JAMES JORDAN
AFR 190
Dr. FONTENOT
AFRICANISMS IN AMERICA?
24th OCTOBER 2002
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In The Birth of African-American Culture, Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, attempt to expose
the “myths” that they feel have plagued African-American society. These “myths” that Mintz and Price
outline fall into three main categories: an existence of an African heritage in the Americas insofar as
surroundings and conditions allowed, the fact that cultures change, and the “encounter model” being too
simplistic. The conceptual framework within which they place their work is one of arguing for a “process”
approach to the existence of “Africanisms” in the Americas and, indeed, to the study of culture itself as
opposed to the “outcome” based theories advocated by scholars such as Melville J. Herskovits. I find no
fault in Mintz and Price’s decision to view cultures as dynamic; however, I do feel that their conclusions
are limited to the geographic locations upon which they based their study: mainly the Caribbean Islands
and some countries in South America. There can only be an acceptance of their findings on a very general
level because they do not account for the differences between each slave society and the myriad AfricanAmerican cultures that were produced.
The first “myth,” outlined by Mintz and Price is the contention that enslaved peoples of African
descent/birth were forced to create new institutions that would “prove responsive to the needs of everyday
life under the limiting conditions that slavery imposed on them” (Mintz and Price 19). This statement puts
forth the claim that an African culture or major chunks of the said culture did not survive wholesale and
without deviation from the native practices. They argue that while some “survivals” or “retentions” may be
found in African-American culture, these are more the exception than the rule. The example in The Birth
of African-American Culture is given of priests and priestesses being forcibly transported across the
Atlantic. Upon arrival in the New World there were no priesthoods or temples specific to the religion(s) of
those people; therefore, it was fairly impossible for the religion to remain intact over any sustained period
of time – thus they were forced to adapt/modify their beliefs and practices. The conclusions that Mintz and
Price provide cannot be accepted wholesale due to the previously mentioned geographic limitations of their
studies.
Melville J. Herskovits, in his seminal work on The Myth of the Negro Past, although conceding
Africanisms–the manifestation of something “African” in the Americas–that did survive were more general
in nature and “almost never directly referable to a specific tribe or a definite area” based his conclusions on
an “outcome” approach to anthropology (Herskovits 122). Mintz and Price attempted to refine and
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continue the groundwork laid by Herskovits in this field, but I do not think that they did the man complete
justice. Herskovits wrote that the amount slaves resisted acculturation is significant because it
demonstrated they had wills and that they resisted by holding onto their own culture(s). Furthermore,
Herskovits gave a much more in-depth analysis of why more “Africanisms” appear in some places as
opposed to others. For example, he cited the climate and topography of a place, the organization and
operation of the plantation, the numerical ratio of blacks to whites, and the contact between whites and
blacks in context of setting, i.e. rural or urban, to explain this cultural phenomenon (Herskovits 111). I
would contend that Mintz and Price only really speak to the third of the aforesaid reasons for the
“retention” or “survival” of Africanisms – the numerical ratio of blacks to whites. The authors chose to
focus their study on the Caribbean Islands thus neglecting the other African-American cultures that
developed in the United States and, ultimately, ignoring Herskovits’ plea for more research in the area.
The conclusions are only valid for the specific Islands and colonies that Mintz and Price identify because to
draw comparisons between slave societies without sufficient evidentiary support is not only dangerous, but
misleading as well.
In religion, there also seems to be a wealth of information and an evidential base for
“Africanisms.” One such example that Herskovits cited was that “spirit possession” was representative of
“one of the most direct African carry-overs to be encountered in this country [America]” (Herskovits 125).
