Saturday, 5 July 2003 - 10:26 PM EDT

9/15. "Inventing Africa." Near the end of yesterday's lecture, I
mentioned a recently-published article by Fred Pearce, on the history
of contemporary symbolizations of the African savannah prior to the
arrival of Europeans: uninhabited by humans, "unspoiled," teeming
with wildebeest, zebra, elephants, lions, etc. -- the model of the
modern African "national park." Pearce proposes that this vision
of "wild" Africa is largely a modern myth.
In the late 19th century, East and Central Africa were, in fact,
heavily populated (by today's measures), and controlled by several
large and thriving cattle-herding civilizations. These societies had
elaborate and rich cultures, well-mounted armies and navies, and were
engaged in robust trade over much of the sub-Saharan region.
In 1887, however, an unsuccessful Italian invasion of Eritrea brought
with it rinderpest, a deadly viral infection specific to cattle. The
virus had originated in central Asia, from which it had periodically
swept through Europe in preceding centuries. By the 1880s, most
European cattle herds had developed limited immunity to rinderpest,
and serious outbreaks of it were relatively rare.
But rinderpest was unknown south of the Sahara before the Italians
brought it to the continent, and no African cattle had resistance to
it. Within 20 years, the virus had spread from the Horn of Africa to
the tip of southern Africa, killing perhaps 90 per cent of cattle in
its wake. Economic and political chaos, war, mass starvation, and
disease quickly followed, resulting in the deaths of as many as two-
thirds of the human population.
The once-florishing pastoralist kingdoms were destroyed by the
pandemic. Most never recovered; few were able to offer more than
token resistance to the European colonial forces which were to enter
the region in the next decade. "Rinderpest served up the continent on
a plate for Europe's 'scramble for Africa,"' Pearce writes.
He observes that conservation movements of the early 20th century
which sought to "preserve" Africa's natural spaces by enclosing the
depopulated savannahs within national parks (where animals might
live "free" of human influence) were, in fact, based on
misunderstandings of the savannah ecology, and the important role
that cattle-herding had played in it for thousands of years before
the pandemic. In this regard, Pearce concludes, "wild" Africa
(monumentalized, for example, in the Serengeti and Masai Mara
national parks) was an "invention" of European and European-
influenced naturalists. They failed to comprehend -- or refused to
recognize -- that a specific technological and political intervention
had produced the very absence of human practice which appeared to
them the evidence of a "natural" state.
The full citation for this article is:
Pearce, Fred. "Inventing Africa." New Scientist 167.2251 (2000): 30-
33.
-- recommended reading. The historical, technological production of
purportedly a-technological or pre-technological spaces will be a
common thread in our discussions this semester.


I found the article on-line at


When Fred Pearce writes: "Before rinderpest arrived, the cattle on
the plains kept the tsetse fly in check by grazing ... very close and
preventing tree seedlings and shrubs from growing more than a
few centimetres high"; you might think he's making a plea for
large scale cattle ranching.

((((I was not sure where to put this article,so I just put it in their section.

Saturday, 5 July 2003 - 11:33 PM EDT

http://www.transafricaforum.org/reports/africanisms_issuebrief1199.pdf.

Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion
Author: Peter H. Wood

Binding: Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Norton, W. W. and Company, Incorporated
Published Date: 04/01/1996
List: USD $14.95
ISBN: 0393314820

Sunday, 6 July 2003 - 12:53 AM EDT

The scholarship of Clyde Ahmad Winters should not always be used as an effective tool for dispeling myths about Africa. His work about about African Aqualitic is solid and scholarly based, but his theory concerning blacks in Early China is dubious.

