Sierra Leonean Americans

Sierra Leonean Americansare an ethnic group ofAmericansof full or partialSierra Leoneanancestry. This includesSierra Leone Creoleswhose ancestors  wereAfrican AmericanBlack Loyalistsfreed after fighting on the side of the British during theAmerican Revolutionary War.Some African Americans trace their roots to indigenous enslaved Sierra Leoneans exported to the United States between the 18th and early 19th century. In particular, theGullah peopleof partial Sierra Leonean ancestry, fled their owners and settled in parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and theSea Islands, where they still retain their cultural heritage. The first wave ofSierra Leoneansto theUnited States, after the slavery period, was after theSierra Leone Civil Warin the 1990s and early 2000s.
According to theAmerican Community Survey, there are 34,161 Sierra Leonean immigrants living in the United States.
The first people from present Sierra Leone who emigrated to the United States were slaves imported in this country between the 18th and 19th centuries. The first slaves from Sierra Leone arrived to the United States are some of theGullahancestries, or (inGeorgia) Geechee, which were sent fromAfricaor since the Caribbean, particularlyBarbados, to serve as free labor for the cultivation of rice, whose area of cultivation was the southeast coast of the modern United States. Indeed, many slavers employed slaves from the West African coasts because their great ability to work in the rice plantations.The Sierra Leonean slaves belonged to peoples such as theMendes,Temnes,Vai,Loko,  theMandingo(also known asMandinka),SherbroandLimbapeopleand some of them were Muslims (Mandinka). Slaves from Sierra Leone made up 24% of the slaves arriving imported to these place.Most of the slaves of Sierra Leone were imported to southeast, mainly toSouth Carolina(where 70% of those slaves arrived.  More than 18,300 slave of modern-day Sierra Leona arrived in South Carolina, settling in places such asSaint Helena Island) andGeorgia(where 15% of them arrived)  There were more of 3,900 slaves from this region, the majority of the slaves of the colony), followed, over long distances, mainly byVirginia,MarylandandFlorida(those places had in total more than 11% in total of the slaves from Sierra Leone in the present U.S., having between 900 and 1,000 of those slaves depending on the American state). Many of these slaves hailed fromBunce Islandin theSierra Leone River.
Moreover, between 1776 and 1785, during theAmerican Revolution, many Gullah of Sierra Leoneans origin fled from the United States and emigrated toNova Scotia,Canada, after the abolition of slavery in this country.Subsequently, in 1787 the British helped 400 freed slaves from the United States, Nova Scotia (many of them were Gullah), and Great Britain to return to Sierra Leone, where they  founded the colonyFreetownin 1792. The descendants of the settlers are theSierra Leone Creolepeople.
In 1841, a group of slaves that traveled on the shipLa Amistad, whose destination was the island of Cuba, made an uprising against the merchants who drove the ship and seized of it.Most of the slaves were Mende people,but also had people of other tribes such as the Temne. The Amistad arrived to the American coasts and theU.S. Supreme Courtfreed them from slavery. Most of those slaves returned to Africa. Only some of them remained in the United States, acquiring the American citizenship. Slavery was finally abolished after of 1865, after theAmerican Civil War.
They did not emigrate to the United States again until the 1970s, when a new group of Sierra Leoneans, mostly students, arrived to study at American universities. Some received "legal residence status" (or married an American), enabling them to live permanently in the United States. Many became doctors, lawyers and accountants.
The number of Sierra Leoneans who emigrated to the United States grew throughout the 80's due to the majority poverty and political problems suffered by the Sierra Leonean population. Many of them were students although they also worked to help their familiesor sent them money if they lived in Sierra Leone and encouraged them to emigrate.In addition, although some of the Sierra Leoneans who completed their studies returned to Sierra Leone, other Sierra Leoneans decided to stay in the US and obtain legal residency status.
The 1990 American Census showed that 4,627 people linked your origins with Sierra Leone, many of them American citizens. Between 1990 and 1996 another many Sierra Leoneans  migrated to the US, mostly fleeing the civil war. Many of them arrived to the country with visitor, as well as with student visas. During this period, more of 7,150 Sierra Leoneans with a legal status emigrated to the United States. After 1996, many Sierra Leoneans legally  emigrate to the US thanks they had a refugee status and relatives residing in the US. By 1999, about 2,500 Sierra Leoneans had emigrate to the US annually, according to TheUnited Nations High Commission for Refugees.The recent refugees tend to have lower education than earlier migrants, who have University degrees.