Spirit possession is where one’s body is taken over by a spirit, thus rendering the person possessed out of
control, and is considered by many West Africans to be the highest form of religious experience. Funerals
and burial rites in slave societies also illustrate the existence of Africanisms due to “the widespread African
belief in the power of the ancestors to affect the life of their descendants” (Herskovits 197). Herskovits
also argued that burial was so important to the slaves that “not even the most hard-hearted masters were
ever quite willing to deny them” the opportunity to bury their dead in the way that they were accustomed to
(Herskovits 201). I found the most interesting survival of a West African belief found in the New World to
be the folk-tale detailing the “tar-baby” of Georgia. This “tar-baby” was “by no means a mere
manufactured, lifeless snare, but a living creature whose body through some mysterious freak of nature,
was composed of tar, and whose lips were ever parted in an ugly grin” (Herskovits 255). It was alleged to
wander through the forests “ever bent on ensnaring little folks into its yielding, through vice-like embrace”
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(Herskovits 255). The “tar-baby” is somewhat analogous to a devil-like figure in the Western world and,
Herskovits claimed, has “several points of resemblance with the bakru” (Herskovits 255). The bakru are
found in certain West African folklore and are similar yet fundamentally different to Herskovits’ “tarbaby,” (the latter being huge whilst the former are child-size) illustrating again how Africanisms have
survived in distorted fashion in African-American culture.
Mintz and Price argued, in 1976, that Africanisms do appear in African-American societies insofar
as the historical and economic surroundings have allowed. Even with the vast amount of research in the
field scholars are still making the case for the Middle Passage destroying African cultures. For example, in
Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood’s book, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the
American South and British Caribbean to 1830, they cite Jon Butler (who wrote in 1990) as a proponent of
this view, claiming that “the transatlantic slave trade shattered African systems of religion,” describing it as
a “holocaust that destroyed collective religious practice in colonial America” (Frey and Wood 35).
However, Frey and Wood dispute this resurfacing of a “myth” that Mintz and Price speak against by
illustrating similarities between New World and West (and West-Central) Africa, i.e. in the continuing
significance of grave gods, burial ceremonies—the existence of a first and second ceremony (Frey and
Wood 53). They also refer to the importance of music and song at these burials and the fact that they
always took place at night as evidence for “Africanisms” in the New World. Yet, they contend that these
“Africanisms” always occurred under the restraint of the plantation system, i.e. night was the only time
they could have performed these rituals (Frey and Wood 53).
Herskovits wrote, “it goes without saying that the plantation system rendered the survival of
African family types impossible,” thereby implying the oppressive nature of slavery totally destroyed
native African familial structures and that the subsequent “families” the slaves organized themselves into
were based along European lines—a myth (Herskovits 139). Mintz and Price, however, argued for a more
syncretic approach to the African-American family in which it was influenced by both African and
European traditions, a view strangely presented by Herskovits later in his book by declaring that “the
aspects of Negro family which diverge most strikingly from patterns of the white majority are seen to
deviate in the direction of resemblances to West African family life” (Herskovits 180). Phillip Morgan, in
his book, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry,
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offered support for this view when he alleged, “the important role of extended kin in slaves’ lives may
derive in part from African beliefs” (Morgan 553). Furthermore, Morgan cited “the slaves’ propensity for
thinking in kinship forms in addressing nonkin or the important role of fictive kinfolk where kin were
absent altogether–corresponds with what is known about basic assumptions concerning kinship in West
African societies” (Morgan 553). Herskovits’ book was written over sixty years ago and so the
modifications/extensions of his arguments concerning the family (and generally) by later authors such as
Mintz and Price (1976) and Phillip Morgan (1998) can be dealt with in more depth and conviction because
of the advantage they have of more extensive research being done in the field. Notwithstanding,
Herskovits did manage to cast doubt over the traditional view of the African family—that it was a
European-style construct—an issue that Mintz and Price expound upon and specify as a myth.
The second “myth” that Mintz and Price attempt to debunk is that cultures are dynamic and
subject to change over time. In this line of argumentation they attack traditional anthropology for the
“somewhat mechanical view of culture” and how it has de-emphasized “processes of change and
diversification” due to the limited methodology employed (Mintz and Price 13). They would argue that to
view culture as “a list of traits or objects or words is to miss the manner in which social relations are carried
on through it” (Mintz and Price 22). It is through the study of the processes, therefore, that will yield the
most valuable information concerned with cultures rather than their outcomes. However, they only talk
generally and give few, if any, specific examples preferring instead to criticize others for portraying
cultures as static.
