Exchanging our country marks : the transformation of African identities in the colonial and antebellum South

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Title:

Author:

Gomez, Michael A., 1955-

ISBN:

9780807823873

9780807846940

Personal Author:

Gomez, Michael A., 1955-

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Physical Description:

xi, 370 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Ch. 1. Vesey's Challenge -- Ch. 2. Time and Space -- Ch. 3. Warriors, Charms, and Loas: Senegambia and the Bight of Benin -- Ch. 4. Prayin' on duh Bead: Islam in Early America -- Ch. 5. Societies and Stools: Sierra Leone and the Akan -- Ch. 6. I Seen Folks Disappeah: The Igbo and West Central Africa -- Ch. 7. Talking Half African: Middle Passage, Seasoning, and Language -- Ch. 8. Tad's Query: Ethnicity and Class in African America -- Ch. 9. Turning Down the Pot: Christianity and the African-Based Community -- Ch. 10. The Least of These -- App. Census Estimates for 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, and 1830.

Subject Term:

African Americans -- Southern States -- Ethnic identity.

African Americans -- Race identity -- Southern States.

Slaves -- Southern States -- Social life and customs.

Geographic Term:

Southern States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Southern States -- History -- 1775-1865.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015744911	305.896073075 G633E 1998	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The transatlantic slave trade brought individuals from diverse African regions and cultures to a common destiny in the American South. In this comprehensive study, Michael Gomez establishes tangible links between the African American community and its African origins and traces the process by which African populations exchanged their distinct ethnic identities for one

defined primarily by the conception of race. He examines transformations in the politics, social structures, and religions of slave populations through 1830, by which time the contours of a new African American identity had begun to emerge.

After discussing specific ethnic groups in Africa, Gomez follows their movement to North America, where they tended to be amassed in recognizable concentrations within individual colonies (and, later, states). For this reason, he argues, it is possible to identify particular ethnic cultural influences and ensuing social formations that heretofore have been considered unrecoverable. Using sources pertaining to the African continent

as well as runaway slave advertisements, ex-slave narratives, and folklore, Gomez reveals concrete and specific links between particular African populations and their North American progeny, thereby shedding new light on subsequent African American social formation.