Sunday, 6 July 2003 - 12:59 AM EDT

SHOTGUN HOMES AND PORCHES
by John H. Lienhard
Click here for audio of Episode 820.
Today, low-cost housing proves to be much more than we first thought. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
We've all seen those elementary houses in poor neighborhoods. They consist of three or four rooms in a row, with a forward-slanting roof over a front porch. John Michael Vlach finds that those old houses tell a very interesting story.
We call them shotgun houses. In the 1930s we decided they must be a regional invention from the Louisiana bayou country. That's where the older ones seemed to be concentrated.
But Vlach looks more closely at old records. He traces the shotgun house to the early 1800s. Then he finds older shotgun houses in the sugar-growing plantation islands -- in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Finally, he finds that same distinctive design in West Africa.
If those were the houses of the poor, they were houses of people forced to be poor. They're an adaptation of homes the slaves had left behind. They're an African technology carried into the new world. But they came by an indirect route.
You see, the American slave trade was far too brutal. We systematically severed slaves from their cultural origins. The shotgun house had to find its way here through the Caribbean.
In 1810 the population of New Orleans was just over 12,000. One third was white, one third was slave. The last third was a population of free blacks, most of whom had come here from Haiti. They brought the shotgun house design with them. And what they made of it was not ghetto housing by any means.
The shotgun house builders in Haiti had written African motifs into their exterior timber framing. Now shotgun houses in New Orleans sprouted American gingerbread trimming. By the mid-19th century, many are positively Victorian in appearance.
When the cost of wood fell during the late 1800s, the shotgun house did indeed become the best way the poor could keep a roof over their heads. But, by then, shotgun houses had added a new element to the American architectural vocabulary.
You see, shotgun houses gave us the southern porch. We didn't previously have porches like that in America. Like the shotgun house itself, southern porches are now all over America.
So the next time you see those rows of small linear houses in poor neighborhoods, consider what you're really seeing. These are the remains of an African technology that reached considerable elegance among people of middle means in the 19th century.
And it's a technology that left an indelible and formative mark on our landscape. It propagated that outward-looking sign of community over America -- the front porch from which we've greeted friends and neighbors ever since.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)

Vlach, J.M., The Shotgun house: An African Architectural Legacy, Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture. (D. Upton and J.M. Vlach, eds.) Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1986, pp. 58-78.
Vlach, J.M., Sources of the Shotgun House: African and Caribbean Antecedents for Afro-American Architecture. Vols. I and II, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Folklore, Indiana University, March, 1975.
Vlach, J.M., Afro-Americans, America's Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups that Built America. The Preservation Press, pp. 43- 47.
I am grateful to Ellen Beasley, architectural historian, and Margaret Culbertson, UH Art and Architecture Librarian, for suggesting the topic, and to M. Culbertson for providing the source material.



Photo by Ellen Beasley
A typical shotgun house in Galveston, Texas



The Engines of Our Ingenuity is Copyright ? 1988-1997 by John H. Lienhard
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi820.htm

Sunday, 6 July 2003 - 1:09 AM EDT

''The scholarship of Clyde Ahmad Winters should not always be used as an effective tool for dispeling myths about Africa. His work about about African Aqualitic is solid and scholarly based, but his theory concerning blacks in Early China is dubious. ''

I agree with you on this position of Clyde Ahmed Winters. The problem with African centered scholars is many time they will tell truths,but will not be taken serious because of carless scholarship. You must document everthing you do with facts to deflect the Eurocentric thinking which prevails. One thing I admire about Cheikh Anta Diop is that he did just this. He documented everyone of his arguments with sound proof.

VanSertima wrote a nice little book called ''Blacks in Science:Ancient and Modern,which checks out with reliable references. Unfortunatley,he was misunderstood about his position of the Olmec civlization. Much of Diop's and VanSertima's data was taken by white European scholars. If we donot document our reserch then we will be ridiculed and strawmaned to death in debates we have.

Sunday, 6 July 2003 - 3:26 AM EDT

I agree with you too. He and Rashidi in a sense dampen Afrocentric scholarship. As for Olmec and China, there is no proof to suggest any African colonization of these areas. Africa itself is the home to numerous black civilizations and I see no reason for anyone to venture out of Africa in the manner they have.

Thursday, 10 July 2003 - 4:44 AM EDT

THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

VOL. IV APRIL, 1891. No. 1

ARITHMETICAL PRODIGIES. E. W. SCRIPTURE, PH. D. (Leipzig). I. A great deal has been said and written about these phenomenal persons in a very uncritical manner; on the one hand they are regarded as almost supernatural beings, while on the other hand no notice has been taken of them scientifically. Nevertheless, we can perhaps gain light on the normal processes of the human mind by a consideration of such exceptional cases. The first object of the present article is to give a short account of these persons themselves, and to furnish for the first time an approximately complete bibliography of the subject. Thereupon the attempt will be made to make such a psychological analysis of their powers as will help in the comprehension of them, and will perhaps furnish more than one hint to the practical instructor in arithmetic. NIKOMACHOS. - Lucian said that he did not know how better to praise a reckoner than by saying that he reckoned like Nikomachos, of Gerasa.1 Whether this refers to the reckoning powers of Nikomachos (about 100 A. D.), or to the famous Introduction to Arithmetic written by him, we are left in doubt. De Morgan inclines to the former opinion,2 Cantor holds the latter.3 The literal translation of the pas- 1Lacianus, Philopatris, "ariqmeeiz wz Nikomacoz." 2Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography v. Nikomachus. 3Cantor, Vorlesunyen uber Geschichte der Mathematik, Leipzig, 1880, I, 363.