Philip Morgan does an excellent job of outlining the processes of change in black/AfricanAmerican cultures in the Chesapeake and Lowcountry by cleverly including the influences of (and changes
in) “white culture,” particularly the dominant slaveholding class. The prevalent philosophy of the
slaveholders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was patriarchalism, which, according to Morgan,
later shifted to paternalism (Morgan 259). Morgan illustrates the fact that not only were African-American
cultures dynamic, but also those of the planter elites and the effects that both had on each other. Frey and
Wood attest that “the conversion of African Americans to Protestant Christianity was a, perhaps the,
defining moment in African American history,” citing religion as having a major influence on the changing
nature of African-American culture(s) (Frey and Wood xi). However, the authors of Come Shouting to
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Zion recognize the dynamism of the societies in West Africa (which is where they are concerned with)
through the vehicle of religion. For example, the development in of the traditional cosmologies in response
to other features of the modern situation, i.e. the rise of the nation-states, the proliferation of commerce
leading to less isolation and the coming of the missionaries all resulted in redefinitions of how the different
West African communities perceived the world (Frey and Wood 2). Frey and Wood contended that
religion became the slaves’ “primary source of cultural identity,” therefore, highlighting the importance of
religion in the creation of a culture for African-Americans – a point that Mintz and Price raise but do not
investigate as thoroughly as they should (Frey and Wood 1).
That the so-called “encounter model” is too simplistic is the main thrust of Mintz and Price’s
argument. In brief, they define this model as the encounter between an “African” and a European culture in
a New World setting as a result of slavery. They stated that in order to think this, scholars have been
compelled “either to posit the existence of a generalized West African cultural ‘heritage,’ which Africans
of diverse backgrounds brought to a given colony, or to argue that the bulk of Africans in that colony came
from some particular ‘tribe’ or cultural group” (Mintz and Price 7). Basically, the authors alleged that there
was (is) no generalized West African heritage. They do, however, put forth the case for there being
“underlying levels of unity” through which the levels can be discerned by examining the [Africans’]
“cognitive orientations” in their basic assumptions about human relations and their understanding of
causality (Mintz and Price 11,10). Mintz and Price argued that because slaves were drawn from different
parts of the African continent and from different ethnic and linguistic groups and societies in any given
region there was no common culture on a generalized scale. Furthermore, they asserted that the Africans
who found themselves forcibly transported to the New World were more heterogeneous crowds than
communities – thereby implying the inherent differences between them (Mintz and Price 18). And lastly,
perhaps the authors’ most important point: there was no shared culture and community until the slaves
themselves created one.
In agreement with Mintz and Price, Phillip Morgan argued that there was no real homogeneity
between the slaves and that African-Americans had little chance to assimilate because of the rising tide of
African imports—particularly in the Lowcountry (Morgan 19). Here, Morgan takes the argument to a new
level by building on previous contentions of that there was no single “West African culture” by implying
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that the continued influx of Africans influenced (perhaps prevented) a new African-American culture(s)
being formed. He, unlike Mintz and Price, illustrated the differences between geographic locations and
thus, builds upon Herskovits’ work insofar as the climate and topography, organization and operation of the
plantation affected the growth of an African-American culture(s). Morgan articulates that in the
Lowcountry, rice was the prevalent cash crop and so in order to grow it in profitable amounts large groups
of slaves were “tasked” to do this. The result was larger communities of slaves, a higher ratio of blacks to
whites and a less “assimilist” culture than their Chesapeake counterparts (Morgan 20). Again, Morgan
furthers Herskovits’ argument a step closer to the truth by attempting to distinguish between what George
Orwell termed “the undifferentiated brown stuff” (Orwell 427). Herskovits, Mintz and Price, and a whole
host of scholars are guilty of concentrating their research on areas where the black to white ratio was
highest, paying little attention to the obvious differences between the slaves. Morgan attempted to illustrate
these differences, i.e. some were Africans, some were Creoles, and that none had a common heritage
beyond the fact that they were all slaves. As evidence of this, Morgan notes: “on the eve of the Revolution,
more than a third of South Carolina’s slave population consisted of Africans, whereas in Virginia more than
nine of ten slaves were American born” (Morgan 62). This allows distinct differences between slave
populations and thus cultures because while a Creole community was beginning to take root in the
Chesapeake, in the Lowcountry Africans formed a significant enough minority to maintain a certain
amount of cultural instability in those societies.
