THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA
Published electronically by its author, Norman Coombs, and Project
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(C 1993) by Norman Coombs
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This text is based on the original publication:
THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA
The Immigrant Heritage of America
By Norman Coombs
Publisher: Twayne, (c 1972)
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction (omitted from electronic version)
PART ONE From Freedom to Slavery
1. African Origins
The Human Cradle
West African Empires
The Culture of West Africa
2. The Human Market
The Slave Trade
Caribbean Interlude
3. Slavery As Capitalism
The Shape of American Slavery
North American and South American Slavery
Slavery and the Formation of Character
Slave Response
4. All Men Are Created Equal
Slavery and the American Revolution
Slave Insurrections
Growing Racism
Part Two. Emancipation without Freedom
5. A Nation Divided
Black Moderates and Militants
White Liberals
Growth of Extremism
6. From Slavery to Segregation
Blue, Gray, and Black
Reconstruction and Its Failure
The New Racism
7. Racism and Democracy
Fighting Jim Crow
Making the World Safe for Democracy
Urban Riots
The Klan Revival
Part Three. The Search For Equality
8. The Crisis of Leadership
The Debate Over Means and Ends
Booker T. Washington: The Trumpet of Conciliation
W. E. B. DuBois: The Trumpet of Confrontation
Marcus Garvey: The Trumpet of Pride
A. Philip Randolph: The Trumpet of Mobilization
9. The New Negro
Immigration and Migration
Harlem: "The Promised Land"
The Negro Renaissance
Black Nationalism
10. Fighting Racism at Home and Abroad
Hard Times Again
The Second World War
The U.S. and the U.N.
11. Civil Rights and Civil Disobedience
Schools and Courts
The Civil Rights Movement
12. The Black Revolt
Civil Disorders
Black Power
Epilogue
Notes and References (omitted from electronic version)
Bibliography (omitted from electronic version)
Index (omitted from electronic version)
Preface
During the last several years, the study of American history has turned a
new direction. Previously, it emphasized how the various immigrant
groups in America shed their divergent heritages and amalgamated into a
new nationality. More recently, scholars and laymen alike have become
more sensitive to the ways in which these newcomers have kept aspects
from their past alive, and there is a new awareness of the degree to
which ethnicity continues as a force within America.
Most of the original settlers were British, Protestant, and white. Many
of the later arrivals differed from them, in one or more ways. History
books usually depicted these new waves of immigrants as assimilating
almost fully into American society. However, recent writings have put
more stress on the ethnic diversities which remain and on the rich
variety of contributions which were made to the American scene by each
new nationality.
This volume depicts the immigrants from Africa as one among the many
elements which created present-day America. On the one hand, they differ
from the other minorities because they came involuntarily, suffered the
cruelties of slavery, and were of another color. All of this made their
experience unique. On the other hand, they shared much in common with the
other minorities, many of whom also felt like aliens in their new land.
Throughout most of American history, political power has been held
tightly by the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant majority. Historical
presentations which stressed the political component, thereby tended to
leave the later immigrants in the background. However, because these
newcomers did not assimilate fully into the mainstream of America, they
maintained some of their ethnic identity and made fresh and unique
contributions to American life. A socio-cultural approach to history,
through highlighting society and culture rather than politics, brings
these minorities into proper focus.
This study of Afro-Americans seeks to describe the character and culture
which they produced for themselves in America. It also points to the many
important contributions which they have made to American cultural life.
The spotlight is on what they felt and thought, on the attitudes they
developed, and on their increasingly vocal protests against the unfair
treatment which they believed was directed at them.
Besides taking a socio-cultural approach to the subject, this book is
deliberately interpretive rather than being merely a narrative of events.
It is reasonably brief in the hope that it will appeal to interested
laymen. At the same time, it contains a number of footnotes so that
either scholars or laymen, wanting to check their thoughts against the
interpretation presented here, can readily use this book as a guide to
further reading. (Note the footnotes are not in this electronic version.)
If at times the treatment of the white majority seems harsh, it is
because, in my opinion, it is still necessary for Americans to take a
long, cold look at the chilling facts which have too often been ignored.
