African American Women During the Civil War (Studies in African American History and Culture)

The revivals of the Second Great Awakening of the late 18th and early 19th centuries extended the geographic reach of evangelicalism as the nation expanded into new territory and also drew increasing numbers of African Americans to Christianity. Antebellum African Americans developed independent arenas in which to interpret, experience, and express their religious commitments. In enthusiastic and embodied communal worship they also sang spirituals that spoke of sorrow, joy, justice, salvation, and liberation, and they danced the ring shout in a counterclockwise circular movement meant to make the Holy Spirit present.

Slave religion, then, served as a source of individual and communal comfort and the means to endure the brutality of slavery. Religion also provided resources for forceful public critique of the institution that enslaved and sought to dehumanize African Americans in the new republic. Black abolitionists, such as lecturer and journalist Maria W. Stewart — , who grounded her claims for social justice in biblical exegesis, and David Walker — , whose Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World warned of divine punishment on America for the sins of oppression, exemplified this approach.

In other instances, religion fostered open rebellion against slavery, as with the planned revolt in in Richmond, Virginia, that participants organized in religious meetings led by Gabriel Prosser — , the appeal to scripture and use of religious meetings to plan the aborted revolt of Denmark Vesey — in South Carolina in , and the rebellion in Northampton, Virginia, organized by religious visionary and preacher Nat Turner — Even as the influence of religion on the men who led these rebellions against slavery is clear, evidence also exists that Christianity served to accommodate some enslaved African Americans to their status, as demonstrated in the address of enslaved poet and preacher Jupiter Hammon — in which he enjoined enslaved blacks to be the obedient servants he felt Christ called them to be and await their reward in heaven.

Enslaved African Americans also turned to religious resources outside of Christianity. Conjure, derived from West Central African ritual work to harness the power of the natural and spiritual world to protect, heal, and sometimes harm, was a feature of African American culture, as were other folk healing practices using roots and herbs. Islam was also part of the religious world of enslaved Africans in the antebellum American South, with the relatively small number of Muslims struggling to maintain their religious practices, create community, and preserve the Arabic language across generations.

Muslims such as Omar ibn Said c. Taken together, this range of religious expressions provided resources for the development of culture in common, a sense of collective identity as African Americans, and affirmation of black humanity. In addition to the often hidden and covert religious activities in the invisible institution of slave religion, antebellum African American Christians developed churches that provided arenas for independent interpretation of Christian teaching and practice as well as a platform for political organizing.

Early independent black Baptist churches include the Silver Bluff, Georgia, church led in the s by David George c. The Baptist framework appealed to those in bondage because its structure of congregational autonomy supported local leadership and independence. Although these formerly enslaved men and their largely enslaved congregants faced monitoring and restrictions on religious practice, the institutions they founded became important sites promoting African American interpretations of Christianity that affirmed the humanity of black people.

Free black Baptists in northern states, where slavery was abolished gradually following the American Revolution, also established important congregations. Significant independent black church organizing during the early national period took place under the umbrella of Methodism and, by the early 19th century, individual congregations joined together to form denominations.

In many cases, black Methodists founded independent congregations in response to the racism they experienced in the predominantly white congregations to which they belonged. In Philadelphia, Richard Allen — , a former slave and licensed Methodist preacher, belonged to the predominantly white St. Allen, along with Absalom Jones — , another former slave and lay preacher, and other black congregants objected to the increasing discrimination they suffered in their home church, marked most clearly by the new policy relegating black members to the church balcony.

Two congregations emerged from this movement, reflecting the varied theological and institutional interests among the former members of St. One contingent founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in with Absalom Jones, the first African American to be ordained an Episcopal priest, as its first rector, and the other formed Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in with Allen as its pastor.

In Allen called together the leaders of a number of other black Methodist congregations in the region and they formed the African Methodist Episcopal AME Church, the first black denomination in America, with Allen as the first bishop. Conflicts between leaders of various contingents of African Methodists led Varick and Zion Church to organize a small group of independent black Methodist congregations in under the denominational umbrella of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

These new institutions became vitally important arenas for antebellum African American organizing and public discussion of a range of issues, including the abolition of slavery and the status of free blacks, as well as campaigns to create colonies for free blacks outside the United States. Clergy and members of the AME and AME Zion Churches often became public voices on pressing issues, a role that highlights the significance of churches in fostering black leadership throughout African American history.

African American denominations also contributed to black public life and culture throughout the 19th century by creating and supporting a range of economic enterprises, including publishing houses that produced journals and newspapers, including the AME Church Review , the Christian Recorder , and the Star of Zion , that covered religious and secular issues.

By the end of the 19th century, black denominations also established a range of educational institutions. From their founding moments, then, independent African American denominations served as more than spiritual homes for black Christians; they also offered education, opportunity for economic development, a platform for political advocacy, and an environment that supported a collective sense of peoplehood.

Black women preachers such as Jarena Lee b. Grounding their insistence on a right to leadership in both biblical interpretation and the claim to have experienced a direct call from God, Lee and other 19th-century preaching women in the AME and AME Zion Churches called their denominations to live up to their stated missions of proclaiming the equality of all under God.

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Facing resistance from the male leadership of their churches and from many male and female members, these women persisted in their work as itinerant evangelists and some published spiritual narratives to recount their experiences and promote their claims. Zion became the first black denomination to ordain women when Julia Foote — was ordained a deacon in , a status women in the AME Church gained in Despite the limited access to formal leadership roles, women within these independent black church denominations, who constituted the majority of members, were active contributors to the life of the church, serving as fundraisers, evangelists, and missionaries, for example.

The number of black churches grew rapidly following the Civil War as many of the millions of African Americans emerging from slavery established their own congregations. Culture and class differences sometimes led to conflict, however, as AME Church leaders sought to restrain the enthusiasm of southern black worship and impose their own standards of respectability.

The Reconstruction period also saw the founding of the Colored now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in in Jackson, Tennessee, by former enslaved members of the white-controlled Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The founding of the National Baptist Convention NBC was perhaps the most significant institutional development in post-Reconstruction black religious life.

