Download Free The African Presence In Black America Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The African Presence In Black America and write the review.

Accepting the basic premise that Africa is the ancestral homeland of black Americans raises questions as to how much, if any, of African cultural heritage remains within that community. Some claim that the severity of the plantation system and the acculturation process of the slaves could not have left any Africanism in the New World, while others argue that African cultural heritage can still be seen today in many aspects of American life and thought. This volume revisits the debate, examining the ways in which this alleged cultural heritage manifests itself.
This book is comprised of the proceedings of the First and Only Conference on Negritude ever held in the Americas. The Conference which gathered intellectuals of African descent from various countries of the new continent was held in Miami in 1987 around the theme "Negritude, Ethnicity and Afro Cultures in the Americas." The towering presence of Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, side by side on a public forum for the first and, most likely, the last time since The First World Festival of Negro Arts, hosted by Senegal in 1966, bestowed a solemn summit quality on this impressive gathering. The untimely death of Cheikh Anta Diop, the scientist , Alioune Diop, the strategist, Léon Damas, the uncompromisingly anti-colonialist writer deprived the Conference participants of their physical presence, but their spirit hovered over the entire city during these memorable three days. Since the conference, death also robbed the Black World of the brilliant minds of Lelia Gonzalez, St. Clair Drake and Alex Haley who participated. Men of letters and political pioneers, Césaire and Senghor have ineradicably marked world history. At the close of this millenium, their incomparable intellectual contribution has come to symbolize the divergent continuity of the two powerful currents of thought launched, at the beginning of this century, by Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Jean Price Mars, Anténor Firmin (and many less known African men and women thinkers) in what some have termed the Great Debate.
Blending a vivid narrative with more than 150 images of artwork, Painter offers a history--from before slavery to today's hip-hop culture--written for a new generation.
An introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. The diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration are all examined to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture.
"The African presence in ancient America"--Jacket subtitle.
"This entrancing book looks at [the clash of class and caste within the black community] . . . . An important reexamination of African American history." —Choice The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago showed the world that America had come of age. Dreaming that they could participate fully as citizens, African Americans flocked to the fair by the thousands. "All the World Is Here!" examines why they came and the ways in which they took part in the Exposition. Their expectations varied. Well-educated, highly assimilated African Americans sought not just representation but also membership at the highest level of decision making and planning. They wanted to participate fully in all intellectual and cultural events. Instead, they were given only token roles and used as window dressing. Their stories of pathos and joy, disappointment and hope, are part of the lost history of "White City." Frederick Douglass, who embodied the dream that inclusion within the American mainstream was possible, would never forget America's World's Fair snub.
The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas, an interdisciplinary collection of essays by scholars and writers whose disciplines include but are not limited to literature, languages, linguistics, history, sociology and psychology, reflects the complexity and diversity of the historical and cultural legacy of the African diasporic reality and provides a critical perspective for examining the persistence of African cultural traditions in the Americas. These writers and scholars explore the ways in which people connected by moments in history and the common legacies of racism, classism, colonialism and imperialism, have used literature, music, dance, religion and cultural rites and rituals to survive and resist. The poetry and prose of Afro-Cuban icon, Nicolás Guillén and Afro-American literary legend, Gwendolyn Brooks provide a context for exploring these themes. Guillén and Brooks symbolize the triumph of the human spirit and the “Africanisms” present amongst people who share a common legacy originating in Africa. Building on the themes in the work of these poets, the scholars and writers in The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas examine the nature, persistence and impact of these themes in literature, language, music, dance and religion. The scholarship generated in this collection has implications for the ways in which we read, study and teach cultural studies, literature, history, language, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies and Africana Studies.
12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. While just over 11.0 million survived the arduous journey, only about 450,000 of them arrived in the United States. The rest-over ten and a half million-were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. This astonishing fact changes our entire picture of the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, and of its lasting cultural impact. These millions of Africans created new and vibrant cultures, magnificently compelling syntheses of various African, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish influences. Despite their great numbers, the cultural and social worlds that they created remain largely unknown to most Americans, except for certain popular, cross-over musical forms. So Henry Louis Gates, Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries of their acknowledge-or deny-their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries-Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru-through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism that has sometimes sought to keep the black cultural presence from view.
Collection of essays tracing the historical evolution of African American experiences, from the dawn of Reconstruction onward, through the perspectives of sociology, political science, law, economics, education and psychology. As a whole, the book is a systematic study of the gap between promise and performance of African Americans since 1865. Over the course of thirty-four chapters, contributors present a portrait of the particular hurdles faced by African Americans and the distinctive contributions African Americans have made to the development of U.S. institutions and culture. --From publisher description.