Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black AtlanticThe first slaves imported to America did not see themselves as "African" but rather as Temne, Igbo, or Yoruban. In Becoming African in America, James Sidbury reveals how an African identity emerged in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world, tracing the development of "African" from a degrading term connoting savage people to a word that was a source of pride and unity for the diverse victims of the Atlantic slave trade. In this wide-ranging work, Sidbury first examines the work of black writers--such as Ignatius Sancho in England and Phillis Wheatley in America--who created a narrative of African identity that took its meaning from the diaspora, a narrative that began with enslavement and the experience of the Middle Passage, allowing people of various ethnic backgrounds to become "African" by virtue of sharing the oppression of slavery. He looks at political activists who worked within the emerging antislavery moment in England and North America in the 1780s and 1790s; he describes the rise of the African church movement in various cities--most notably, the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as an independent denomination--and the efforts of wealthy sea captain Paul Cuffe to initiate a black-controlled emigration movement that would forge ties between Sierra Leone and blacks in North America; and he examines in detail the efforts of blacks to emigrate to Africa, founding Sierra Leone and Liberia. Elegantly written and astutely reasoned, Becoming African in America weaves together intellectual, social, cultural, religious, and political threads into an important contribution to African American history, one that fundamentally revises our picture of the rich and complicated roots of African nationalist thought in the U.S. and the black Atlantic. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 72
Page 3
... sought to capitalize on his growing fame by publishing a memoir. After a short discussion of the racial characteristics of the “regular coast of Guinea nigger,” the memoir turns to Aldridge's royal African origins. Aldridge's ...
... sought to capitalize on his growing fame by publishing a memoir. After a short discussion of the racial characteristics of the “regular coast of Guinea nigger,” the memoir turns to Aldridge's royal African origins. Aldridge's ...
Page 4
... sought shelter with friends and allies in surrounding villages, remaining in hiding for nine years until they were finally able to arrange their escape to America.1 If this account of Ira Aldridge's origins seems fantastical, that is ...
... sought shelter with friends and allies in surrounding villages, remaining in hiding for nine years until they were finally able to arrange their escape to America.1 If this account of Ira Aldridge's origins seems fantastical, that is ...
Page 6
... sought to reinterpret, in part because they worked within Western literary and cultural traditions. Thus, the African identity that they claimed was not an ethnic identity—like Temne, Igbo, Kongo, or Yoruban—that might either have had ...
... sought to reinterpret, in part because they worked within Western literary and cultural traditions. Thus, the African identity that they claimed was not an ethnic identity—like Temne, Igbo, Kongo, or Yoruban—that might either have had ...
Page 8
... sought a way to recreate the unity among sub-Saharan Africans that they perceived to have been broken in postbiblical times. The tension between this mythic and nearly essentialist sense of African identity and the more contingent ...
... sought a way to recreate the unity among sub-Saharan Africans that they perceived to have been broken in postbiblical times. The tension between this mythic and nearly essentialist sense of African identity and the more contingent ...
Page 9
... sought a fresh start and a more hospitable new home. Slightly more than 1,000 of these selfstyled “Nova Scotians” accepted the British government's offer of free transportation to Sierra Leone and created a settlement at Freetown that ...
... sought a fresh start and a more hospitable new home. Slightly more than 1,000 of these selfstyled “Nova Scotians” accepted the British government's offer of free transportation to Sierra Leone and created a settlement at Freetown that ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
2 Toward a Transformed Africa | 39 |
3 An African Homeland? | 67 |
4 Out of America | 91 |
5 Becoming African in the English Atlantic | 131 |
6 African Churches and an African Nation | 157 |
7 Becoming American in Liberia and in the United States 18201830 | 181 |
Epilogue | 203 |
Notes | 211 |
Bibliography | 255 |
Index | 277 |
Other editions - View all
Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic James Sidbury Limited preview - 2007 |
Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic James Sidbury Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
African identity African Masons African Methodist African nation African Union African Union Society American Colonization Society antislavery asserted Atlantic Atlantic slave trade authors Baltimore Bethel black Americans black discourse Black Loyalists brethren British Carretta chap Christian claim coast of Africa colony Colored Company Company’s congregations Cuffe's Logs Cuffe’s cultural Daniel Coker diaspora discourse on African discussions emigration England enslaved Equiano and Cugoano evangelical filiative free black freedom Freetown George God’s governor Gronniosaw hoped Hundredors Huntingdonian ibid Ignatius Sancho Interesting Narrative James Forten John Clarkson John Marrant Jones kinship Kizell land leaders Liberia living Logs and Letters London Lott Cary movement native Nova Scotians offered Olaudah Equiano oppression Paul Cuffe Peters Philadelphia political Prince Hall promised Pybus race racial racism reel religious Russwurm Savannah settlers shared Sierra Leone slave trade slavery Society’s sought Temne transformation Tythingmen United vision Wheatley and Sancho Wheatley’s William Zachary Macaulay