Yet, times and people do change. Race relations in America are not today
what they were a century ago. The progress of history may not be the wide
highway moving steadily and smoothly upward as many have believed, but
the racial picture in America has altered and will continue to do
so--sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Nevertheless, it
is only by knowing ourselves that we can intelligently face our crises. I
hope that this volume will assist the reader as he struggles with this
difficult task.
Norman Coombs
September, 1971
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deep appreciation to the National Endowment
for the Arts and Humanities and to the Rochester Institute of Technology
for providing me with much of the time which made this research possible.
I am also indebted to Professors Benjamin Quarles and Merle Curti for
kindly reading and commenting on the manuscript. My thanks are also
extended to my father, Earl Coombs, for his invaluable assistance in
helping with the hours of painstaking research demanded by such a
project. Miss Dorothy Ruhl provided the detailed, careful labor necessary
to help prepare the manuscript for the printer, and Mrs. Doris Kist
performed the demanding task of proofreading it. I also want to thank
Cecyle S. Neidle, the editor of the Immigrant Heritage of America series,
for her helpful supervision and advice. Finally, I owe a deep debt of
gratitude to my wife, Jean, for typing the manuscript, for a host of
other miscellaneous tasks and, above all, for her forbearance and
encouragement.
N. C.
PART ONE From Freedom to Slavery
CHAPTER 1
African Origins
The Human Cradle
THREE and a half centuries of immigration have injected ever-fresh doses
of energy and tension into the American bloodstream. As diverse peoples
learned to live together, they became a dynamo generating both creativity
and conflict. One of the most diverse elements in American life was
introduced when Africans were forcibly brought to the American colonies.
The American experiment had begun and consisted mainly of white men with
a European heritage. The African was of a different color, had a
different language, a different religion, and had an entirely different
world view. But perhaps the most striking contrast was that, while the
European came voluntarily in search of greater individual opportunity,
the African came in chains. Because the European was the master and
thereby the superior in the relationship, he assumed that his heritage
was also superior. However, he was mistaken, because the African had a
rich heritage of importance both to himself and to mankind. When people
interact intimately over a long period of time, the influences are
reciprocal. This is true even when their relationship is that of master
and slave.
To trace the importance of the African heritage one must go back millions
of years. Evidence is accumulating to the effect that Africa is the
cradle of mankind. Professor Louis Leakey argues that Africa was
important in the development of mankind in three ways. First, some thirty
or forty million years ago, the basic stock which eventually gave rise to
both man and the ape came into existence in the vicinity of the Nile
Valley. Second, some twelve or fourteen million years ago, the main
branch which was to lead to the development of man broke away from the
branch leading to the ape. Third, about two million years ago, in the
vicinity of East Africa, true man broke away from his now extinct manlike
cousins. The present species of man-Homo Sapiens--developed through a
complex process of natural selection from a large number of different
manlike creatures-hominids.
One of the most numerous of the early hominids was Australopithecus
Africanus who originated in Africa. Although he also did some hunting, he
lived mainly by collecting and eating vegetables. One of the things that
identified him as a man was his utilization of primitive tools. He had a
pointed stone which may have been used to sharpen sticks, and these
sticks were probably used for digging roots to augment his food supply.
Leakey believes that Homo Habilis, who lived in East Africa about two
million years ago, was the immediate ancestor of man and the most
advanced of all the hominids. Although the hominids spread far outside of
Africa, it is clear that they originate there and that it was in Africa
that true man first emerged. As Darwin predicted a century ago, Africa
has been found to be the father of mankind.
For many thousands of years, Homo Sapiens and the other hominids lived
side by side in Africa as elsewhere. By ten thousand years ago, however,
all the hominids had disappeared. Scholars believe that this was the
result of the gradual absorption of all the other hominids by the more
biologically advanced Homo Sapiens. This process may explain the
appearance of variations within Homo Sapiens. At various times and
places, as Homo Sapiens absorbed other hominid strains, differences
within Homo Sapiens developed. In any case it is clear that the various
types of man came into existence very early. In Africa, this process led
to the development of three main types: the brownish-yellow Bushmen in
the south, the darker Negroes throughout most of the continent and the
Caucasoid Mediterranean types in the north.
