Afro-Americans and Africa: Grass Roots Afro-American Opinion and Attitudes toward Africa

Abstract

It has long and widely been assumed that Afro-Americans have a special concern for African affairs, an assumption resulting from the West African ancestry of Afro-Americans. It is thought that these descendants, like other ethnic entities in the United States, desire some form of continuing linkage to the “motherland.” Historically this has been illustrated in several ways: Often descendants of Africa in America have referred to themselves as African and identified their organizations as such (Berry and Blassingame 1982:389), there are direct sociocultural “African survivals” (Herskovits 1958:7), and Afro-Americans often express sympathy for continental “African aspirations” (Hoadley 1972:490). The pinnacle of this may have been reached during the 1960s, a period referred to as the era of cultural nationalism, when African dress, inter alia, was adopted by Afro-Americans (Brisbane 1974:175).