Drawing together independent black Baptist congregations and mission and educational societies, the NBC emerged at its founding moment in Atlanta under the leadership of former slave Elias C. In addition, black Baptist women in the 19th and early 20th centuries contributed to the life of the church as individual evangelists or as licensed preachers.

Although the women of the WC and the NBC at large did not organize to press for ordination, black Baptist women nevertheless initiated significant public discussions within their denomination about religion, gender, and equality. Not all black Christians located their religious lives in black denominations. Some African Americans found spiritual homes in predominantly white churches, including Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Episcopal denominations, drawn by family ties, theological appeal, or style of worship.

For many who had been enslaved in regions with large Roman Catholic populations, Catholicism was the dominant culture that shaped their religious lives. As with other predominantly white denominations, access to leadership in Roman Catholicism was often restricted and African American men found it difficult to gain admission to the priesthood. A few prominent black priests made their mark on 19th-century black Catholic life, however, including former Missouri slave August Tolton — , who was ordained in Rome in , and Charles Randolph Uncles — of Baltimore, who became the first African American ordained in the United States.

In a number of important instances, black women were successful in founding religious orders through which they could pursue their religious vocations. Although the orders remained small, black Catholic sisters were visible figures in 19th-century African American Catholic life. African American lay Catholics organized at the end of the 19th century to represent their interests as a group to the church at large and, despite experiences of racism and exclusion, to promote Catholicism among black Protestants as a universal and inclusive tradition.

Former slave and Ohio journalist Daniel A. Rudd — founded The American Catholic Tribune in to promote black Catholic interests, and he stood at the forefront of the Colored Catholic Congress movement that called black Catholics together from to to discuss their status within the church and to strategize to oppose racism in church and society. In the late 19th century, African American denominations turned their attention to Africa as a mission site and, in some instances, as a place to settle and pursue black self-governance.

While black missionaries had worked through white mission societies earlier in the century, the support of black-led denominational structures made additional connections to Africa possible and allowed African Americans to frame their work in ways that spoke directly to their concerns. Where the biblical story of the Exodus had provided a map of meaning and a ground for hope for many enslaved and free African Americans in the antebellum period, after the end of slavery African American Christians looked to the Bible for other sources of inspiration and knowledge about their future.

Some interpreted Psalm Earlyth-century AME mission work took place in the context of debates among free blacks about the colonization movement. The American Colonization Society ACS , founded in by northern and southern whites concerned about growing numbers of free people of color in the United States, advocated transporting free blacks to Africa and, to achieve that goal, established a settlement that would eventually become part of Liberia.

The ACS encouraged free blacks to emigrate and secured funds to purchase the freedom of enslaved people on the condition that they agree to be transported to Africa. Some individuals, such as founding member Daniel Coker — , argued that prospects for free blacks would be better in Africa given restricted opportunities in the United States. Most AME leaders opposed colonization, however, holding that as Americans they should not have to leave the country of their birth to secure liberty and rights. Moreover, many argued, it would be devastating to the cause of abolition for free blacks, who could serve as advocates for the enslaved to leave.

The denomination formally condemned the colonization scheme; nevertheless, some members continued to find the idea appealing. In Coker joined with the ACS to embark on missionary work in Sierra Leone, traveling aboard the Elizabeth with eighty-five other colonists in a largely unsuccessful venture. In the s AME clergy and church members constituted part of the Liberian Exodus movement in which a number of groups, most famously the company of people aboard the Azor that sailed from Charleston to Monrovia in , gave up on the possibility of safety and prosperity in America and sought to build lives and communities elsewhere.

Black Methodists, such as internationally recognized traveling evangelist Amanda Berry Smith — , also engaged in independent missionary work, largely without institutional support. In AME bishop Henry McNeal Turner — traveled to West Africa and southern Africa to incorporate into the denomination the churches that earlier missionaries had established. In Levi J.

In Carey traveled to Sierra Leone as a missionary, accompanied by his wife, two children, and twenty members of his congregation. The group settled in Liberia the following year and Carey founded Providence Baptist Church in Monrovia, which he pastored until his death in Later black Baptists saw Carey as a model for their work, establishing the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention in , which, along with state mission boards, supported Baptist missions.

African American members of predominantly white denominations also engaged in missionary work in Africa, including Virginia native and ordained Presbyterian minister William H. African American missionaries and emigrationists generally framed their projects in terms of their own history, present concerns, and hopes for the future. Incorporating Africans into their biblical interpretations of the divine plan for black Christianity to lead the way to human redemption, missionaries and colonists rejected African traditional religions and worked to transform African societies according to the standards of Western Christian civilization.

Even many of those who learned indigenous languages and attended to the social, economic, and medical needs of Africans in the regions of their missionary work still viewed indigenous religious and cultural systems as heathen and in need of reform. Episcopal priest Alexander Crummell — and Presbyterian minister Edward Wilmot Blyden — represent the complex religious perspectives of African diaspora blacks in this era with respect to their relationship to Africa.

A New York native, Crummell was ordained to the priesthood in and became a vocal anti-slavery activist before embarking on missionary work in Liberia in Blyden, an immigrant to the United States from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, also devoted himself to missionary work in Liberia, where he settled in and began a career in ministry, education, and politics.

In his writings, Blyden advocated the preservation of African cultural traditions, which he argued had contributed to world cultures, and he also contended that Islam offered greater dignity to people of African descent than did Christianity, a perspective that led him to sever his connection with the Presbyterian Church. An ardent advocate of immigration of diaspora blacks to West Africa, Blyden lived out the remainder of his life there, dying in Sierra Leone in Although the number of missionaries and colonists remained small over the course of the 19th century, their work was located in larger discussions about religious interpretations of black racial identity, history, and future destiny.

African American Christianity diversified in branching out in new directions in the late 19th century, reflecting and contributing to broader theological developments in American Christianity. Although this theological position emerged from within evangelical churches it proved controversial and, in some cases, proponents of the doctrine formed new Holiness churches organized around belief in sanctification.

