist Church

(Georgetown, District of Columbia) was

formed in 1814. Known as the “Ark” or the

“Meeting House,” the church had free and

enslaved members who would have been

only one or two generations removed from

Africa. References in the records of the

church to enslaved Africans having “gone

home” (euphemism for death) is consistent

with Igbo ideology. The Igbo, from presentday Nigeria, were the predominant enslaved

ethnic group in the Chesapeake area. 

Kentucky

Kuntz Shotgun House (Louisville, Jefferson

County) was built between 1889 and 1891 and

is representative of a two-story “camelback”

style shotgun, a more recent modification of

the vernacular architectural style. 

Louisiana

Melrose Plantation (Melrose, Natchitoches

Parish) was owned by a formerly enslaved

woman, Marie Therese Coincoin. It contains

buildings designed by transplanted Africans

for their use. (Property is listed in the

National Register of Historic Places) 
60 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Massachusetts

African Baptist Society Church (Nantucket,

Nantucket County) is the oldest remaining

building in Nantucket associated with people

from West Africa. The building is located 

in a neighborhood called Newtown, on land 

purchased by the African Baptist Society

in 1826 for $10.50. The section of Newtown

where the church resides formerly was

known as “Guinea.”

Virginia

Poplar Forest (Forest vicinity, Bedford

County) is Thomas Jefferson’s other major

land holding in Virginia, aside from

Monticello. It holds archeological information that documents the continuation 

of African dietary, agricultural, and mercantile practices among slave population. The

majority of the slave population was no more 

than one or two generations removed from

African soil. (Property is designated as a

National Historic Landmark)

The Historic American Engineering Record

The following Historic American

Engineering Record property is associated

with Africanisms.

The entry is listed by state and includes a

brief statement of what makes it an

Africanism.

Louisiana

Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation, Shotgun

Quarters (Thibodaux, LaFourche Parish)

were built as a part of the larger plantation.

There are 26 shotgun houses in total, which

represent vernacular architecture with 

African origins. (Property is listed in the

National Register of Historic Places.)
National Park Service 61

Index

A

academic scholarship, 3-5, 9, 40

African-American Cemetery (New York), 58

African Baptist Society Church (Massachusetts), 

29-30, 60

African Burial Ground Complex (New York), 2, 16,

27-28, 59

African School. See African Baptist Society Church

Africanisms, defined, 2

“Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African

Influenced Place Names in the USA”, 33-34

agricultural practices and influences, 13, 26, 30-31, 

41-43, 58

archeological sites, 14, 15-16, 27, 32-33, 44-45, 46-47

architecture. See housing types and patterns

Ashby Street Shotgun Row Historic District

(Georgia), 56

Avery Research Center for African American

History and Culture, 40

Ayden Historic District (North Carolina), 58

B

Bailey Graveyard (Tennessee), 58

banners, 28

Behavior Cemetery (Georgia), 56

Bethlehem Historic District (Georgia), 56

Black exodusters, 11

Black Studies programs, 5

Blassingame, John, 5

blended culture. See creolization

Brathwaite, Edward Kamau, 3

Brightwell Shotgun Row (Georgia), 56

Brown, Kenneth L., 32-33

brush arbors, 45

burial practices, 14, 15-16, 27-28, 44-45, 57, 58

bush harbors, 45

C

caille, 12, 25

Carney, Judith, 42

cemeteries, 14, 15-16, 27-28, 44-45, 56, 57, 58

ceremonies, 15-16, 27, 45. See also religious beliefs

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site 

(South Carolina), 40

Chicora Wood Plantation (South Carolina), 41-43, 58

Christianity, African American, 15, 45-46

Christiansted Historic District (Virgin Islands), 

26, 59

churches, 15, 29-30, 45-46, 57, 59, 60

colono-ware, 5, 14, 32, 44

Congo Square (Louisiana), 2, 24, 57

cosmograms, 15-16, 32-33

cosmology, 15

Covington Historic District (Georgia), 56

creole quarters, double, 30-31

creolization, 3, 14, 33, 34

culinary influences, 13-14

cultural syncretism, 5, 9, 12

Curtin, Philip D., 5

D

dance, 15, 24, 45, 57

Daufuskie Island Historic District 

(South Carolina), 58

Dawson Historic District (Georgia), 57

Deetz, James, 3

detached kitchens, 42-43

diaspora, African, 6-7, 8, 9-12

dietary practices and patterns, 13-14, 27, 42-43, 47

dispersion patterns, slaves, 6-7, 39

documenting resources, 23, 29, 30

Donnan, Elizabeth, 4

E

Eddings Point Community Praise House 

(South Carolina), 58

F

Fairbanks, Charles, 5

Ferguson, Leland, 5

foodways, 13-14, 42-43

Frazier, E. Franklin, 3

“Free Gut”, 26, 59

Freedmen’s Town Historic District (Texas), 58

Frogmore Manor Plantation (South Carolina), 32

funerary practices, 14, 15-16, 27-28, 44-45, 57, 58
62 African Reflections on the American Landscape