- page 2 - sage places Nikomachos undoubtedly among the skillful calculators. AFRICAN SLAVE DEALERS. - Perhaps brought to the front or produced by the necessity of competing with English traders armed with pencil and paper, many of the old-time slave-dealers of Africa seemed to have been ready reckoners, and that, too, for a practical purpose, - a point overlooked by more than one of the later calculators. "It is astonishing with what facility the African brokers reckon up the exchange of European goods for slaves. One of these brokers has perhaps ten slaves to sell, and for each of these he demands ten different articles. He reduces them immediately by the head into bars, coppers, ounces, according to the medium of exchange that prevails in the part of the country in which he resides, and immediately strikes the balance."1 The ship-captains are said to have complained that it became more and more difficult to make good bargains with such sharp arithmeticians. It was also an African who was the first to appear in this role in America. TOM FULLER. - The first hand evidence in regard to Fuller consists of the following: A letter read before the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery by Dr. Rush of Philadelphia, which is published, more or less completely, in three places;2 and the obituary which appeared in the Columbian Centinel.3 On the foundation of these documents several later accounts have been given.4 1[T. Clarkson.] An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African. 2d Ed., London, 1788. (The passage quoted does not appear in the American editions, Fhila., 1788, 1787, 1804). 2American Museum, Vol. V, 62, Phila., 1799. Steadman, Narrative of a five years expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, South America, 2v. 4o, London, 1796, Vol. II, 260. In the French translation, Vol. III, 61. Needles, Historical Memoir of the Penn. Society for the Abolition of Slavery; Phila., 1848, p. 32. 3Columbian Centinel of Boston, Dec. 29, 1790, No. 31 of Vol. XIV. 4For example, Gregoire; An Enquiry concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes, followed with an Account of the Life and Works of Fifteen Negroes and Mulattoes; Translated by D. B. Warden; Brooklyn, 1810. (The translation is from Gregoire's original manuscript.) Brissot de Warville; New Travels in the United States of America, performed in 1788; London, 1792, p. 287; 2d Ed., London, 1794, vol. I, 243; Boston, 1797 (reprint of 1st ed.), p. 158; in the original French edition, vol. II, p. 2. Williams; History of the Negro Race in America; New York, 1883, vol. I, 399. Didot's Nouvelle biographie generale v. Fuller.