Most of the concepts, held even by scholars about the nature and origin
of races, are being proven inaccurate. Anthropological literature used to
suggest that skin color in some groups was a possible indication of
Mongoloid influences or that the thin, straight lips common in another
group could be envisioned as a Caucasoid feature. However, it has become
increasingly obvious that an analysis based on specific single traits
such as these is always a poor indication of either racial origin or of
racial contact. In fact, they could just as likely be the result of
spontaneous and local variations within a given population grouping. In
contrast, recent anthropological research is putting less emphasis on
bone measurement and shape and, instead, is turning increasingly to
technical analysis particularly through the examination of blood types.
Making and using tools are what differentiate man from animals. The
earliest tools which have survived the wear of time were made of stone.
As man's techniques of handling stone improved, so did his tools. The
hand axe, a large oval of chipped flint varying in size and weight, came
into common usage about half a million years ago, and it has been found
in much of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This too seems to have had an
African origin. While scholars are not certain about its use, it was
probably used for killing animals and for chopping meat.
The first achievement which radically altered man's condition was the
invention of tools. The second achievement was his learning of primitive
agriculture which transformed the hunter into the farmer. The
domestication of animals and the planting and cultivating of crops had
begun in the Near East, but the practice shortly spread to the Nile
Valley in Northeast Africa. At the same time, farming communities sprang
up throughout the Sahara which, at that time, was going through one of
its wet phases. This made it well-suited to early agriculture. Farming
permitted men to live together in communities and to pursue a more
sedentary way of life. Actually, some Africans had already adopted a
sedentary community life before the arrival of farming. Making hooks from
bones led to the development of a few fishing communities near
present-day Kenya.
As the communities along the Nile grew in size and number, society began
to develop a complex urban civilization. By 3,200 B.C. the communities
along the Nile had become politically united under the first of a line of
great pharaohs. These early Egyptians undoubtedly were comprised of a
racial mixture. The ancient Greeks viewed the Egyptians as being dark in
complexion, and it has been estimated that the Egyptian population at the
beginning was at least one-third Negro. Herodotus says that it was
impossible to tell whether the influence of the Egyptians on the
Ethiopians was stronger than that of the Ethiopians on the Egyptians.
What Herodotus and the Greeks referred to as Ethiopia was, in fact, the
kingdom of Kush. It was located up the Nile from Egypt. As the Egyptian
empire grew in strength and wealth, it strove to expand its power over
its neighbors. Egypt sent several military expeditions south along the
Nile to try to conquer the black people of Kush. They failed and the
Kushites, in turn, endeavored to extend their power over Egypt. In 751
B.C., Kush invaded Egypt and, shortly thereafter, conquered it. This
occupation of Egypt lasted for over a hundred years, until both the
Kushites and the Egyptians were defeated by an invading army from Assyria
in 666 B.C. At that point, the Kushites returned to the safety of their
homeland.
The Kushites and the Egyptians had been defeated by a superior
technology. While they were fighting with weapons made of copper and
bronze, the Assyrians fought with iron. Methods of smelting and working
iron had been developed centuries before by the Hittites who lived in
Asia Minor. The use of iron spread across the Near East, becoming the
basis for the Assyrian power. After their defeat in 666 B.C., the
Kushites and the Egyptians rapidly adopted the new iron technology. The
coming of the Iron Age to Africa meant the production of better weapons
and tools. Better weapons provided safety from hostile foes and
protection from ferocious beasts. Better axes meant that man could live
in densely forested regions where he had not been able to live before.
Better farm implements meant that more food could be grown with less
work, this again encouraged the development of denser population centers.
By 300 B.C., Kush had become an important iron-producing center. Its
capital, Meroe located on the upper Nile, developed into a thriving
commercial and industrial city. Archeological diggings have unearthed the
remains of streets, houses, sprawling palaces, and huge piles of slag
left from its iron industry. When scholars are able to decipher the
Kushitic writings much more will be known about the culture and way of
life of this early black empire. In the first century A.D. a Kushite
official, whom the Bible refers to as the Ethiopian eunuch, was converted
to Christianity by the apostle Philip while returning from a visit to
Jerusalem. Shortly, Christianity spread throughout the entire kingdom.
