The Importance Of Saving And Sharing The Heritage Of Our African Ancestors

For what little history is taught about Africans institutionally and publically presently, it used as a tool to disempower people of African descent. To start present interpretations of African history denies the feats and accomplishments done by Africans as well as the roots from which all people come from. Presently history is made for people

World War II brought several changes to the world and specifically America. It not only changed the world map but also set impact on the behaviours. WWII played a major role in building turning points during different periods. Before WWII, African Americans were not offered equal rights in the community. It was considered an impossible thing that African could ever do a white collar or even a blue collar job. However, soon after the WWII, there came a turning point in the lives of African American with the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

From the 1500s to the 1700s, African blacks, mainly from the area of West Africa (today's Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Dahomey, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon) were shipped as slaves to North America, Brazil, and the West Indies. For them, local and tribal differences, and even varying cultural backgrounds, soon melded into one common concern for the suffering they all endured. Music, songs, and dances as well as remembered traditional food, helped not only to uplift them but also quite unintentionally added immeasurably to the culture around them. In the approximately 300 years that blacks have made their homes in North America, the West Indies, and Brazil, their highly honed art

Africans have, since the early settlement of America, has had a great influence in the nation’s growth. These contributions to the United States from enslaved Africans have been greatly portrayed in American culture. Varying from cuisine, to song and dance are not only portrayed today but it has a deep-rooted impact throughout the United States. During the middle passage, enslaved Africans were forced to abandon their everyday lives, their families and their homes and forced to adapt to a new lifestyle they knew nothing of. However, upon arrival into the New World, due to their prior knowledge and wisdom from back home, they were able to quickly adapt and custom themselves to this new lifestyle in order to survive with the hope of potentially one day returning back to Africa. Unfortunately, African contributions to the culture of the United States has received little to no recognition and it has been taken credit for by Europeans and Whites since the early establishment of the United States.

It is essential to note that the term African Diaspora does not describe any single event, group of people or set of customs. It represents a current state of being for many citizens of the world and provides context for understanding the social structures and intercultural relationships of the world we live in today. Collin Palmer provides great insight into the context of diaspora. He writes that there have been several movements, massive migrations of people, throughout history. There is no single “diasporic movement or monolithic diasporic community” to be studied, but rather a confluence of people, events and ideologies that span thousands of years, across every continent. Each period of movement, each diasporic stream, happened for different reasons. Palmer’s approach to the African Diaspora begins with a look nearly 100,000 years into the past. He identifies five major streams, with the first African diaspora that occurred as a

In the aftermath of the Civil War African Americans had gained a lot of rights politically but due to the little progress gained in the social and economic spheres their situation did not change much. So despite small gains socially, economically, and politically the lives of African Americans were not enhanced.

What had started out as just a distant European conflict soon became a revolutionary event for the political, social, and economic future of black people. The war greatly impacted all African Americans. A lot of things occurred during the war that made this time period one of the most dynamic periods of the African American experience like for example, migration, military service, racial violence, and political protest. African Americans definitely tested the boundaries of the American democracy, by demanding their rights as American citizens, and also asserted their humanity in both subtle and dramatic ways.

After the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction there were many political, social and economic changes which continued to affect the society. The role of African Americans in society changed after the abolishment of slavery. This new freedom and opportunities were not much greater than before when slavery existed. Despite reconstruction efforts, African Americans faced discrimination. Society as a whole was altered extensively at this time.

Survival was a key element for the lives of African Americans during slavery. Its guiding principle was the ability to endure the oppression to secure the continuation of the race. Slaves recognized that adaptation to the new environment and culture in the New World would be the main factor for their ability to stay alive. They began this adaptation process, called survival faith, by creating a sub-culture which merged traditional African practices with those the slaves were forced to adopt from their masters. The African slaves brought with them all of their African traditions but were suppressed from utilizing them in their original fashion. Therefore, they merged remnants of African cultures including ¡§the great Bantu tribes from Sierra Leone to South Africa; the Sudanese, straight across the center of the continent, from the Atlantic to the Valley of the Nile; the Nilotic Negroes and the black and brown Hamites, allied with Egypt; the tribes of the great lakes; the Pygmies and the Hottentots; and in addition to these, distinct traces of both Berber and Arab¡¨ (DuBois, 3) with those remnants of European and Native American cultures. This new culture was comprised of dance, rhythmic music, folk traditions and values, religious beliefs,

Despite what is commonly assumed, specific African traditions and beliefs were not merely transferred from the continent to the Americas. Rather, African American communities took on African customs and incorporated them into their own distinct worldview, and these new African American customs were even transferred back to the Continent. The Atlantic served as a passageway that did moved more than human bodies, but also the traditions that those bodies carried with them. Evidence for this phenomenon is found through both anecdotal stories from the Lowcountry as well as through anthropological findings on the way material objects were understood and used.

Melville Herskovits, the author of The Myth of Negro Past, spoke of many cultural characteristics shared between Africans in his book. His main goal was to tackle the myth of the past of African Americans, which is that we have no past at all. Herskovits uses this book to go into detail about the African traditions that have survived the years. The most prominent African cultural aspects that have endured time are evident in African American family life, as well as in marriage traditions seen in the New World.

53. Gutman convincingly argues that the stability of the Black family encouraged the transmission of -and also was cruicial in sustaining- the Black heritage of folklore, music and religious expression from one generation to another, a heritage that slaves were continuingly fashioning out of their African and American ecperiences.

The beginning of slavery in the Caribbean can be traced back to the emergence of piracy in the 16th and 17th centuries. This eventually led to the promotion of slave trading and sugar plantations. While enslaved on the sugar plantations, slaves were treated very poorly. Plantation owners treated their slaves so poorly that most were undernourished and diseased. Slaves were even forced to work on their "spare" time to provide for their own needs. Needless to say, slaves encountered cruel punishment that we can’t even comprehend. The slaves however, continually resisted white supremacy causing much tension between the two social classes. Despite this, a new social class was emerging, the free coloureds. This