Black Legacy [Paperback]

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.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Piersen (History/Fisk University) looks at selected areas of American culture from a perspective that offers an occasional convincing surprise, as he focuses on African traditions and social mechanisms that reached the New World (including the Caribbean and Latin America) with the black slaves. The author has collected folktales and oral traditions from both sides of the Atlantic to explain how blacks came to be dominated by whites--material that, while it may not cast a new light on history, is interesting in itself and gives access into the rationalizing consciousness of the enslaved. Piersen takes a serious, not romantic, view of African royalty: While few African kings and princesses ruled over vast regions or great wealth, ideas of rank and social etiquette were highly developed, and the author suggests that class-conscious slaves were not--as is usually believed--upholding their masters' values but were transmitting African ideas about manner and caste. Satiric song lyrics and the subversive humor of black Americans have often been described as weapons of powerless people too beaten to use force, but Piersen shows that public humiliation and criticism--rather than violence or physical punishment--was a primary method of social control in African societies. He suggests that the original KKK regalia (predating white hoods and sheets) was inspired by the masking traditions of African secret societies. The African origins and influence on southern cooking, Carnival, and the use of herbal medicine seem much less hidden. If Piersen can't consistently provide jolts of new understanding, his compilation of materials remains readable and interesting throughout. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.