Jones — and Charles H. Mason — , both Baptist preachers, began to advocate the controversial Holiness doctrine at revivals and churches in Mississippi, which led to their expulsion from their local Baptist association and the founding of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee. Seymour — , a Louisiana native who preached the importance of another spiritual experience beyond sanctification. Seymour and advocates of what would become Pentecostalism strove for baptism in the Holy Spirit, which, they believed, would result in the manifestation of the gifts of speaking in tongues, healing, prophecy, and interpretation.

Mason reported experiencing this baptism and speaking in tongues at Azusa Street and became persuaded that all true Christians must also do so. Mason and Jones split the following year as a result of disagreement about Pentecostal theology. Jones continued to focus on sanctification and renamed his church the Church of Christ Holiness U. Although early Pentecostalism was characterized by multiracial interactions, the movement became segregated over the first decades of the 20th century. At the start of the 20th century most African Americans lived in the South, primarily in rural settings.

Over the next decades a number of factors combined to motivate African Americans to relocate to southern and northern cities in search of greater opportunity. By the end of World War I, some 2. In the cities of the Northeast, southern migrants, who continued to arrive in large numbers in this first wave until the early s, encountered immigrants from the British West Indies, also on the move in search of greater opportunity.

More than , Caribbean immigrants arrived in the United States in the first three decades of the century, and they contributed to the religious, political, and cultural life of the growing black urban neighborhoods. While most African Americans still remained in the South and the reality of life for those who migrated to the North did not always meet the promise of expanded opportunity, the Great Migration nevertheless set the context for important developments in African American religious life.

Some established African American religious institutions in northern cities responded by working to incorporate the newcomers, and congregations such as Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago saw a significant increase in membership. Encounters between established northern black religious leaders and southern migrants were often fraught, however, as northern leaders frequently counseled migrants to conform to their middle-class religious and social standards. As a result, many migrants reconstituted their home churches in the North or founded new ones, sometimes in rented storefronts in the absence of funds to purchase property or build edifices.

The growth in the number of Christian congregations in black neighborhoods in northern cities largely reflected the religious sensibilities and practices that had formed under slavery and that had become institutionalized in Baptist, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches. Some of the most prominent of these storefront churches were founded and led by women, who appealed directly to the power of God and the Holy Spirit rather than to denominational hierarchies to authorize their leadership.

The experience of South Carolina native Rosa A. Horn — , who migrated spiritually from her Methodist upbringing to Pentecostalism and geographically to Illinois and then New York, exemplifies the influence of black southern Pentecostalism on the religious culture of the urban North. Horn, who began her religious ministry in Illinois, founded the Pentecostal Faith Church of All Nations in Harlem in , which not only featured emotional worship and faith healing, but also provided material aid for struggling residents of Harlem during the Great Depression.

Horn was not alone in making use of popular and commercial culture as a vehicle for religious expression in this period. As radio broadcasts became popular in the s, African American religious leaders took to the airwaves, and figures such as Holiness preacher Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux — in Washington, D. African American musicians also used radio to broadcast black religious music in the s. Radio broadcasts, either from black churches or from studios, reached beyond African American listeners and provided a glimpse of aspects of black religious culture to a national audience.

The most successful of the race records preachers was James M. African American religious music served as a central part of black religious culture and an important element in the success of religious race records. The recorded sermons generally presented popular sermonic subject matter in the classic chanted sermon style characteristic of many black preachers with call and response from congregants, and they also sometimes incorporated music.

Congregational choirs often provided the music on many sermon recordings, but popular religious musicians sometimes teamed up with preachers to great success. Austin — hired Thomas A. Dorsey — as music director, served as a critical site for the development of gospel. Through his compelling preaching and strong leadership, Virginia-native Austin built Pilgrim into one of the largest churches in the nation.

Pentecostal gospel star Rosetta Tharpe — , who grew up in the Church of God in Christ in Arkansas, was much more at ease moving between what most African Americans at the time would have understood as separate and competing realms of sacred and secular music and performance venues. Tharpe began her career as a gospel performer in the s as she and her mother, a COGIC evangelist, traveled doing revival work.

Her success extended the cultural reach of gospel music, however, and her popularity in varied arenas of American life reveals important connections between secular and sacred culture in black life. Movies served as another arena for religious expression in the era of the Great Migration, and one that also highlights complex interactions between African American church traditions and popular culture.

Rather, with films such as Body and Soul , in which Paul Robeson — made his film debut, Micheaux raised questions about the political utility of churches and clergy and offered a critique of what he saw as the emotionality of southern black religious culture. In the era of sound films, veteran race movie actor and Louisiana native Spencer Williams Jr. In addition to developments within black Christianity, the movement of people and the exchange of cultures in the Great Migration generated new groups that offered people of African descent in the United States a range of religious options outside of the dominant Protestant Christianity.

The stage for these changes was set, in part, by the establishment of Harlem as the headquarters for the Universal Negro Improvement Association UNIA , founded by Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey — to foster global black unity and self-determination in Africa. Garvey and his organization promoted black nationalism through the Negro World newspaper, in conventions, public rallies, and parades, and with the establishment of the Black Star Line of steamships.

But Garvey did not insist upon Catholic or even Christian commitment for membership, which made the organization accessible to a range of people of African descent, including African Americans and immigrants from the Caribbean, in the United States as well as in other countries. Raised a Methodist in Barbados, Ford studied the Bible and apocryphal texts avidly and became persuaded that black people were Israelites descended from King Solomon and the Ethiopian queen of Sheba. Ford moved to Ethiopia in to begin the work of establishing a community and forging connections to the indigenous Ethiopian Jewish community, but he became ill and died before he was able to do so.

By the mids, Matthew had become the most prominent advocate in the United States of Ethiopian Hebrew identity as the true identity of people of African descent, and his congregation served as the nucleus of a group of other congregations in the Northeast served by rabbis whom Matthew had ordained. A number of groups founded in the first decades of the 20th century promoted versions of Islam as the original religion of black people.

Timothy Drew — , taught that blacks in America are the descendants of the ancient Moabites. Drew Ali offered his followers a composite scripture in The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple , combining material from published texts in the Western esoteric tradition and text he wrote himself outlining the origins of Moorish Americans. After his death the movement fractured under the leadership of different followers contending for succession, but it continued to promote this view of Moorish Muslim identity.