The “encounter model” has been pretty much disregarded today and even though Herskovits
argued that slaves were taken from a “relatively restricted region in the area that slaving was carried on,”
recent scholarship has shown that they were drawn from a very wide area indeed (Herskovits 53). Morgan
alleged that Africa was linguistically very complex and though there were many Africans who could speak
different languages “the loss of the indigenous tongue meant the loss of much of the culture that was
inextricably bound up with it” (Morgan 560). This is also an issue that Jill Lepore took up in her book on
King Philip’s War in which she placed language as central to a culture and that its loss meant a
deterioration from that culture. I believe that it would have been impossible for a West African culture to
have survived wholesale in the New World given that they had no native written language(s) and so relied
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upon an oral tradition that was bound to, over time and exposure to other traditions, become diluted and
differ somewhat from its original form.
Frey and Wood added to the “encounter” discussion when they claimed that instead of being
“culturally homogenous,” the transported Africans were “culturally compatible” – which built upon Mintz
and Price’s argument for the underlying unities that West Africans possessed (Frey and Wood 45).
However, unlike Mintz and Price, Frey and Wood asserted that the linguistic and cultural differences were
not so severe that the Africans could not transcend them. Thus, the authors point to the intellectual
capability and propensity the West Africans had in being able to create for themselves a new culture(s) in
the New World faster than their European masters – an issue that Mintz and Price readily agree on. Alan
Kulikoff, in his book Tobacco and Slaves, also disagrees with the so-called “encounter model” by stating,
“the African-American slaves developed their own social institutions and indigenous culture during the
second-half of the eighteenth century” (Kulikoff 350). Therefore, he is implying that the slaves had no
homogenous culture to begin with but developed their own in response to the conditions that befell them
based on what they could remember of their homeland and what had been passed down through the rapidly
growing kin networks.
Mintz and Price’s attempt to debunk the “myths” that they feel have plagued the study of AfricanAmerican culture are a genuine effort to convey the main points of the problem to the ordinary reader.
However, in 84 pages, I feel it is verily impossible to provide a comprehensive study into all the aspects of
the birth of African-American culture. There is not enough research done in North America and they admit
as much when they wrote, “we would suggest tentatively that similar scenarios may have unfolded in many
other parts of Afro-America and for other cultural sub-systems as well” (Mintz and Price 50). Mintz and
Price are guilty of generalizing on a massive scale the experiences of slaves in the Caribbean and parts of
South America to the experience of slaves in North America – that each slave society was inherently
different I think I have made perfectly clear, drawing upon the works of Morgan and Herskovits. There
was no universal slave experience; Herskovits got that one exactly right when he identified the different
factors involved in shaping a slave society. I do agree with Mintz and Price to the extent that cultures are
dynamic and subject to change, although, I would have liked them to expand upon the religious angle a
little more and to include the fact that changes in white cultures also shaped slave cultures. In sum, I
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believe that Africanisms did survive in the New World although they manifested themselves differently in
different places due to myriad factors and that the slaves were the active agents in creating for themselves a
new culture(s) “forged in the fires of enslavement” (Mintz and Price 82).
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Works Cited
Frey, Sylvia R. and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African-American Protestantism in the
American South and British Caribbean to 1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 1998.
Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon, 1941.
Kulikoff, Alan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake,
1680-1800. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Mintz, Sidney W. and Richard Price. The Birth of African-American Culture. Boston: Beacon,
1976.
Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and
Lowcountry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 1998.
Orwell, Sonia and Ian Angus ed. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell.
Harmondsworth: Non Pareil Books, 1970.
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Bibliography
Frey, Sylvia R. and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African-American Protestantism in the
American South and British Caribbean to 1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 1998.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1974.
Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon, 1941.
Kulikoff, Alan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake,
1680-1800. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New
York: Vintage Books, 1998.
Mintz, Sidney W. and Richard Price. The Birth of African-American Culture. Boston: Beacon,
1976.
Morgan, Edmund. S. American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.
New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1975.
Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and
Lowcountry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 1998.
Orwell, Sonia and Ian Angus ed. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell.
Harmondsworth: Non Pareil Books, 1970.
Phillips, Ulrich B. Life and Labor in the Old South. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1929.