G

Genovese, Eugene, 5

Georgia Writers’ Project (WPA), 4

Gethsemane Cemetery (New Jersey), 58

gravestones and markers, 14, 15-16, 44, 45

Great Migrations of the 1920s, 12

“Guinea”, 29

Gullah/Geechee culture, 4, 14, 40-41, 57

Gundaker, Grey, 3

H

HABS. See Historic American Buildings Survey

HAER. See Historic American Engineering Record

Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo, 9

Hampton Springs Cemetery (Arkansas), 56

Harris, Joseph E., 6-7, 8, 9

Harrison Historic District (Kentucky), 57

Heath, Barbara, 46

Herskovits, Melville J., 3

Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), 

29-30, 59-60

Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), 

30-31, 60

Historic District Development Corporation

(Atlanta), 43-44

historic districts. See specific resource names

Hog Hammock Historic District (Georgia), 57

Holbrook-Ross Street Historic District (Virginia), 59

Holloway, Joseph E., 9

Holy Family Catholic Church Historic District

(Mississippi), 57

housing types and patterns, 12, 14, 25-26, 30-31, 

43-44, 58

Hurston, Zora Neale, 4

I

identifying resources, 23, 24

Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments 

of 1965, 12

indigo industry, 13

interpretation and management of historic sites, 

14, 39-47

“Interwoven Traditions: Archaeology of the

Conjurer’s Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor

Plantations”, 32-33

J

Jefferson, Thomas, 46, 60

Jordan Plantation (Texas), 32

K

Kashif, Annette, 33-34

Kingsley Plantation (Florida), 5, 40

kitchens, detached, 42-43

Kuntz Shotgun House (Kentucky), 59

L

Lancaster, Clay, 30

language and linguistics patterns and influences, 

4, 14, 33-34, 40

Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation (Louisiana), 30-31, 60

Levine, Lawrence, 5

Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource

Study, 40

M

MacFarlane Homestead Historic District 

(Florida), 56

management and interpretation of historic sites, 

14, 39-47

Manati Municipality Hacienda Azucarera 

La Esperanza (Puerto Rico), 58

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

(Georgia), 43-44, 57

Mary Jenkins Community Praise House 

(South Carolina), 58

medicinal practices, 14, 47

Melrose Plantation (Louisiana), 57, 59

migration patterns, 6-8, 9, 11-12, 25-26, 39

Mintz, Sidney, 5

Mount Moor African-American Cemetery

(New York), 58

Mount Olivet Cemetery (District of Columbia), 14

Mt. Zion United Methodist Church 

(District of Columbia), 59

music, 2, 15, 24, 45

N

National Historic Landmarks, 27-28, 59

National Park Service (NPS) cultural 

resources programs

criteria for inclusion, 23

Low Country Gullah Culture Special 

Resource Study, 40-41
National Park Service 63

Places of Cultural Memory Conference, 31-43

Teaching With Historic Places, 40

See also Historic American Building Survey, 

Historic American Engineering Survey, 

National Historic Landmarks, 

National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places, 24-26, 56-59