Thursday, 10 July 2003 - 4:50 AM EDT

Thomas Fuller
It is highly possible that social influences led Thomas Fuller to become a mathematician. Africans grew up illiterate but were taught math. Math was taught in games they played such as manacala, weaving patterns and stories. Much of the folklore of the time that was passed down has been said to fall under mathematical patterns that followed the position of the stars. Unfortunately, with slavery and the New World growing hand in hand many Africans became good with math by selling of other Africans.
Africans who took part in the profit of slave trade were known to be experts with their accounts. In fact, it was thought that they were better with their finances then Europeans. Thomas Clarkson stated ?that African brokers, on exchange of slaves for European goods, were quick to give an accurate, fair price and strike the balance while the Europeans, on the other hand, were busy making their calculations with their pen and paper?(Ref. 1). Thomas Fuller just as the African brokers was able to do long calculations in his head.
Fuller?s mathematical ability was possibly ingrained early in his youth. However, when sold as a slave at the age of fourteen, in Alexandria, Virginia, he was able to perfect his skills on his own. With his good visualization and ability with numbers, Thomas Fuller was an amazement to all that tried to disprove Africans abilities.
It is amazing to think about the barriers Fuller overcame and how his success fully began to change the way people viewed the mental capacity of African slaves. Had Thomas Fuller had the advantages of an education, there is no telling the limits his abilities would have had. However, it is interesting to note that Fuller is quoted as saying that ?it is best I go not learning; for many learned men be great fools?(Ref 2).
Both his African heritage and the enforced European culture affected Fuller?s life. Forced into slavery at 14, Fuller was unable to control his destiny. It was the thought of most whites, at the time, that blacks were inferior to whites. This idea supported that blacks were best to be thought of as nothing more than servants to whites. Fuller contradicted this idea. Fuller?s calculations threw Europeans off their feet. The idea that a man could calculate large numbers in his mind was unheard of by the pencil and paper orientated Europeans. However, Fuller?s ability was downplayed because of the color of his skin. At the time slavery, racism, and prejudice against blacks were at all time highs. Europeans would never be able to accept the idea that a black man has the same capabilities as them. Many jumped to say that Fuller was a man of many memorized math facts without the ability to figure problems out. Others who did accept his calculations criticized his ability. Rouse Ball wrote, ?although more rapid than Buxton, he was a slow worker as compared with some of those whose doings are described as below?(Ref. 2). The works he described belonged to white men. This shows that Fuller was able to great calculations, but ignored because he was black. Others ignored Fuller because whites thought of him as having an ?abnormal mentality?(Ref. 2) with no ?practical manifestation?(Ref. 2). This means that they thought that Fuller was just one case out of all the blacks who could do this skill and that he was abnormal because of it. Also by saying that it was impractical, they were covering themselves in case it was found that all blacks had the same abilities.
Much of the racial prejudices that Europeans formed about Africans were based on the fact that Africans could not read or write. Fuller was illiterate until his death, but was able to do math. In Africa literacy wasn?t important but the ability to barter was. In Europe it was important to read and write. Therefore, Fuller and other Africans learned what was needed to survive, just as well Europeans did. Unable to see that education is dependent on social standards Europeans blinded by their own standards set out to dominate people who they thought were weaker then them and or did not have the same social standards as them. This not only seen with Africans but also with Native Americans, Indians and others.
Calling Fuller a mathematician and not showing his work would preposterous. On the other hand, it is impossible to show his work since he did his calculations in his head. We can only guess at how he obtained his answers. So what we are showing in our math is what we think a model of his thinking pattern may have been. You cannot prove they are right but you can assume that they are since the answers come out the same as his.
At the age of 80 Fuller was asked to find the amount of seconds in a man?s life that was 70yrs, 17 days and 12 hours old. Astoundingly he answered with precise accuracy in minutes while even including leap years (a total of 17). This is how we would attempt this problem on paper.
First we thought that he would find the amount of leap years.
So,
70yrs/4yrs=17.5
Knowing that every leap year you add a day and that there are 17.5 leap years we know that we have to take into account 17 extra days. We disregard the .5 because that represents that we are still 2 yr. away from the next leap year.
Next, we will break down the number of days, years, hours and minutes to seconds.
365 days * 70 yrs =25,550 days
25,550 days + 17 days + 17 days = 25,584 days
25,584 days * 24 hrs = 614,016 hrs
614,016 hrs + 12 hrs = 614,028 hrs
614,028 hrs * 60 min = 36,841,680 min
36,841,680 min * 60 sec = 2,210,500,800 sec
As seen, the numbers are very large and the thought of having to store these numbers in your head while calculating an answer is scary. To Fuller and other Africans who could not read or write this was just common practice. Fuller, was the first to prove that blacks did have the same capabilities as whites. Fuller may have been extraordinarily brilliant or just someone normal who?s education was different from the standards around him. Either way Fuller is proved to be great from his courage that broke through racial stereotypes and started the first steps towards equality for blacks.
References
1)1st quote: Smith, Steven. 1983. The Great Mental Calculators. New York: Columbia university press.178-180.
2)2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th quote: John Fauvel and Paulus Gerdes. 1990. African Slave and Calculating Prodigy: Bicentnary of the Death of Thomas Fuller. Historia Mathematica 17.141-151.
3) Internet: www.math.bufallo.edu/mad/special/fuller_thomas_1710-1790.html
4) Gerdes, Paulus.1994. On Mathematics in the History of the Sub-Saharan Africa; Historia mathematica 21. 345-376.
Thoughts on references
1)1st quote: Smith, Steven. 1983. The Great Mental Calculators. New York: Columbia university press.178-180.
This references wasn?t very extensive when it came to talking about Fuller?s life and experiences. Also it didn?t really talk about his cultural heritage. This was a good article to show his ability with math. Its main points were on his ability to calculate in his head. It was good because it was backed up by an interview that went on with Fuller.
2)2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th quote: John Fauvel and Paulus Gerdes. 1990. African Slave and Calculating Prodigy: Bicentnary of the Death of Thomas Fuller. Historia Mathematica 17.141-
151.
History Mathematica 17 is the most reliable and well-rounded source found. It covers African mathematical development, what is known of Fuller in his youth, great examples of his mental ability, and mentions the beginning of the break through of minorities and their mental capacity.
3) Internet: www.math.bufallo.edu/mad/special/fuller_thomas_1710-1790.html
This reference was good because it touched on Fuller?s heritage. It gave us an understanding to the education that the Africans followed. It let us know that he wasn?t the only African to do calculations like his. This reference also touched on Fuller?s mathematics lightly.
4) Gerdes, Paulus.1994. On Mathematics in the History of the Sub-Saharan Africa; Historia Mathematica 21. 345-376.
This is an excellent source on the development of African mathematics. Though not much information on Fuller, it allows us to make more accurate assumptions in his mathematical ability might have been obtained
http://www.cs.appstate.edu/~sjg/womenandminoritiesinmath/student/fuller/Fuller.htm