When Kush was defeated by the Axumites, founders of modern Ethiopia,
several smaller Nubian, Christian kingdoms survived. Not until the
sixteenth century, after almost a thousand years of pressure, did Islam
gain supremacy in western Sudan. Ethiopia, shortly after defeating Kush,
also became Christianized, and survived as a African only Christian
island in a Moslem sea. In fact, Ethiopia has remained an independent,
self-governing state until the present, with the brief exception of the
Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941.
The development of man and civilization in Africa was not limited merely
to the area in the Northeast. There is much evidence of cultural contact
between people in all parts of the continent. When the Sahara began to
dry out about 2000 B.C., the population was pushed out from there in all
directions, thereby forcing the spread of both people and cultures. Even
then, the Sahara did not become a block to communication as has been
thought. There is clear evidence that trade routes continued to be used
even after the Sahara became a desert. Scholars also have found that,
shortly after the Iron Age reached North Africa, iron tools began to
appear throughout the entire continent, and, within few centuries, iron
production was being carried on at a number of different locations. At
about the same time, sailors from the far East brought the yam and the
banana to the shores of Africa. These fruits spread rapidly from the
east coast across most of the continent, becoming basic staples in the
African diet. New tools and new crops rapidly expanded the food supply
and thereby provided a better way of life.
West African Empires
Although West Africa had been inhabited since the earliest times, about
two thousand years ago several events occurred which injected new vigor
into the area. The first event had been the drying of the Sahara, which
had driven new immigrants into West Africa and, from the admixture of
these new people with the previous inhabitants, a new vitality developed.
Then, the introduction of the yam and the banana, as previously noted,
significantly increased the food supply. Finally, the developments of
iron tools and of iron work further increased the food supply and also
provided better weapons. This permitted increased military power and
political expansion. These were the necessary ingredients that led to the
building of three large and powerful empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhay.
Commerce was another factor which contributed to their development.
Governmental control of a thriving trade in both gold and salt provided
the wealth and power necessary for establishing these large empires.
Unfortunately, our knowledge about West Africa's early history is
severely limited by the lack of written records from that period. In
recent years, archaeologists have been unearthing increasing amounts of
material which contribute to our knowledge of early Africa. West Africans
tended to build their cities from nondurable materials such as wood, mud,
and grass. The area does have a rich oral tradition, including special
groups of trained men dedicated to its development and maintenance. As
oral history is always open to modification and embellishment, with no
means available for checking the original version, this material must be
used cautiously. Nevertheless, when employed in conjunction with other
sources, it does provide a rich source of information.
The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who developed
close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D. After that, West Africans
began using Arabic themselves to record their own history. In the middle
of the fifteenth century, Europeans began regular contact with West
Africa, and they left a wide variety of written sources. While most of
these early Europeans were not men of learning, many of their records are
still valuable to the student of history.
Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex political and
social organization, when the Arabs reached it about 800 A.D. An Arabic
map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and other contemporary Arabic
sources refer to Ghana as the land of gold. From this time on, a thriving
trade developed between Ghana and the world of Islam, including the
beginnings of a slave trade. However, this early slave trade was a
two-way affair. Al-Bakri, a contemporary Arab writer, was impressed with
the display of power and affluence of the Ghanaian king. According to
him, the king had an army of two hundred thousand warriors which included
about forty thousand men with bows and arrows. (Modern scholars know that
the real power of the Ghanaian army was due not to its large numbers as
much as to its iron-pointed spears.) Al-Bakri also described an official
audience at the royal palace in which the king, the Ghana, was surrounded
by lavish trappings of gold and silver and was attended by many pages,
servants, large numbers of faithful officials, provincial rulers, and
mayors of cities. On such occasions, the king heard the grievances of his
people and passed judgment on them. Al-Bakri also describes lavish royal
banquets which included a great deal of ceremonial ritual.
The power of the king, and therefore of the empire, was based on his
ability to maintain law and order in his kingdom. This provided the
development of a flourishing commerce, and it was by taxing all imports
and exports that the king was able to finance his government. The key
item in this financial structure was the regulation of the vast gold
resources of West Africa, and it was by controlling its availability that
the king was also able to manipulate its value. However, after the
eleventh century, the Ghanaian empire was continually exposed to
harassment from a long series of Arabic holy wars. Over a long period of
time, the power of the king was reduced until the empire of Ghana finally
collapsed. From its ashes emerged the basis for the creation of a new and
even larger empire: the empire of Mali.