In Detroit in the early s, a group of African American migrants from the South gathered around W. Little is known about Fard except that he was successful in attracting thousands of followers to the Nation of Islam NOI before the Detroit police forced him to leave the city in and he disappeared. Elijah Poole — , a Georgia Baptist migrant, succeeded Fard. Muhammad took on the role of Messenger of Allah and began to teach that Fard was not simply a prophet but was, in fact, Allah in the flesh.

While the Moorish Science Temple embraced Americanness as part of Moorish American identity, the NOI rejected the United States as evil and doomed to destruction and set economic and territorial independence as a goal. He promised his followers health, agelessness, and eternal life if they would renounce the things of mortal life. Divine enjoined his followers to vote in aid of transforming the world according to his vision and, in , the movement drafted a Righteous Government platform that included political, economic, and educational programs.

At its height of popularity in the late s, the Peace Mission Movement, which drew blacks and whites, counted as many as fifty thousand members in missions in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and the British West Indies. The number of adherents in the black new religious movements of the Great Migration was small in comparison to the large numbers of blacks affiliated with Christian churches. However, their cultural impact extended beyond membership figures as they offered people of African descent in the United States new ways of thinking about their religious and racial identities, varied understandings of the relationship between the two, and approaches to politics that derived from these collective identities.

Religious beliefs, practices, institutions, and leaders contributed to post—World War II campaigns for civil rights in a variety of ways. Religious understandings of the power of nonviolence to effect change were important for many activists, such as James M.

In Lawson moved to Nashville as the southern field secretary for the FOR and began to conduct workshops on nonviolent resistance as Christian practice. Many of the young students Lawson introduced to nonviolence as an activist strategy, including John Lewis b.

Other local civil rights campaigns emerged among southern blacks and many of the participants grounded their work in Christian commitment and religious community. The action continued for more than a year under the direction of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association, whose members pressed Martin Luther King Jr. In the course of the year, community members gathered in mass meetings at churches to support one another in their commitment to nonviolence and to gain courage in the face of increasing violence against them. The action came to an end in following a Supreme Court decision declaring segregated buses unconstitutional.

King became a national figure in the course of the year as a result of his captivating preaching and public advocacy of nonviolent resistance. King and SCLC became the public face of the Civil Rights movement on the national and international stages, but a variety of grassroots organizations and local groups served as the engines of the activism. When Hamer finally succeeded in registering in , she was arrested and beaten badly in jail; nevertheless, she continued to advocate for civil rights, drawing others to the work with powerful speeches articulating a theology of civil rights that insisted on the revolutionary role of Jesus as a liberator.

Hamer came to national attention when her testimony at the Democratic National Convention on behalf of the MFDP delegates was televised, showcasing the theological richness and courage of local activists in the movement. Christian theology, religious commitment to nonviolence, and church culture all played important roles in the southern Civil Rights movement of the s and s. Religiously grounded grassroots organizing combined with the work of national organizations such as the SCLC contributed to the legislative and judicial successes by which formal segregation was dismantled.

His Black Power and Black Theology garnered a great deal of attention and energized a new generation of African American theologians, who explored the liberating potential of Christianity for black people worldwide. Grant and others charged that the work of black male theologians ignored the contributions of women to black church history and failed to take into account how gender shaped the experiences of black women in unique ways that a black theology also needed to address. The Womanist Theology movement emerged in the late s and early s in the ethical and theological writings of women such as ordained Presbyterian professor Katie Geneva Cannon b.

Some critics of Black Theology and Womanist Theology questioned the relevance of an academic enterprise based in seminaries and universities to the daily life struggles facing African Americans in the period after the end of legal segregation. As the 20th century came to a close, the historical black denominations that had been important arenas for cultivating a sense of collective identity, fostering economic and educational development, and motivating political organizing faced the challenge of maintaining relevance in the face of increasing class divisions among African Americans and a generational divide that pointed to the possibility of decreased participation of young people in institutional church life.

A number of significant trends that began at the end of the 20th century continue to shape religious life for people of African descent in the United States in the 21st century. The American religious landscape has been greatly influenced by increased immigration from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, which followed U. The presence of these traditions in the American religious landscape offer new religious options to African Americans even as tensions between native-born and immigrant black populations have sometimes limited religious exchange.

Nevertheless, some African Americans have found fulfillment in Afro-Caribbean traditions, and some African and African American Muslims make their spiritual homes and worship in the same mosques. African American Muslims make up almost one-third of the population of Muslims in the United States, and most of these are connected to the Sunni branch of Islam. Others have been drawn to Islam through individual journeys in search of spiritual fulfillment and through encounter with other adherents, which is also the case for many African American Buddhists and Jews in contemporary America. This development is not exclusive to black churches and, in many cases, predominantly white congregations have attracted significant numbers of African American members while churches with majority black membership and black pastors have white congregants.

Many, like Crenshaw Christian Center, based in Los Angeles with a branch in New York City and claiming more than 20, members, are nondenominational, reflecting a growing trend in black Christianity. The influence of Pentecostal beliefs and practices is strong in African American megachurches whether denominational or nondenominational. While formal membership figures do not necessarily reflect the number of active congregants, these are strikingly large congregations that offer congregants a variety of ministries targeted at interest and demographic groups.

The social engagements of black megachurches tend to focus on community development rather than electoral politics or organized protest, and they use some of their considerable financial resources to sponsor social, economic, and educational services such as legal clinics, family counseling, health projects, housing developments, and schools.

Other prominent African American prosperity preachers in the first decade of the 21st century include Eddie Long b. In addition, prosperity gospel can be found in churches that operate on a much smaller scale than these megachurches led by celebrity pastors, but key to the success of preachers such as Price and Jakes has been their use of multiple media, including satellite network televangelism and broadcast over the Internet, to promote their theologies in the United States and, increasingly, in the Caribbean and Africa.

Critics have charged that the focus on individual financial gain has turned black churches away from addressing the broader issues of racism and economic inequality. Personal scandals involving figures such as Eddie Long, accused of sexual misconduct with young men in one of his church organizations, and Gaston Everett Smith, pastor of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty City, Florida, who was convicted of stealing public grants made to his church to aid the poor, have also raised questions about a number of celebrity ministers who contravene the sexual and financial standards they preach in their ministries.

