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Flying Africans
Flying Africans are figures of African diaspora legend who escape enslavement by a magical passage back over the ocean. Most noted in Gullah culture, they also occur in wider African-American folklore, and in that of some Afro-Caribbean peoples. Though it is generally agreed that the legend reflects a longing for a reversal of the Atlantic slave trade, scholars differ on the extent to which this should be seen as supernatural belief or as allegory: of freedom, death, the afterlife, and even metamorphosis or reincarnation. A common Gullah etiology given for this belief is the 1803 mass suicide at Igbo Landing as a form of resistance among newly enslaved people, although versions of the legend also occur across the African diaspora. Folklore In a Gullah context, the flying Africans are associated with Hoodoo spirituality, and sometimes perform their ascension through a ritual like a ring shout. Gullah lore also associates flying Africans with a magical iron hoe that works by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triangular Trade
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions. The Atlantic slave trade used a system of three-way trans-Atlantic exchanges – known historically as the triangular trade – which operated between Europe, Africa and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. A classic example is the colonial molasses trade, which involved the circuitous trading of slaves, sugar (often in liquid form, as molasses), and rum between West Africa, the West Indies and the northern colonies of British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The slaves grew the sugar that was used to brew rum, which in turn was traded for more slaves. In this circuit, the sea lane west from Africa to the West Indies (and later, also to Brazil) was known as the Middle Passag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salt
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantities in seawater. The open ocean has about of solids per liter of sea water, a salinity of 3.5%. Salt is essential for life in general, and saltiness is one of the basic human tastes. Salt is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous food seasonings, and is known to uniformly improve the taste perception of food, including otherwise unpalatable food. Salting, brining, and pickling are also ancient and important methods of food preservation. Some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 6,000 BC, when people living in the area of present-day Romania boiled spring water to extract salts; a salt-works in China dates to approximately the same period. Salt was also prized by the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arna Bontemps
Arna Wendell Bontemps ( ) (October 13, 1902 – June 4, 1973) was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. Early life Bontemps was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole family. His ancestors included free people of color and French colonists. His father was a contractor and sometimes would take his son to construction sites. As the boy got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz. His mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke, was a schoolteacher. Robert E. Fleming"Bontemps, Arna Wendell" ''American National Biography Online'', February 2000. Retrieved June 3, 2007. The family was Catholic, and Bontemps was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. They would later become Seventh-day Adventists. When Bontemps was three years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South and into cities of the North, Midwest and West. They settled i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue." Growing up in a series of Midwestern towns, Hughes became a prolific writer at an early age. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. He graduated from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, and soon began studies at Columbia University in New York City. Although he dropped out, he gained notice from New York publishers, first in ''The Crisis'' magazine and then from book publishers, and became known in the creative community in Harlem. He eventually graduated from Lincoln University. In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and short sto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Bennett (author)
John Bennett (May 14, 1865 – December 28, 1956) was an American author who is best known for the children's books that he wrote and illustrated. Some of them are anthologies of stories based on black folk tales, especially those drawn from the Gullah culture. He is considered to be a leading figure of the Charleston Renaissance. Early years and education Bennett was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, the son of a merchant. He learned to draw as a child, becoming skilled at the art of cutting silhouettes. He dropped out of high school to work for a newspaper, subsequently become a freelance author and illustrator. These were difficult years financially, and he developed eyestrain and depression that he treated with patent medicines containing cocaine, which led to addiction. By 1891 he had recovered, and that year he began contributing regularly to ''St. Nicholas Magazine'', a children's monthly. Bennett was largely self-educated as an illustrator. He wanted to go to art school, but he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is ''Their Eyes Were Watching God'', published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting for many of her stories. In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research while a student at Barnard College and Columbia University. She had an interest in African-American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to the community's identity. She also wrote fiction about contemporary issues in the Black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drums And Shadows
''Drums and Shadows'' is a book by Mary Granger published in 1940. The book is an account of oral folklore collected in Georgia from African Americans, namely the Gullah people of the Sea Islands, many of whom had been slaves. The main focus of the book is the set of beliefs gathered from these people, much of which today falls under the category of Hoodoo, including spirits, talismans, lucky and unlucky actions and omens. It also examines the use of drums and dancing during celebrations, funerals and baptisms, as well as other aspects of their folklore. Quotes from the interviewees are recorded in dialect. The African Americans interviewed descended from slaves who came directly from Africa on the slave ship the Wanderer that landed in Jekyll, Georgia in 1858. The ethnicity of the Africans were Bantu, Ewe, Igbo among many others. They brought their spiritual culture with them that developed into Hoodoo and other African American religious traditions. Granger uses the in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slave Narrative Collection
''Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States'' (often referred to as the WPA Slave Narrative Collection) is a collection of histories by formerly enslaved people undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938. It was the simultaneous effort of state-level branches of FWP in seventeen states, working largely separately from each other. FWP administrators sought to develop a new appreciation for the elements of American life from different backgrounds, including that from the last generation of formerly enslaved individuals. The collections of life histories and materials on African American life that resulted gave impetus to the collection. The collection of narratives and photographs, as works of the U.S. federal government, are in the public domain, has been digitized, and is available online. In addition, excerpts have been published by various publishers as printed books or on the Internet. The total coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage. Born enslaved in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
All God's Chillun Got Wings (song)
"All God's Chillun Got Wings" is a Negro spiritual song. "Chillun" is an old-fashioned dialect word for "children". (Robeson sings it as "children" in his recording, although the printed lyrics say "chillun".) Its title inspired the Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Nobel Prize in Literature, literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama tech ... play '' All God's Chillun Got Wings''. References External linksPaul Robeson recording of the song American folk songs [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is an African-American spiritual song and one of the best-known Christian hymns. Originating in early oral and musical African-American traditions, the date it was composed is unknown. Performances by the Hampton Singers and the Fisk Jubilee Singers brought the song to the attention of wider audiences in the late 19th century. J. B. T. Marsh includes an early version of text and tune in his 1876 publication ''The Story of the Jubilee Singers, with their Songs''. The earliest known recording of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was recorded in 1894, by the Standard Quartette. The song uses the theme of death to remind the audience of the glory that awaits in Heaven, when Christians believe they will transcend the earthly world of suffering and come to rest in their final home. Specifically, the text refers to the Old Testament account of the Prophet Elijah's ascent into Heaven by chariot. The stylistic elements and thematic content are highly typical to those o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spirituals
Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with Black Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs," work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft. Prior to the end of the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