Mali, like Ghana, was built on gold. While Ghana had been under attack by
the Arabs from outside, various peoples from within struck for their own
freedom. The Mandinka people, who had been the middlemen in the gold
trade and who had received protection from the king of Ghana, achieved
their independence in 1230 A.D. They went on to use their position in
the gold trade to build an empire of their own. The peak of their
influence and power was achieved in the early fourteenth century under
Mansa Kankan Musa who ruled Mali for a quarter of a century. He extended
its boundaries beyond those of Ghana to include such important trading
cities as Timbuktu and Gao, encompassing an area larger than that
controlled by the European monarchs of that day. This empire also was
based on its ability to provide stable government and a flourishing
economy. An Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta, shortly after Musa's death, found
complete safety of travel throughout the entire empire of Mali.
Mansa Musa and, for that matter, the entire ruling class of Mali had
converted to Islam. This intensified the contacts between West Africa and
the Islamic world. Although several of these kings made pilgrimages to
Mecca, the most spectacular was the one by Mansa Musa in 1324. On his way
there, he made a prolonged visit to Cairo. While there, both his
generosity in giving lavish gifts of gold to its citizens and his
extravagant spending poured so much gold into the Cairo market that it
caused a general inflation. It was estimated by the Arabs that his
caravan included some sixty thousand people and some five hundred
personal slaves. Mansa Musa took a number of Arabic scholars and skilled
artisans back to West Africa with him. These scholars enhanced the
university of Timbuktu which was already widely known as a center of
Islamic studies. Now, besides exchanging material goods, West Africa and
the Arabs became involved in a steady exchange of scholars and learning.
The success of Mali in bringing law and order to a large portion of West
Africa was responsible for its decline. Having experienced the advantages
of political organization, many localities sought self-government. In
fact, Mansa Musa had overextended the empire. A skilled ruler like
himself could manipulate it, but those who followed were not adequate to
the challenge. Movements for self-government gradually eroded central
authority until by 1500 Mali had lost its importance as an empire.
Although the period of its power and prosperity was respectable by most
world empire standards, it was short-lived compared to the history of the
previous empire of Ghana. Again, a new empire was to emerge from the
ruins of the previous one.
The Songhay empire was based on the strength of the important trading
city of Gao. This city won its independence from Mali as early as 1375,
and, within a century, it had developed into an empire. Songhay carried
on a vigorous trade with the outside world and particularly with the
Arabic countries. The ruling class, in particular, continued to follow
the religion of Islam, but it is generally believed that the masses of
the population remained faithful to the more traditional West African
religions based on fetishism and ancestor worship. Two of the more
powerful rulers were Suni Ali, who began his 28-year reign in 1464, and
Askia Mohammed, who began his 36-year reign in 1493. Askia Mohammed was
also known as Askia the Great. The security of Songhay was undermined
when Arabs from Morocco invaded and captured the key trading city of
Timbuktu in 1591. Thus ended the last of the three great empires of West
Africa.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that those parts of West Africa
which remained outside of these three empires fulfilled the usual
European image of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a number of other
small yet powerful states existed throughout the entire period. If this
had not been so, the Europeans, as they arrived in the fifteenth century,
could have pillaged West Africa at will. Instead, the Europeans were only
able to establish trading stations where local kings permitted it. With
the exception of a few raiding parties which seized Africans and carried
them off as slaves, most slave acquisition was done through hard
bargaining and a highly systematized trading process. The Europeans were
never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that they always had to
treat the African kings and their agents as business equals. Many of the
early European visitors, in fact, were impressed by the luxury, power,
trading practices, skilled crafts, and the complex social structure which
they found in Africa. Only in some parts of East Africa, where the states
were unusually small, were the Portuguese able to pillage and conquer at
will. While many Europeans may have thought of Africa as being filled
with ignorant savages, those who reached its shores were impressed
instead with its vigorous civilization.