While nondenominational megachurches, prosperity gospel, and media ministries have garnered a significant presence in the African American religious landscape, a study by the Pew Research Center shows that African American commitment to historically black Protestant churches remains strong.

The process by which religious culture developed under slavery has been one of the most debated topics in the field as scholars have sought to understand the relationship of African American religious formations to the various traditions in the African contexts from which enslaved people were transported. Was there cultural continuity and, if so, how was it produced, maintained, and manifested? Were cultural links irreparably ruptured and, if so, what were the consequences for religious developments in America?

The varied terms scholars have used to describe the relationship of African diaspora religions to Africa and the process of cultural change—retention, survival, syncretism, transculturation, polyculturalism, bricolage, among others—reflect a range of approaches to addressing these questions. One prominent scholarly narrative emphasizes a clear and enduring impact of African traditions in African American religious culture seen in understandings of the sacred, ritual practices, and general sensibilities.

Scholarly accounts differ regarding the specific ways these influences are manifested in African American religion. Another narrative argues that the break with African cultures proved so profound that the religious orientations of African Americans bear few traces and represent entirely diasporic formations facilitated by religious exchange with European Americans.

Recent developments in the study of the transatlantic slave trade have encouraged scholars of African American religious history to attend in greater detail to the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans, to the cultural distinctiveness of different regions and states, and to change over time as African American religious culture developed.

African-American culture

Such work focuses less on generalized answers to the question of the relationship of diasporic religion to Africa and more on exploring specific cases, such as the impact of Kongo culture in a particular region of North America. The movement promoted racial pride and ethnic cohesion in contrast to the focus on integration of the Civil Rights Movement, and adopted a more militant posture in the face of racism.

The works of popular recording artists such as Nina Simone " Young, Gifted and Black " and The Impressions " Keep On Pushing " , as well as the poetry, fine arts, and literature of the time, shaped and reflected the growing racial and political consciousness. During this time, there was a resurgence of interest in, and an embrace of, elements of African culture within African-American culture that had been suppressed or devalued to conform to Eurocentric America.

Natural hairstyles , such as the afro , and African clothing, such as the dashiki , gained popularity. More importantly, the African-American aesthetic encouraged personal pride and political awareness among African Americans. African-American music is rooted in the typically polyrhythmic music of the ethnic groups of Africa, specifically those in the Western , Sahelean , and Sub-Saharan regions. African oral traditions, nurtured in slavery, encouraged the use of music to pass on history, teach lessons, ease suffering, and relay messages.

The African pedigree of African-American music is evident in some common elements: Written by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson in to be performed for the birthday of Abraham Lincoln , the song was, and continues to be, a popular way for African Americans to recall past struggles and express ethnic solidarity, faith, and hope for the future. In the 19th century, as the result of the blackface minstrel show , African-American music entered mainstream American society. By the early 20th century, several musical forms with origins in the African-American community had transformed American popular music.

Aided by the technological innovations of radio and phonograph records, ragtime , jazz , blues , and swing also became popular overseas, and the s became known as the Jazz Age. The early 20th century also saw the creation of the first African-American Broadway shows , films such as King Vidor 's Hallelujah! These genres became very popular in white audiences and were influences for other genres such as surf. During the s, the dozens , an urban African-American tradition of using rhyming slang to put down one's enemies or friends , and the West Indian tradition of toasting developed into a new form of music.

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In the South Bronx the half speaking, half singing rhythmic street talk of "rapping" grew into the hugely successful cultural force known as hip hop. Hip hop would become a multicultural movement, however, it still remained important to many African Americans. The African-American Cultural Movement of the s and s also fueled the growth of funk and later hip-hop forms such as rap , hip house , new jack swing , and go-go. House music was created in black communities in Chicago in the s.

African-American music has experienced far more widespread acceptance in American popular music in the 21st century than ever before. In addition to continuing to develop newer musical forms, modern artists have also started a rebirth of older genres in the form of genres such as neo soul and modern funk-inspired groups. In contemporary art , black subject matter has been used as raw material to portray the Black experience and aesthetics. The way Blacks' facial features were once conveyed as stereotypical in media and entertainment continues to be an influence within art.

Dichotomies arise from artworks such as Open Casket by Dana Schutz based on the murder of Emmett Till to remove the painting and destroy it from the way Black pain is conveyed. African-American dance , like other aspects of African-American culture, finds its earliest roots in the dances of the hundreds of African ethnic groups that made up African slaves in the Americas as well as influences from European sources in the United States.

Dance in the African tradition, and thus in the tradition of slaves, was a part of both everyday life and special occasions. Many of these traditions such as get down , ring shouts , and other elements of African body language survive as elements of modern dance. In the 19th century, African-American dance began to appear in minstrel shows.

These shows often presented African Americans as caricatures for ridicule to large audiences. The first African-American dance to become popular with white dancers was the cakewalk in African-American dance forms such as tap , a combination of African and European influences, gained widespread popularity thanks to dancers such as Bill Robinson and were used by leading white choreographers, who often hired African-American dancers. Contemporary African-American dance is descended from these earlier forms and also draws influence from African and Caribbean dance forms.

Groups such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater have continued to contribute to the growth of this form. Modern popular dance in America is also greatly influenced by African-American dance. American popular dance has also drawn many influences from African-American dance most notably in the hip-hop genre. One of the uniquely African-American forms of dancing, turfing , emerged from social and political movements in the East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area.

From its early origins in slave communities, through the end of the 20th century, African-American art has made a vital contribution to the art of the United States. These artifacts have similarities with comparable crafts in West and Central Africa. In contrast, African-American artisans like the New England—based engraver Scipio Moorhead and the Baltimore portrait painter Joshua Johnson created art that was conceived in a thoroughly western European fashion.

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During the 19th century, Harriet Powers made quilts in rural Georgia, United States that are now considered among the finest examples of 19th-century Southern quilting. After the American Civil War , museums and galleries began more frequently to display the work of African-American artists. Cultural expression in mainstream venues was still limited by the dominant European aesthetic and by racial prejudice.