New Corinth Baptist Church (Georgia), 57

O

Old Richmond Historic District (Indiana), 57

P

Parting Ways Archeological District

(Massachusetts), 44-45, 57

Parting Ways (Museum), 45

pen-style, double, house, 30-31

Penn Center, 40

pharmacopoeia, 14, 47

place-names, 14, 33-34, 45

place, significance of, 14-16

Places of Cultural Memory Conference, 31-34, 41

Poplar Forest Archeological Research (Virginia), 

14, 46-47, 60

population distribution,1830 census, 1

porches, 14

Posnansky, Merrick, 47

Price, Richard, 5

Prince Hall Mystic Cemetery (Massachusetts), 57

Q

Queen City Heights Historic District (Texas), 58

R

Rawick, George, 4

religious beliefs and practices, 12, 15-16, 27, 32-33, 

45-46, 58

return migration to Africa, 8, 12

rice industry, 13, 41-43, 58

rituals, 15-16, 27, 45

Rocksprings Shotgun Row Historic District

(Georgia), 57

S

Sand Hills Historic District (Georgia), 57

Savage, Beth, 56

scholarship, Africanisms, 3-5, 9, 40

settlement patterns, 11-12, 39

shotgun houses, 12, 25-26, 31, 43-44, 56-59

Slave Narrative Collection (WPA), 4

slave rebellion, 28

slave trade, 4, 6-7, 10, 11

Smoketown Historic District (Kentucky), 25-26, 57

Smyrna Historic District (Delaware), 56

Snee Farm (South Carolina), 40

Sobel, Mechal, 9

spiritual practices, 15-16

Stampp, Kenneth, 4

Stono River Slave Rebellion Site 

(South Carolina), 28, 59

sugar production, 26, 30-31, 58

Sweet Auburn District (Georgia), 43-44

swept yards, 15

T

tabby slave huts, 58

Teaching With Historic Places (NPS Program), 41-43

Thompson, Robert Farris, 5

Tobias C. Ten Eyck House and Cemeteries 

(New York), 58

toponyms, 14, 33-34, 45

Trapp and Chandler Pottery Site 

(South Carolina), 58

Treaty of 1873, 7

Turner, Lorenzo Dow, 4

V

vernacular architecture. See housing types 

and patterns

Vlach, John, 9

W

“When Rice Was King” (Teaching With 

Historic Places), 41-42

Wood, Peter, 28

Woodlawn Historic District (Mississippi), 57

Works Progress Administration (WPA), 4

Wyatt Street Shotgun House Historic District

(Texas), 58

Y

yards, swept, 15

Z

Zion Poplars Baptist Church (Virginia), 45-46, 59
64 African Reflections on the American Landscape

Illustrations and Tables

Illustration 1, 1830 Census, 1

Illustration 2, Africanisms: African fiddle and

American banjo, 2

Illustration 3, Former slave Bob Lemmons, 4

Illustration 4, Colono-ware bowl, 5

Illustration 5, The African Diaspora Map – I, 6-7

Illustration 5a, The African Diaspora Map – II, 8

Table 1, Countries in West and Central Africa

Affected by the Atlantic Slave Trade, 10

Table 1a, Historical Regional Names for Areas of

West and Central Africa, and their Coordinating

Countries, 10

Illustration 6, Areas of rice cultivation in West 

Africa, 13

Illustration 7, West African beliefs: a burial mound 

in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Washington, DC, 14

Illustration 8, African cosmology: a sharecropper’s

grave in Hale County, AL, 15

Illustration 9, Caroline Atwater sweeping her yard 

in 1939, 15

Illustration 10, Congo Square, New Orleans, LA, 24

Illustration 11, Shotgun houses on E. Breckenridge

Street, Louisville, KY, 25

Illustration 11a, Double shotgun houses on 

S. Hancock Street, Smoketown Historic 

District, Louisville, KY, 25

Illustration 12, Hipped roof houses, Christiansted

Historic District, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, 26

Illustration 13, Headstones and cobbles, African

Burial Ground, New York, NY, 27

Illustration 13a, Tack-decorated coffin lid, African

Burial Ground, New York, NY, 27

Illustration 14, South elevation drawing, African

Baptist Society Church, Nantucket, MA, 29

Illustration 14a, African Baptist Society Church,

Nantucket, MA, 29

Illustration 15, Orthographic architectural drawing 

of double Creole quarters, 30

Illustration 15a, Creole quarters, Laurel Valley Sugar

Plantation, Thibodaux, LA, 30

Illustration 16, Shotgun houses, Laurel Valley Sugar

Plantation, Thibodaux, LA, 31

Illustration 17, Rice producing areas around Chicora

Wood Plantation, Georgetown County, SC, 41

Illustration 18, Winnowing house and rice mill,

Chicora Wood Plantation, Georgetown County,

SC, 42

Illustration 19, Kitchen separated from the house,

Chicora Wood Plantation, Georgetown County,

SC, 42

Illustration 20, Double shotgun house, Martin

Luther King, Jr. Historic District, Atlanta, GA, 43

Illustration 21, Grave marker, Parting Ways

Archeological District, Plymouth, MA, 44

Illustration 21a, Excavation at the Plato Turner home,

Parting Ways Archeological District, Plymouth,

MA, 44

Illustration 22, A poplar grove serving as shelter and

place of worship, Zion Poplars Baptist Church,

near Glouster, VA, 46

Illustration 22a, Zion Poplars Baptist Church, near

Glouster, VA, 46