The Culture of West Africa
An African should not have to find it necessary to make apologies for his
civilization. However, Europeans and Americans have come to believe, at
least in their subconscious minds, that civilization can be equated with
progress in science and technology. Because the Africans lagged far
behind the Europeans in the arts of war and of economic exploitation, the
Europeans believed at the Africans must be uncivilized savages. Africa,
like the rest of the world outside Europe, had not made the break-through
in science, technology, and capitalism which had occurred in Europe.
Nevertheless, they had their own systems of economics, scholarship, art,
and religion as well as a highly complex social and political structure.
There are common elements which run throughout the entire continent of
Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the American
slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied by itself.
The West African economy was a subsistence economy, and therefore people
were basically satisfied with the status quo and saw no point in
accumulating wealth. Also in a subsistence economy, there is little need
for money, and most trade was done through barter. Because there was no
money, there was no wage labor. Instead, labor was created either
through a system of domestic slavery or through a complex system of
reciprocal duties and obligations. However, West African slavery was more
like the European system of serfdom than it was like modern slavery.
Within this subsistence economy, each tribe or locality tended to
specialize in certain fields of agriculture or manufacture which
necessitated a vigorous and constant trade between all of them. However,
within the trading centers, money had come into regular use. It usually
took the form of cowrie shells, iron bars, brass rings, or other standard
items of value. Systems of banking and credit had also been developed,
but even those involved in money, banking, and trade had a noncapitalist
attitude towards wealth. They enjoyed luxury and the display of
affluence, but they had no concept of investing capital to increase
overall production.
West Africa also carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world.
When the Europeans arrived, they discovered, as had the Arabs before
them, that the West Africans could strike a hard bargain. They had
developed their own systems of weights and measures and insisted on using
them. Europeans who failed to treat the king or his agent fairly, found
that the Africans simply refused to deal with them again. Trade was
always monopolized by the king, and he appointed specific merchants to
deal with foreign businessmen. As previously noted, it was by the control
and taxation of commerce That the king financed his government and
maintained his power.
The strength and weaknesses of the West African economy can be seen by a
cursory glance at a list of its main exports and imports. West African
exports included gold, ivory, hides, leather goods, cotton, peppercorn,
olive oil, and cola. While some of these items were only exported for
short distances, others found their way over long distances. West African
gold, for example, was exported as far away as Asia and Northern Europe.
Some English coins of the period were minted with West African gold. West
African imports included silks from Asia, swords, knives, kitchen-ware,
and trinkets from the primitive industrial factories of Europe as well as
horses and other items from Arabia. Two other items of trade became all
important for the future--the exportation of slaves and the importation
of guns and gunpowder.
West African manufacturing demonstrated a considerable amount of skill in
a wide variety of crafts. These included basket-weaving, pottery making,
woodworking and iron-working. Archeological evidence shows that West
Africans were making pottery and terracotta sculpture as much as two
thousand years ago. Three-dimensional forms seem to have held a
particular interest for West African artists. During the last century,
art critics have gone beyond considering this art as "primitive" and
have begun to appreciate its aesthetic qualities. In fact, in recent
years, African art has had considerable influence on contemporary artists.
The two forms of African art best known outside Africa are music and the
dance. African music contrasts with European music in its use of a
different scale and in concentrating less on melodic development and more
on the creation of complex and subtle rhythmic patterns. Musicians used
to view African music as simple and undeveloped, but now musicologists
admit that African rhythms are more complex and highly developed than
rhythms in European music. Africans like to sing and to develop songs for
all occasions: religious songs, work songs, and songs for leisure.
African singing is also marked by the frequent use of a leader and a
chorus response technique. African dance, like its music, builds on
highly complex rhythmic patterns. It too is closely related to all parts
of the African's daily life. There are dances for social and for ritual
occasions. The most common use of the dance was as an integral part of
African religious rites.
