African American History - Social Aspects, United States - Civilization

Black Legacy

Name: Black Legacy
Author: William D. Piersen
ISBN: 9780870238598

by William D. Piersen

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Overview

Drawing on a vast wealth of evidence - folktales, oral histories, religious rituals, and music - this book explores the pervasive if often unacknowledged influence of African traditions on American life. The result is a bold reinterpretation of American history that disrupts conventional assumptions and turns racial stereotypes inside out. William D. Piersen begins by examining a series of African and African-American oral narratives that interpret the experience of slavery from a distinctly black perspective. Centered on issues of moral truth, these tales bear witness to the meaning and human cost of the slave trade as perceived by those who were its victims. Piersen then analyzes the ways in which enslaved Africans adapted their rich cultural heritage to the new circumstances they were forced to endure. He shows, for example, how they imaginatively - and often aggressively - devised forms of public satire to resist white authority. He traces the transfer of traditional African medical knowledge to the Americas and demonstrates that in antebellum America many black healers were more skilled than their white counterparts. He further shows how African customs helped shape the evolving contours of American culture - particularly in the South - from holiday celebrations, musical traditions, and architectural styles to modes of speech, habits of work, and ways of cooking. The black legacy to America even extended, ironically, to the Ku Klux Klan, whose founders imitated masking traditions handed down from West African secret societies. By reestablishing the forgotten cultural links between Africa and America, this study enriches our understanding of American history and is a powerful testament to the legacy of African culture in American life.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Intriguing and challenging, this multidisciplinary study argues for more recognition of the African influence on the culture of the United States and the rest of the Americas. Historian Piersen ( Black Yankees ) first compares African and African American folk myths in which blacks attempted to understand the reasons for their enslavement; he finds in the tales hints of a ``common pan-African world view.'' Many African slaves had royal blood, he notes, and their leadership qualities were honored in New World black communities. Piersen also presents evidence that Africans brought skillful holistic medical techniques, including a form of inoculation against smallpox, as well as a great concern with personal cleanliness. While Piersen argues cogently for greater recognition of the black influence on New Orleans' Mardi Gras, his suggestion that the Ku Klux Klan borrowed its masked style from African secret societies is admittedly speculative. He also finds African influence in Southern manners, cooking and preaching. This study, Piersen writes, makes a strong argument that a melting pot existed. (June)

Library Journal

In this strong argument for taking America's African heritage seriously, historian Piersen has followed his award-winning Black Yankees ( LJ 2/1/88) with a remarkable study of how a coherent African cosmology has shaped and shared U.S. culture from earliest times. Ranging from subjects as diverse as moral truth to holistic medicine and cooking, he shows African hands fashioning the American soul, mind, and body. From architectural styles to habits of work, modes of speech, musical traditions, and celebrations, African peoples have configured American culture. Piersen's deeply instructive analysis supplements Melville Herskovits's classic The Myth of the Negro Past (1941) and joins recent works such as Leland Ferguson's Uncommon Ground ( LJ 1/91) and William L. Van Deburg's New Day in Babylon ( LJ 8/92) in weaving the intricate African American elements into the fabric of U.S. culture. Recommended for U.S. history and African American collections.-- Thomas J. Davis, Univ. at Buffalo, N.Y.

Booknews

Explores the pervasive, and often unacknowledged, influence of African traditions on American culture. Piersen examines African and African- American legends that explain the power imbalance between blacks and whites; the aristocratic heritage of many slaves; the often superior healing abilities of African medicine; and the black legacy in American (particularly Southern) speech, cooking, music, architectural style, and institutions, such as Mardi Gras. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)