ATHENS, Ga. -- Slavery brought more to America than chains and shame. It brought an entirely new population that would grow up with the struggling country, in the process losing memories of Mother Africa, tribal affiliations and whole languages. Parts of that rich heritage survived, but untangling it has been difficult for historians because of gaps in the record and the faded memory of terrible times.
Now, however, a University of Georgia historian has discovered that it is possible for African-Americans to begin identifying particular ethnic cultural and social influences once thought unrecoverable. Using African sources, runaway-slave advertisements, ex-slave narratives and folklore, Michael Gomez has found that the lost history of African-Americans may not be so lost after all.
"I found to my surprise that certain ethnic groups were disproportionately represented among slaves," said Gomez. "There were especially a large number of slaves who were Igbo people from what is now southeast Nigeria. They came from villages that were very densely populated. Also, we find a large of number of Ibibio, who inhabited a similar region and had a related culture."
Gomez not only found from where large groups of identifiable Africans came -- he discovered where they settled in the U.S. His research was just published by the University of North Carolina Press in a book called Exchanging Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South.
The task facing Gomez was daunting. Although author Alex Haley was able to trace a relative to the Kinte clan in Gambia and celebrate that discovery in the book Roots, few African-Americans know where their families originated. In fact, Gomez's research extends only until 1830, after which African influences and memories began to fade as African-Americans became more mobile.
The amount of information on Africans in America before that time, however, was surprisingly large, even to a seasoned historian like Gomez, himself an African-American.
"Prior to 1830, there is in fact all kinds of information about ethnicity," said Gomez. "The people themselves recorded it, but the slave holders were also well aware of it, too. They had a good idea as to where groups of people came from in Africa and even had stereotypic notions that certain people were predisposed to jobs such as animal husbandry."
Among the more specific details was tribal scarification, the so-called "country marks" mentioned in the title of the book. These marks were often reproduced or described in runaway slave ads, and they helped Gomez trace the influence of certain ethnic groups in America. The real question in "exchanging our country marks" is how slaves began to see themselves as a different people entirely -- part of a homogenous group bound by slavery rather than separated by language or culture in Africa.
Along the way, these first- and second-generation Africans began to add to an already rich tapestry of culture in the American South, providing new ideas on cooking, food selection, religion and work. This influence is today pervasive in the South among whites and blacks, though few know the origins of the customs.
While the Igbo and Ibibio people were disproportionately represented among slaves, other large groups came from what is now the Republic of the Congo, Angola and other countries in west Africa. There were also significant numbers of Muslims. Using records, Gomez was able to discover that there are three rough zones of African ethnic influence in the U.S.: Virginia-Maryland-Chesapeake Bay, South Carolina-Georgia, and Louisiana.
"I can say without question, however, that one-fourth of the Africans imported into what became the U. S. were from southeastern Nigeria," said Gomez.
Gomez was not surprised to find that during this period the slaves developed a sense of race. Perhaps it was inevitable, given the shared burden of slavery. He also argues, however, that they quickly developed a sense of class that can in some instances be related to ethnicity. This was based as much on how they were viewed by slave holders as how they viewed the world themselves. Religion was also a useful a marker of class.
Gomez said that he has not spent nearly as much time tracing his own roots as he did in the decade it took to research and write this new book.
"I suppose being a descendant of these people gives you a certain perspective, but I don't know if it's any better than another," he said. "People not of African descent can come to these issue with perspectives that are as valuable as mine."
He does know that his father, a native of Puerto Rico, is of African descent, and that his maternal grandfather's family, from Mississippi, came originally from Virginia and was possibly of Igbo or Akan ancestry.
(For information from the University of North Carolina Press regarding this book, call Lisa Dellwo at 919/966-3561, ext. 234 in Chapel Hill.)
WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501,
CONTACT: Michael Gomez, 706/542-2541, mgomez@arches.uga.edu