African Voices in the African American Heritage

African slaves brought to North America were stripped of their possessions.

Slave owners tried to strip them of their culture too.

The dominance of European American culture suppressed the traits of African traditions until the majority of scholars thought, even into the 1970s, that virtually all significant traces had been erased.

But those scholars were wrong. Although the slaves' hands were empty, their heads and hearts remained full.

Africans kept their values in religious and family structures, and kept their ideas about how to organize their communities.

Despite the traumas of slavery, Reconstruction, segregation, and continuing racism, these ways of life survived.

Drawing on oral history, interviews, folklore, song lyrics, and the works of two major African American folk artists, Sam Doyle and Bill Traylor as well as printed historical documentation, "African Voices in the African American Heritage" reveals African influences on African American life and shows how the African impulse fed American culture even into the 20th century.