We have to remember what it was like in Africa, even if we're Americans now,' she tells us. The site is aptly located between the green lawns and stone buildings of the University of Chicago and the quiet desperation of a black neighborhood that burned after Martin Luther King's assassination and still hasn't been rebuilt. During one meeting, members of the association argue over the specifics of a financial restructuring plan and then debate the best way to teach their children traditional tribal dances. Members of the Ewe tribe, like many other Ghanaians in the United States, represent an American success story. Drawing on African traditions and determined efforts at self-improvement, Ewe living in Chicago have fused traditional African virtues with American ones.
Members are intensely community oriented, upwardly mobile, hard working, and entrepreneurial.
They have little use for big government. They offer few kind words for Afrocentrism and want little to do with most black Americans. Although nobody keeps track of exact numbers, members estimate there are roughly 300 Ewe adults in the Chicago area, and perhaps 200 minor children. In a sprawling metropolis where machine politics never quite died, the tribal councils act a little like the old Democratic party ward organizations that still exist in some parts of Chicago. But rather than delivering votes to a boss downtown the tribal organizations keep a sense of community alive among immigrants.