Among the sparse evidence we have John Bardot's 1732 account of the abilities of the inhabitants of Fida (on the coast of Benin):
The Fidasians are so expert in keeping their accounts, that they easily reckon as exact, and as quick by memory, as we can do with pen and ink, though the sum amount to never so many thousands: which very much facilities the trade the Europeans have with them

Saturday, 25 October 2003 - 4:52 PM EDT

Weathering the Storm: An Africanism in America
By Mausiki Scales

On the evening of December 29th, 1993, a very colorfully dressed crowd began to gather at the Hammonds House, an African American art gallery in Atlanta, GA. The event was a celebration of the Kwanza principle Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics). As the evening progressed, poets, singers, community activists and various other speakers spoke about the significance of Ujamaa in the African American community of Atlanta. One of the highlights of the evening were performances by several drummers, including a finale by a Nigerian named Adebici. Adebici played the talking drum for the crowd and lectured briefly on the Yoruba culture of Nigeria.
He spoke of a specific orisha (deity, divinity) named Shango, worshipped since ancient times by many of the African people of Nigeria and surrounding territories. According to Yoruba traditional beliefs, each orisha was charged with his/her responsibilities before departure from heaven. According to tradition, Shango has the responsibility of guiding kingships, producing thunder and lightening, and protecting and developing warriors and drummers. Some of the icons sacred to Shango are drums, thunder stones, shekeres (rattles), various red and white objects and the double headed axe. Adebici commented on the various roles of priests of Shango within Yoruba society. He stated that if an object is stolen from someone, the victim often seeks out a Shango priest. At this stage of the "investigation" the priest publicly announces a grace period for the guilty party to confess their misdeed. According to Abedici and other documented accounts, if the criminal does not acknowledge their transgression within the given time period, they get struck by lightening.
During the summer of 1995, I conducted field research in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi for the "Behind the Veil" Project. I collected oral histories from elderly African Americans in an effort to understand and document Black life in the Jim Crow south. Many of the interviews I conducted in Mississippi were in the Delta region, particularly near the city of Ita Bena. During one of my early interviews an association was made with the Yoruba culture of Nigeria and practices found among African Americans in the Southern US. I spoke with an elder who was in her mid-sixties. She spoke of her life's experiences including a March 16, 1942 storm she survived. While describing the storm she said:
"My grand daddy, he was from Gloston, Mississippi, from down round below Jackson. He had saw storms before, we had never saw them. We had never witnessed no tornado. It just kept thundering, and so about four o' clock we heard a roarin', sound like a train comin'... He always stood an axe...I don't know if you ever heard tell of people use to split clouds with an axe to make them go around, they'll split...if a dark cloud is back this way (gesturing) you stick an axe in the ground, it's a certain way you stick an axe in the ground and that cloud will part."
Later during this interview this elder specified that there was a certain technique to this practice and it was not meant for the unskilled. She noted that this practice was handed down from her grandfather to the next generation. She said, "He taught my mom...my mom could do it but I was scared 'cause you could also bring it (the storm) over too. It's a certain way you have to do it and it works."
This use of the axe to dictate environmental realities echoes the practices of priests of Shango in Nigeria. Other accounts gathered specified that the axe must be double-headed and only some had the "gift" of quelling storms. One informant commented, "you can take a double bit axe and go down and stick it in the ground facing the storm...it'll split the cloud." After hearing numerous accounts of this practice, I recognize this practice as an Africanism, a practice that originated in Africa and survived the brutality of slavery in America.
While collecting oral histories, I also came across an account of this practice in a 19th century newspaper. This account came from the New Orleans Times Democrat, August 5, 1888. In the midst of a thunderstorm Tantes Dolores eagerly searched her home for something. Unfulfilled, she rushed to the yard and according to the article:
"Hither and tither she ran in rapid quest, until at last she stumbled upon the object of her search, no less a thing than an axe for chopping wood...a bright expression of joy irradiated her face."
Grabbing the axe and raising it over her head, "she made pass after pass in the face of the rushing current, as if chopping some invisible thing in the rain." When the winds suddenly stopped she returned to the house victorious, commenting that this practice had never failed if she " just got their in time enough." This practice is noted in a collection of folklore concerning the people of New Orleans called Gumbo ya-ya. In Gumbo ya-ya, Puckett notes:
"...foreign to the European thought is the Southern Negro custom of going out into the yard and chopping the ground with an ax when a storm threatens. This is suppose to "cut de storm in two" and so stop it. Others stick a spade in the ground to split the cloud, or simply place an ax in the corner of the house."
The custom of using an axe to stop thunderstorms, split storm clouds or perform other practices of weather control is very significant. This rite presumably can be traced to African origins.
The religious traditions of Africa are pragmatic in that they adapt to the situations as the necessity to do so emerges. Adherents of African traditional religions are not bound by a single prophet or authority and in times of extreme danger or trouble; the spiritual activities meet the needs of the people. According to Anthony C.F. Wallace, author of "African Religion in the Americas:"
"Every person in a society maintains a mental image of that society and its culture. His conception of the total social complex, involving his own person and the object of his environment, both human and non-human provides a mazeway of experience through which he moves; and this movement must be free and unimpeded in order for him to function in that society. Once this mazeway is mastered by the individual, he functions unconsciously as a member of that society. However, should his mazeway become blocked, he must seek alternative paths through life that make it possible for him to continue to function in its culture."
Through the era of slavery in America, African people (African Americans) seemed to have been successful in transforming the priestly knowledge of weather control into survival techniques among the wider community. The use of the double headed axe, one of the sacred emblems of Shango, to quell bad weather conditions seems to be a cultural retention Africans have been maintained since our forced migration to America. This parallel is especially significant if one considers the African practices of "weather control " by the traditional African priests of Shango.
Writing on Africanisms document that they are usually associated with island or coastal cultures of the Western Hemisphere. Scholars often limit Africanisms to Haiti (Vodun), Cuba (Santeria), Jamaica (Obeah), Gullah/Sea Islands and other coastal areas where large populations of enslaved Africans have been recorded. However, the Africanisms found in areas like the Mississippi Delta, among other territories, deserve the same inquiry that scholars provide for African cultural retentions found in the aforementioned regions. These retentions indicate a resilience and recollection of ancestral ties to Africa. They may serve as inspiration and deserve recognition, especially considering their survival within the hostile social environment of enslavement and even present day American society. Personally, these beautiful acts of remembrance provide me with a personal motivation to continue to "weather the storm" of life. Bury the hatchet and weather your storm!!!
Citations
"Gumbo ya-ya" Material collected by workers of the Works progress administration, Louisiana Writers' Project. Compiled by Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer and Robert Tallant (Houghton Mifflin, 1945).
"Folk Tales of Louisiana" Collected by Saxon Dreyer (Pelican, 1991).
"Black Gods: Orisha Studies in the New World" By Gary Edwards and John Mason (Yoruba Theological Arts Ministry, 1985).
"Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South" (New York: Oxford, 1978) By Albert J. Raboteau (Publisher, and Year).
"African Religion in the American Islands in Between" By Anthony C.F. Wallace, in "African Religions: A Symposium" Edited by Newell S. Booth, Jr. (New York: NOK Publishers, 1977).
http://www.duke.edu/doubletake/cds/btv/Storm.html