To increase the visibility of their work, many African-American artists traveled to Europe where they had greater freedom. In later years, other programs and institutions, such as the New York City-based Harmon Foundation , helped to foster African-American artistic talent.

Sussex Centre for American Studies

Augusta Savage , Elizabeth Catlett , Lois Mailou Jones , Romare Bearden , Jacob Lawrence , and others exhibited in museums and juried art shows, and built reputations and followings for themselves. In the s and s, there were very few widely accepted African-American artists. Pierce, Florida , created idyllic, quickly realized images of the Florida landscape and peddled some 50, of them from the trunks of their cars. They sold their art directly to the public rather than through galleries and art agents, thus receiving the name "The Highwaymen".

Rediscovered in the mids, today they are recognized as an important part of American folk history. The Black Arts Movement of the s and s was another period of resurgent interest in African-American art. The sculptor Martin Puryear , whose work has been acclaimed for years, was being honored with a year retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in November African-American literature has its roots in the oral traditions of African slaves in America.

The slaves used stories and fables in much the same way as they used music. These authors reached early high points by telling slave narratives.

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During the early 20th century Harlem Renaissance , numerous authors and poets, such as Langston Hughes , W. Du Bois , and Booker T. Washington , grappled with how to respond to discrimination in America. Authors during the Civil Rights Movement , such as Richard Wright , James Baldwin , and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial segregation , oppression, and other aspects of African-American life. This tradition continues today with authors who have been accepted as an integral part of American literature , with works such as Roots: The African-American Museum Movement emerged during the s and s to preserve the heritage of the African-American experience and to ensure its proper interpretation in American history.

Institutions such as the African American Museum and Library at Oakland , The African American Museum in Cleveland and the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture [56] were created by African Americans to teach and investigate cultural history that, until recent decades was primarily preserved through oral traditions. Generations of hardships imposed on the African-American community created distinctive language patterns. Slave owners often intentionally mixed people who spoke different African languages to discourage communication in any language other than English.

This, combined with prohibitions against education, led to the development of pidgins , simplified mixtures of two or more languages that speakers of different languages could use to communicate. African-American Vernacular English AAVE is a variety dialect , ethnolect , and sociolect of the American English language closely associated with the speech of, but not exclusive to, African Americans.

Inner-city African-American children who are isolated by speaking only AAVE sometimes have more difficulty with standardized testing and, after school, moving to the mainstream world for work. The Black Arts Movement , a cultural explosion of the s, saw the incorporation of surviving cultural dress with elements from modern fashion and West African traditional clothing to create a uniquely African-American traditional style.

Kente cloth is the best known African textile. Kente fabric also appears in a number of Western style fashions ranging from casual T-shirts to formal bow ties and cummerbunds. Kente strips are often sewn into liturgical and academic robes or worn as stoles. Since the Black Arts Movement , traditional African clothing has been popular amongst African Americans for both formal and informal occasions.

Another common aspect of fashion in African-American culture involves the appropriate dress for worship in the Black church. It is expected in most churches that an individual present their best appearance for worship. African-American women in particular are known for wearing vibrant dresses and suits.

An interpretation of a passage from the Christian Bible , " Hair styling in African-American culture is greatly varied. African-American hair is typically composed of coiled curls, which range from tight to wavy. Many women choose to wear their hair in its natural state. Natural hair can be styled in a variety of ways, including the afro, twist outs, braid outs, and wash and go styles.

It is a myth that natural hair presents styling problems or is hard to manage; this myth seems prevalent because mainstream culture has, for decades, attempted to get African-American women to conform to its standard of beauty i. To that end, some women prefer straightening of the hair through the application of heat or chemical processes. However, more and more women are wearing their hair in its natural state and receiving positive feedback.

Alternatively, the predominant and most socially acceptable practice for men is to leave one's hair natural. Often, as men age and begin to lose their hair, the hair is either closely cropped, or the head is shaved completely free of hair. However, since the s, natural hairstyles , such as the afro , braids, waves , fades , and dreadlocks , have been growing in popularity.

Religion in African American History - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

Despite their association with radical political movements and their vast difference from mainstream Western hairstyles, the styles have attained considerable, but certainly limited, social acceptance. Maintaining facial hair is more prevalent among African-American men than in other male populations in the US. European-Americans have sometimes appropriated different hair braiding techniques and other forms of African-American hair. There are also individuals and groups who are working towards raising the standing of the African aesthetic among African Americans and internationally as well.

This includes efforts toward promoting as models those with clearly defined African features; the mainstreaming of natural hairstyles; and, in women, fuller, more voluptuous body types. While African Americans practice a number of religions, Protestant Christianity is by far the most prevalent. The religious institutions of African-American Christians commonly are referred to collectively as the black church. During slavery, many slaves were stripped of their African belief systems and typically denied free religious practice, forced to become Christian.

Slaves managed, however, to hang on to some practices by integrating them into Christian worship in secret meetings. These practices, including dance, shouts, African rhythms, and enthusiastic singing, remain a large part of worship in the African-American church. African-American churches taught that all people were equal in God 's eyes and viewed the doctrine of obedience to one's master taught in white churches as hypocritical — yet accepted and propagated internal hierarchies and support for corporal punishment of children among other things. An African-American church is not necessarily a separate denomination.

Several predominantly African-American churches exist as members of predominantly white denominations. Because of this, African-American pastors became the bridge between the African-American and European American communities and thus played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement. Like many Christians, African-American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas play. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is a re-telling of the classic Nativity story with gospel music. Generations before the advent of the Atlantic slave trade , Islam was a thriving religion in West Africa due to its peaceful introduction via the lucrative Trans-Saharan trade between prominent tribes in the southern Sahara and the Arabs and Berbers in North Africa.