African religion has usually been defined as fetish worship-the belief
that specific inanimate objects are inhabited by spirits endowed with
magical powers. While this view of African religion is partly true, it
obscures more than it clarifies. The fetish is believed to have some
powers of its own, but, in general, it derived them from its close
association with a dead ancestor. Behind the fetish was the religion of
ancestor worship, and the fetish is better understood as a religious
symbol. Ancestor worship was also part of the African's strong family
ties and his powerful kinship patterns. Behind the realm of this fetish
and ancestor worship lay another world of distant and powerful deities
who had control over the elemental natural forces of the universe. While
this religion might be described as primitive, it cannot be viewed as
simplistic. It involved a series of complex ideas about fetishes,
ancestors, and deities which required a high degree of intelligence.
The intricacies of theology, law, medicine, and politics made it
necessary to develop a complex system of oral education. Europeans, who
tended to identify knowledge with writing, had long assumed that, because
there was no written language in early Africa, there could be no body of
knowledge. After the arrival of Islam, Arabic provided a written form
within which West African ideas could be set down.
Only recently have scholars become aware of the libraries and the many
publications to be found in West Africa. Two of these books were
responsible for providing historians with detailed information about the
customs and social structure of the area. One was the Tarikh al-Fattiish,
the chronicle of the seeker after knowledge, written by Mahmud Kati in
the early fifteenth century. The other was the Tarikh al-Sudan, the
chronicle of the Western Sudan, written by Abd al-Rahman as-Sadi about
the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The society of West Africa was stratified in several different ways. It
was divided in terms of differing occupations: farmers, merchants,
priests, scholars, laborers, and a wide variety of craftsmen. The social
ranking assigned to these occupation divisions varied according to the
importance of each occupation.
Society was also divided in terms of clans, families, and villages. At
the same time, there was a hierarchical division based on the varying
degrees of political power each group exercised within its society. Some
had the power to become chiefs and rulers. Some had the right to choose
and depose rulers, and others could limit and define the rights of the
rulers. However, almost everywhere there was a clear trend toward
increasing centralized authority and decreasing popular participation.
The centralization of power in West Africa never reached the extremes of
absolute monarchy which occurred in Europe, and there was never the same
need for revolutionary social changes to revive democratic participation
within African society.
In an old Asante ritual, connected with the enthronement of a ruler, the
people pray that their ruler should not be greedy, should not be hard of
hearing, should not act on his own initiative nor perpetuate personal
abuse nor commit violence on his people, While the right to rule was
generally passed on from generation to generation within a single family,
the power did not immediately and automatically fall on the eldest son
within that family. Instead, another family had the power to select the
next ruler from among a large number of potential candidates within the
ruling family. If the ruler who was selected ruled unwisely and unfairly,
he could also be deposed. Here was a distinct limitation on royal
absolutism.
In a similar way, there were limitations on the centralization of
economic power. While valuable land in Europe had been captured and
controlled by private ownership and was the possession of a powerful
minority, land in West Africa still belonged to the community. A powerful
family had the right to control and supervise the use of the land for the
welfare of the community, and, undoubtedly, this power could be misused.
Such a family assigned land to its users along with certain tenure
safeguards which operated to limit even the power of the family. Those
using the land who did not fulfill their obligations to the community by
utilizing it properly and wisely, could have the land taken away from
them. It might then be given to someone else. Both in economics and in
politics, historical custom and precedent has limited minority power and
has protected the welfare of the community. Nevertheless, community
power and wealth has come to be divided into two major divisions: the
rich and powerful few and the poor and powerless majority. Though the
elite ruled and the masses served, rights and obligations which limited
the amount of exploitation were always in existence.
One of the signs of the trend toward the increasing centralization of
power within the society of West Africa was the development of a
professional army. The gigantic armies of Ghana had been conscripted from
the common citizenry. As the ruling class in West Africa adopted Islam
and as its desire to increase its power continued to undermine local
tradition and custom, there was more need for a professional army which
would owe its total allegiance to the ruler.
Also, changes in military technology required a skilled and carefully
trained army. Horses were expensive and could only be used efficiently by
men who were expert riders and who knew how use a horse in a combat
situation. Even more, with the arrival the Europeans in the fifteenth
century, West Africa was introduced to guns and gunpowder. These, too,
were expensive required trained soldiers to make good use of them.
While the new military technology had increased the ruler's freedom from
popular control, it made him increasingly dependent on and subject to
European interests. The African ruler's desire for guns and the
European's desire for slaves went hand in hand.