Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black AtlanticOxford University Press, 2007 M09 27 - 304 pages The first slaves imported to America did not see themselves as "African" but rather as Temne, Igbo, or Yoruban. In Becoming African in America, James Sidbury reveals how an African identity emerged in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world, tracing the development of "African" from a degrading term connoting savage people to a word that was a source of pride and unity for the diverse victims of the Atlantic slave trade. In this wide-ranging work, Sidbury first examines the work of black writers--such as Ignatius Sancho in England and Phillis Wheatley in America--who created a narrative of African identity that took its meaning from the diaspora, a narrative that began with enslavement and the experience of the Middle Passage, allowing people of various ethnic backgrounds to become "African" by virtue of sharing the oppression of slavery. He looks at political activists who worked within the emerging antislavery moment in England and North America in the 1780s and 1790s; he describes the rise of the African church movement in various cities--most notably, the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as an independent denomination--and the efforts of wealthy sea captain Paul Cuffe to initiate a black-controlled emigration movement that would forge ties between Sierra Leone and blacks in North America; and he examines in detail the efforts of blacks to emigrate to Africa, founding Sierra Leone and Liberia. Elegantly written and astutely reasoned, Becoming African in America weaves together intellectual, social, cultural, religious, and political threads into an important contribution to African American history, one that fundamentally revises our picture of the rich and complicated roots of African nationalist thought in the U.S. and the black Atlantic. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... Christian education,” a fortuitous decision, because the grandfather's crusade against the slave trade angered the “principal chiefs” of the Fullah. A civil war ensued in which “the reforming Prince ... together with his whole family ...
... Christian education,” a fortuitous decision, because the grandfather's crusade against the slave trade angered the “principal chiefs” of the Fullah. A civil war ensued in which “the reforming Prince ... together with his whole family ...
Page 8
... Christianity while also learning to produce nonhuman commodities for exchange in the Atlantic market. In this way the residents of Africa would overcome ethnic division, become Christian, and emerge as an “African” people who could ...
... Christianity while also learning to produce nonhuman commodities for exchange in the Atlantic market. In this way the residents of Africa would overcome ethnic division, become Christian, and emerge as an “African” people who could ...
Page 9
... Christian God with the prevalence of “paganism” in Africa, reaching toward a belief that American slavery represented God's plan for bringing the light of true religion to the Dark Continent. This conviction gave all three groups a ...
... Christian God with the prevalence of “paganism” in Africa, reaching toward a belief that American slavery represented God's plan for bringing the light of true religion to the Dark Continent. This conviction gave all three groups a ...
Page 10
... Christianity, but when used to define an “African” people, it offered a link between affiliative secular narratives of identity that rested on shared oppression, and mythic filiative narratives that asserted literal blood kinship. The ...
... Christianity, but when used to define an “African” people, it offered a link between affiliative secular narratives of identity that rested on shared oppression, and mythic filiative narratives that asserted literal blood kinship. The ...
Page 20
... Christian” household). Neither Wheatley nor Sancho credited their patrons for all of their success; neither gave the impression that white liberality had worked some sort of alchemical magic on passive and inert black objects in order ...
... Christian” household). Neither Wheatley nor Sancho credited their patrons for all of their success; neither gave the impression that white liberality had worked some sort of alchemical magic on passive and inert black objects in order ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
2 Toward a Transformed Africa | 39 |
3 An African Homeland? | 67 |
4 Out of America | 91 |
5 Becoming African in the English Atlantic | 131 |
6 African Churches and an African Nation | 157 |
7 Becoming American in Liberia and in the United States 18201830 | 181 |
Epilogue | 203 |
Notes | 211 |
Bibliography | 255 |
Index | 277 |
Other editions - View all
Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic James Sidbury Limited preview - 2007 |
Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic James Sidbury Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
African identity African Masons African Methodist African nation African Union African Union Society American Colonization Society antislavery asserted Atlantic Atlantic slave trade authors Baltimore Bethel black Americans black discourse Black Loyalists brethren British Carretta chap Christian claim coast of Africa colony Colored Company Company’s congregations Cuffe's Logs Cuffe’s cultural Daniel Coker diaspora discourse on African discussions emigration England enslaved Equiano and Cugoano evangelical filiative free black freedom Freetown George God’s governor Gronniosaw hoped Hundredors Huntingdonian ibid Ignatius Sancho Interesting Narrative James Forten John Clarkson John Marrant Jones kinship Kizell land leaders Liberia living Logs and Letters London Lott Cary movement native Nova Scotians offered Olaudah Equiano oppression Paul Cuffe Peters Philadelphia political Prince Hall promised Pybus race racial racism reel religious Russwurm Savannah settlers shared Sierra Leone slave trade slavery Society’s sought Temne transformation Tythingmen United vision Wheatley and Sancho Wheatley’s William Zachary Macaulay