Currently, 80% of African Americans who are descendants of enslavesd Africans have some ancestors that came fromBunce Islandin Sierra Leone.Most Sierra Leonean immigrants reside in theBaltimore-Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Other Sierra Leonean communities are settled in suburbs ofAlexandria,Fairfax,Arlington,Falls Church, andWoodbridgeinVirginia, and inLandover,Lanham,Cheverly,Silver Spring, andBethesdainMaryland. There are alsoSierra Leoneancommunities in theBostonandLos Angelesmetropolitan areas, and inNew Jersey,Florida,Pennsylvania,New York,Texas,OregonandOhio.
Most Sierra Leoneans areMuslimsand practitioners of native cultures, but there are also manyChristians. Sierra Leonean Americans communicate in  English, either as a first or second language, due to the British colonial history.  However,Kriois thelingua francaand primary language of communication among diverse groups of Sierra Leoneans living abroadalthough a few still speak tribal  languages reflecting their unique heritage. Many Sierra Leonean residents in the USA work in two or three jobs to reach enough salary to help their families in their country, whilst some others have university degrees. Indeed, while some Sierra Leoneans arrived in theUnited Statesto pursue university studies, some are already holders of degrees fromBritish universitiesor fromFourah Bay CollegeinFreetown. Many Sierra Leoneans residing in the USA incorporate their children to secret organizations of Sierra Leonean origin,which teach them the cultures own of their tribes. Sierra Leonean Americans have also been helped by many formerPeace Corpsvolunteers who worked in Sierra Leone. In the US, many Sierra Leoneans have established relationships (and have even intermarried) with people from other cultures and nationalities, especially with other African  immigrants.
The Gullah, or (inGeorgia) Geechee, are descendants of enslaved Africans that were sent fromAfricaor since the Caribbean, particularlyBarbados, to serve as free labor for the cultivation of rice, whose area of cultivation was the southeast coast of the modern United States, and that still live inSea Islandsand the coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia. Slaves from Sierra Leone made up 24% of the slaves arriving in this place. Many slavers employed slaves from the West African coasts because their great ability to work in the rice plantations. Indeed, most of the slaves that were imported to southeast coast of the United States came from the West African's rice-growing region, established mainly in Sierra Leone, through theBunce Island.
So although the ancestors of the Gullah come from many places on the coast of West Africa, many of the elements that are part of their material culture, food (rice) and crops (indigo) are the same as those held by Sierra Leoneans. Thus, the Gullah have the same types and capacities of textiles, fishing, foodways, folktales, vernacular architecture, music, basket making, net making, language, belief systems, pottery and woodcarving that the Sierra Leoneans.So, Dr. Hair, a British historian, said the "startling" fact that all texts in African Gullah dialect are written in languages spoken in Sierra Leone. Most African texts gathered by historian Turner are belonging to theMende language. But Dr. Cabello also said that an "unusually large proportion" of the four thousand African names and personal loans in the Gullah language come from Sierra Leone. He estimated that twenty-five percent of African names and twenty percent of African vocabulary words came from the  Sierra Leonean languages, principally Mende andVai(one of the Gullah words of origin not Sierra leonean is the same term "Gullah", that may derive fromAngola).
The Gullah/Geechee people speak a language based mainly onSierra Leonean Krio,acreolederiving from English, indigenous West African languages, and other European languages. TheGullah languagealso has varying degrees of influences from African languages such asEwe,Mandinka,Igbo,Twi,Yoruba, andMende.
Although Sierra Leoneans in United States belong to a variety of ethnic and religious groups have been created organizations to help Sierra Leonean community entire. So, the Chicagoland Association of Sierra Leoneans, formed in 1996, is a nonprofit organization to unite Sierra Leoneans in a community, socialize newcomers, and help to Sierra Leoneans living in Chicago and abroad.  Also in 1975 it created one organization named Tegloma ("let's progress" in Mende) in Washington DC, the largest nonprofit, nonpolitical Sierra Leonean organization in the world,  and it help Sierra Leoneans in te world and promoting Mende culture, the culture of the second largest ethnic group in Sierra Leone. There is an organization created in New York on behalf of health care providers that represent nursing. In 2008 the Sierra Leone Nurses Association (SLNA) was started in New York, in honor of the original SLNA started originally in Sierra Leone in 1961. Following the first chapter in the USA started in 2007 in California. And worldwide chapters since. There is a union organization called Union of Sierra Leone organizations in New York (USLO) in 2010.