Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South - Softcover

Gomez, Michael A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807846945 ISBN 13: 9780807846940

Publisher: University North Carolina Pr, 1998

Synopsis

The transatlantic slave trade brought individuals from diverse African regions and cultures to a common destiny in the American South. In this comprehensive study, Michael Gomez establishes tangible links between the African American community and its African origins and traces the process by which African populations exchanged their distinct ethnic identities for one
defined primarily by the conception of race. He examines transformations in the politics, social structures, and religions of slave populations through 1830, by which time the contours of a new African American identity had begun to emerge.

After discussing specific ethnic groups in Africa, Gomez follows their movement to North America, where they tended to be amassed in recognizable concentrations within individual colonies (and, later, states). For this reason, he argues, it is possible to identify particular ethnic cultural influences and ensuing social formations that heretofore have been considered unrecoverable. Using sources pertaining to the African continent
as well as runaway slave advertisements, ex-slave narratives, and folklore, Gomez reveals concrete and specific links between particular African populations and their North American progeny, thereby shedding new light on subsequent African American social formation.

About this title

About the Author

Michael A. Gomez is a professor of history at New York University.

From the Back Cover

Recovers the diverse ethnic roots of Africans brought into slavery in the American South by identifying concrete links between African populations and their North American progeny.

Edition details

• Publisher: University North Carolina Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807846945
• ISBN 13: 9780807846940
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384