Slaves were either forcibly converted to Christianity as was the case in the Catholic lands or were besieged with gross inconveniences to their religious practice such as in the case of the Protestant American mainland. In the decades after slavery and particularly during the depression era, Islam reemerged in the form of highly visible and sometimes controversial movements in the African-American community. Ali had a profound influence on Wallace Fard , who later founded the Black nationalist Nation of Islam in Elijah Muhammad became head of the organization in Many former members of the Nation of Islam converted to Sunni Islam when Warith Deen Mohammed took control of the organization after his father's death in and taught its members the traditional form of Islam based on the Qur'an.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are a collection of African-American religious organizations whose practices and beliefs are derived to some extent from Judaism. Their varied teachings often include, that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites. Studies have shown in the last 10 to 15 years there has been major increase in African-Americans identifying as Jewish.

Aside from Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, there are also African Americans who follow Buddhism and a number of other religions. Many of them are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean and South America, where these are practiced. Because of religious practices, such as animal sacrifice, which are no longer common among the larger American religions, these groups may be viewed negatively and are sometimes the victims of harassment.

It must be stated, however, that since the Supreme Court judgement that was given to the Lukumi Babaluaye church of Florida in , there has been no major legal challenge to their right to function as they see fit. For most African Americans, the observance of life events follows the pattern of mainstream American culture. While African Americans and whites often lived to themselves for much of American history, both groups generally had the same perspective on American culture. There are some traditions that are unique to African Americans.

Some African Americans have created new rites of passage that are linked to African traditions. Some pre-teen and teenage boys and girls take classes to prepare them for adulthood. These classes tend to focus on spirituality , responsibility, and leadership. Many of these programs are modeled after traditional African ceremonies, with the focus largely on embracing African cultures.

To this day, some African-American couples choose to " jump the broom " as a part of their wedding ceremony. Although the practice, which can be traced back to Ghana , [95] fell out of favor in the African-American community after the end of slavery, it has experienced a slight resurgence in recent years as some couples seek to reaffirm their African heritage.

Funeral traditions tend to vary based on a number of factors, including religion and location, but there are a number of commonalities. Probably the most important part of death and dying in the African-American culture is the gathering of family and friends. Either in the last days before death or shortly after death, typically any friends and family members that can be reached are notified.

This gathering helps to provide spiritual and emotional support, as well as assistance in making decisions and accomplishing everyday tasks. The spirituality of death is very important in African-American culture. A member of the clergy or members of the religious community, or both, are typically present with the family through the entire process.

Death is often viewed as transitory rather than final. Many services are called homegoings or homecomings, instead of funerals, based on the belief that the person is going home to the afterlife; "Returning to god" or the Earth also see Euphemism as well as Connotation. This is most notably demonstrated in the New Orleans jazz funeral tradition where upbeat music, dancing, and food encourage those gathered to be happy and celebrate the homegoing of a beloved friend.

In studying of the African American culture, food cannot be left out as one of the medians to understand their traditions, religion, interaction, and social and cultural structures of their community. Observing the ways they prepare their food and eat their food ever since the enslaved era, reveals about the nature and identity of African American culture in the United States. No written evidence are found historically about the gumbo or its recipes, so through the African American's nature of orally passing their stories and recipes down, gumbo came to represent their truly communal dish.

Gumbo is said to be "an invention of enslaved Africans and African Americans". Through sharing of this food in churches with a gathering of their people, they not only shared the food, but also experience, feelings, attachment, and sense of unity that brings the community together. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States, such as yams , peanuts , rice , okra , sorghum , grits , indigo dyes , and cotton , can be traced to African influences.

African-American foods reflect creative responses to racial and economic oppression and poverty. Under slavery, African Americans were not allowed to eat better cuts of meat, and after emancipation many were often too poor to afford them. Soul food , a hearty cuisine commonly associated with African Americans in the South but also common to African Americans nationwide , makes creative use of inexpensive products procured through farming and subsistence hunting and fishing. Pig intestines are boiled and sometimes battered and fried to make chitterlings , also known as "chitlins". Ham hocks and neck bones provide seasoning to soups, beans and boiled greens turnip greens , collard greens , and mustard greens.

Other common foods, such as fried chicken and fish , macaroni and cheese , cornbread , and hoppin' john black-eyed peas and rice are prepared simply. When the African-American population was considerably more rural than it generally is today, rabbit , opossum , squirrel , and waterfowl were important additions to the diet. Many of these food traditions are especially predominant in many parts of the rural South. Traditionally prepared soul food is often high in fat, sodium, and starch.

Highly suited to the physically demanding lives of laborers, farmhands and rural lifestyles generally, it is now a contributing factor to obesity , heart disease , and diabetes in a population that has become increasingly more urban and sedentary. As a result, more health-conscious African Americans are using alternative methods of preparation, eschewing trans fats in favor of natural vegetable oils and substituting smoked turkey for fatback and other, cured pork products; limiting the amount of refined sugar in desserts; and emphasizing the consumption of more fruits and vegetables than animal protein.

There is some resistance to such changes, however, as they involve deviating from long culinary tradition. As with other American racial and ethnic groups, African Americans observe ethnic holidays alongside traditional American holidays. Holidays observed in African-American culture are not only observed by African Americans but are widely considered American holidays. The birthday of noted American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr has been observed nationally since Black History Month is another example of another African-American observance that has been adopted nationally and its teaching is even required by law in some states.

Black History Month is an attempt to focus attention on previously neglected aspects of the American history, chiefly the lives and stories of African Americans. For the past 28 years, presidents have announced to Americans that Black Music Month also called African-American Music Month should be recognized as a critical part of American heritage. Black Music Month is highlighted with various events urging citizens to revel in the many forms of music from gospel to hip-hop.

African-American musicians, singers, and composers are also highlighted for their contributions to the nation's history and culture. Less-widely observed outside of the African-American community is Emancipation Day popularly known as Juneteenth or Freedom Day, in recognition of the official reading of the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, , in Texas.

It is one of the fastest growing African-American holidays with observances in the United States. The day is observed on May 19 in American cities with a significant African-American population, including Washington, D. Another noted African-American holiday is Kwanzaa. Like Emancipation Day, it is not widely observed outside of the African-American community, although it is growing in popularity with both African-American and African communities.

