Page 152 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

african-american and caribbean religions 37

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s
sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and
to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. • Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)

African kingdoms, while in the Islamic world, the African Descendents of Kongo and Yoruba peoples account for
slave trade expanded commerce in the Indian Ocean and about 17 percent of the African population in Jamaica,
the Persian Gulf. In the Americas, it was a key component while the Akan and Kalabari account for, respectively, 25
in the success of plantations established by Europeans. In percent and 30 percent of the Jamaican population. It is
addition, wealth generated by slavery transformed Euro- estimated that on Cuba and Hispaniola (the island that
pean economies dramatically, and the African slave trade is home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic) Kongo
also transformed African religions and fostered the ethnic groups constitute 40 percent of the African popu-
spread of these religions around the world. lation, while the Yoruba and other related groups shipped
from the Bight of Benin make up, respectively, 15 percent
African Religions and 40 percent of the African populations of Haiti and
in the New World Cuba. Among the descendants of slaves in the United
In the Americas, the institution of slavery persisted much States, it is estimated that one in four African Americans
longer in some places than others.With the exception of is of Kongo descent and that one in seven African Amer-
African slaves in Haiti—who initiated a revolution in icans is of Yoruba descent. It should be noted that few
1791 and in 1804 established the first black republic in slaves came to the United States directly from Africa.
the Americas—Africans became emancipated in the Most had worked plantations elsewhere before being sold
Americas in the following order: Jamaica and Trinidad in in the United States.
1838; the United States in 1863; Puerto Rico in 1873; These percentages are important for understanding
Cuba in 1886; and Brazil in 1888. These dates are African religions in the New World. Whenever a large
highly significant. For example, the ethnologist Pierre number of slaves from a particular place in Africa were
Verger (1968) contends that the “purest” forms of African sold to a single New World location, they were better able
religion are to be found in northeastern Brazil primarily to preserve selected aspects of their religions. Such reli-
because the slave trade to Brazil continued illegally into gious retentions were never exact replicas of African reli-
the twentieth century. gious practices. They represented a syncretism or
Of the Africans taken to the Americas as slaves, 99 per- blending. One reason for this is that African tribal reli-
cent came from an area stretching from modern-day gions were revealed over time. Only elders possessed
Senegal and Mali in the north to Zaire and Angola in the extensive religious knowledge. During the early years of
south. This corridor encompasses a number of ethnic slavery, elders were seldom enslaved because older cap-
groups belonging to the Niger-Kongo language family.A tives rarely survived the rigorous passage to the New
common language base and common cultural traditions World. Most first-generation slaves were under twenty
facilitated the movement and exchange of people, goods, years of age, and few were over thirty. Their knowledge
and ideas along this corridor. of religious ritual was limited to what they had person-
These ethnic groups also shared similar concepts con- ally seen and/or experienced. On the other hand, later in
cerning deities, the universe, the social order, and the the slave trade there were African religious specialists (like
place of humans within that order. Unifying themes of Robert Antoine, the nineteenth-century founder of the
African systems of belief and worship include the fol- first Rada compound in Trinidad) who voluntarily
lowing: the idea that there is one god who created and migrated to the Caribbean specifically to establish African
controls the universe; a focus on blood sacrifices; and religious centers in the New World.
belief in the forces of nature, ancestral spirits, divination, The relationship between African religions as practiced
the magical and medicinal powers of herbs, the existence in Africa and these same religions in the New World is
of an afterlife, and the ability of humans to communicate replete with examples of what Pierre Verger (1968, 31)
with deities through trance-possession states. has termed “flux and reflux.” Building on a lifetime of