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.