African-American scholar and activist "Maulana" Ron Karenga invented the festival of Kwanzaa in , as an alternative to the increasing commercialization of Christmas. Derived from the harvest rituals of Africans, Kwanzaa is observed each year from December 26 through January 1. Participants in Kwanzaa celebrations affirm their African heritage and the importance of family and community by drinking from a unity cup; lighting red, black, and green candles; exchanging heritage symbols, such as African art; and recounting the lives of people who struggled for African and African-American freedom.

Negro Election Day is also another festival derived from rituals of African culture specifically West Africa and revolves around the voting of a black official in New England colonies during the 18th century. Although many African-American names are common among the larger population of the United States, distinct naming trends have emerged within African-American culture. Prior to the s and s, most African-American names closely resembled those used within European American culture.

With the rise of the mid-century Civil Rights Movement, there was a dramatic rise in names of various origins. Efforts to recover African heritage inspired selection of names with deeper cultural significance. Before this, using African names was uncommon because African Americans were several generations removed from the last ancestor to have an African name, as slaves were often given European names and most surnames are of Anglo origin. African-American names have origins in many languages including French , Latin , English , Arabic , and African languages. One very notable influence on African-American names is the Muslim religion.

Islamic names entered the popular culture with the rise of The Nation of Islam among Black Americans with its focus on civil rights. The popular name " Aisha " has origins in the Qur'an. Despite the origins of these names in the Muslim religion and the place of the Nation of Islam in the civil rights movement, many Muslim names such as Jamal and Malik entered popular usage among Black Americans simply because they were fashionable, and many Islamic names are now commonly used by African Americans regardless of their religion.

Names of African origin began to crop up as well. By the s and s, it had become common within the culture to invent new names, although many of the invented names took elements from popular existing names. Even with the rise of creative names, it is also still common for African Americans to use biblical, historic, or European names. When slavery was practiced in the United States, it was common for families to be separated through sale. Even during slavery, however, many African-American families managed to maintain strong familial bonds.

Free African men and women, who managed to buy their own freedom by being hired out, who were emancipated, or who had escaped their masters, often worked long and hard to buy the members of their families who remained in bondage and send for them. Others, separated from blood kin, formed close bonds based on fictive kin; play relations, play aunts, cousins, and the like. This practice, a holdover from African oral traditions such as sanankouya , survived Emancipation, with non-blood family friends commonly accorded the status and titles of blood relations. This broader, more African concept of what constitutes family and community, and the deeply rooted respect for elders that is part of African traditional societies, may be the genesis of the common use of the terms like "cousin" or "cuz" , "aunt", "uncle", "brother", "sister", "Mother", and "Mama" when addressing other African-American people, some of whom may be complete strangers.

Immediately after slavery, African-American families struggled to reunite and rebuild what had been taken. As late as , when most African Americans lived under some form of segregation, 78 percent of African-American families were headed by married couples. This number steadily declined during the latter half of the 20th century. This apparent weakness is balanced by mutual-aid systems established by extended family members to provide emotional and economic support.

Older family members pass on social and cultural traditions such as religion and manners to younger family members. In turn, the older family members are cared for by younger family members when they cannot care for themselves. These relationships exist at all economic levels in the African-American community, providing strength and support both to the African-American family and the community.

Since the passing of the Voting Rights Act , African Americans are voting and being elected to public office in increasing numbers. As of , [update] there were approximately 10, African-American elected officials in America. Only 11 percent of African Americans voted for George W. Bush in the Presidential Election. Social issues such as racial profiling , [] the racial disparity in sentencing , [] higher rates of poverty , [] lower access to health care [] and institutional racism [] in general are important to the African-American community.

While the divide on racial and fiscal issues has remained consistently wide for decades, seemingly indicating a wide social divide, African Americans tend to hold the same optimism and concern for America as any other ethnic group. These political and social sentiments have been expressed through hip-hop culture, including graffiti, break-dancing, rapping, and more.

An area where African Americans in general outstrip whites is in their condemnation of homosexuality. Prominent leaders in the Black church have demonstrated against gay rights issues such as gay marriage. This stands in stark contrast to the down-low phenomenon of covert male—male sexual acts. There are those within the community who take a different position, notably the late Coretta Scott King [] and the Reverend Al Sharpton , the latter of whom, when asked in whether he supported gay marriage, replied that he might as well have been asked if he supported black marriage or white marriage.

African-American neighborhoods are types of ethnic enclaves found in many cities in the United States. The formation of African-American neighborhoods is closely linked to the history of segregation in the United States , either through formal laws, or as a product of social norms. Despite this, African-American neighborhoods have played an important role in the development of nearly all aspects of both African-American culture and broader American culture. Many affluent African-American communities exist today, including the following: Due to segregated conditions and widespread poverty, some African-American neighborhoods in the United States have been called "ghettos".

The use of this term is controversial and, depending on the context, potentially offensive. Despite mainstream America's use of the term "ghetto" to signify a poor urban area populated by ethnic minorities, those living in the area often used it to signify something positive. The African-American ghettos did not always contain dilapidated houses and deteriorating projects, nor were all of its residents poverty-stricken. For many African Americans, the ghetto was "home", a place representing authentic "blackness" and a feeling, passion, or emotion derived from the rising above the struggle and suffering of being of African descent in America.

Although African-American neighborhoods may suffer from civic disinvestment , [] with lower-quality schools, [] less-effective policing [] and fire protection, [] [] there are institutions such as churches and museums and political organizations that help to improve the physical and social capital of African-American neighborhoods. In African-American neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion. Many African-American neighborhoods are located in inner cities , and these are the mostly residential neighborhoods located closest to the central business district.

The built environment is often row houses or brownstones, mixed with older single-family homes that may be converted to multi-family homes. In some areas there are larger apartment buildings. Shotgun houses are an important part of the built environment of some southern African-American neighborhoods. The houses consist of three to five rooms in a row with no hallways. This African-American house design is found in both rural and urban southern areas, mainly in African-American communities and neighborhoods.

In Black Rednecks and White Liberals , Thomas Sowell suggested that modern urban black ghetto culture is rooted in the white Cracker culture of the North Britons and Scots-Irish who migrated from the generally lawless border regions of Britain to the American South, where they formed a redneck culture common to both blacks and whites in the antebellum South.