Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America

by Sterling Stuckey

How were blacks in American slavery formed, out of a multiplicity of African ethnic peoples, into a single people? In this major study of Afro-American culture, Sterling Stuckey, a leading thinker on black nationalism for the past twenty years, explains how different African peoples
interacted during the nineteenth century to achieve a common culture. He finds that, at the time of emancipation, slaves were still overwhelmingly African in culture, a conclusion with profound implications for theories of black liberation and for the future of race relations in America.
By examining anthropological evidence about Central and West African cultural traditions--Bakongo, Ibo, Dahomean, Mendi and others--and exploring the folklore of the American slave, Stuckey has arrived at an important new cross-cultural analysis of the Pan-African impulse among slaves that
contributed to the formation of a black ethos. He establishes, for example, the centrality of an ancient African ritual--the Ring Shout or Circle Dance--to the black American religious and artistic experience.
Black nationalist theories, the author points out, are those most in tune with the implication of an African presence in America during and since slavery. Casting a fresh new light on these ideas, Stuckey provides us with fascinating profiles of such nineteenth century figures as David Walker,
Henry Highland Garnet, and Frederick Douglas. He then considers in detail the lives and careers of W. E. B. Dubois and Paul Robeson in this century, describing their ambition that blacks in American society, while struggling to end racism, take on roles that truly reflected their African heritage.
These concepts of black liberation, Stuckey suggests, are far more relevant to the intrinsic values of black people than integrationist thought on race relations.
But in a final revelation he concludes that, with the exception of Paul Robeson, the ironic tendency of black nationalists has been to underestimate the depths of African culture in black Americans and the sophistication of the slave community they arose from.

Genres: History, African American, Nonfiction

444 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 2 out of 5]

There'a an article length version of this book, originally published in The Massachusetts Review, which gives you everything you need. I remember being very excited when this book appeared and extremely disappointed when I read it. The notion of nationalism in the book flattens out the nuance of the article, which is a useful complement to Lawrence Levine's vastly superior Black Culture and Black Consciousness.

[Keyo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only thing I can hold against this book is the title "Slave Culture", which implies that the slave status itself created a culture which was crucial in the context of the subject of the book. In the text of the book however, it is shown that the links to various African cultures and African cultural heritage which was the crucial factors in African-American nationalist theory and the foundations of black America.

So apart from the title, the book is brilliant, thorough and all through very interesting indeed.

[Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sterling Stuckey is the rock star of American history, don't believe the hype about those other historians! Stuckey is where it's at. Read this!

[Inem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely loved this book and consider it a must read for all Pan-Africanists. I have some differences with the author in my framework and vision for African liberation but at this point, that is an inevitability given how strong my opinions are on the matter. What I got out of this book was a lineage or roadmap of the emergence of Pan-Africanism in the Americas, particularly the United States, and then how the Pan-African objective was transmitted from generation to generation through the revolutionary intelligentsia as represented by specific figures: David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. There's so much about this book that I just adored. Africans in the United States are indisputably Africans and this book proves it.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read on US Black Nationalist theory and history , Stuckey's writing was well detailed and dense but easily readable. 5/5

[Byron Woodson Sr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

According to its subtitle Slave Culture was directed toward the foundations of black America. Stuckey began this book with a look at the dogma or theory that was written into David Walker's Appeal. He departed from the approach presented by Benjamin Quarles in Black Abolitionists (1969). Quarles reached back to a pivotal secular meeting which took place in the Mother Bethel Church in Philadelphia (1817), while setting the stage for those foundations. Black American leaders faced the American Colonization Society's plan to banish free black Americans to Africa. That crisis was a catalyst for the first convergence of black American leadership.
Stuckey presents David Walker's Appeal in an eviscerated state of being. For instance he failed to disclose that David Walker had reprinted a letter written by Bishop Richard Allen. The letter was first printed in Freedom's Journal, the first black American newspaper. No other letter received that kind of attention at this early stage and for decades to follow. Stuckey chose to eviscerate the message of David Walker's Appeal by ignoring the letter that Walker thought to be important. Walker's Appeal also provided an effusive praise of Allen and did not direct praise to any other black American leader. Stuckey ignored that praise.

Stuckey's approach ignores the institutional aspect of the foundations of black America. Richard Allen/Bethel church won a case in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which gave black Americans the right to control their own churches. Stuckey fails to mention the court victory, which allowed for the establishment and control of the institution that enabled a platform for black American self-determination for 150 years.

Stuckey's work contravenes the work of Benjamin Quarles (above) and Charles H. Wesley, who wrote their brilliant works, while connected to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Slave Culture not only misses the appropriate foundations of black America, but ignores 60 years of scholarship that was developed at HBCUs, that is, before the dramatic events of the 1960s reset the ethos of black America and marginalized the role of HBCUs.

What underlies these differences in viewpoint? Stuckey attempted to elevate and enshrine those early black American leaders, who were found to have called "the white man" "the devil." He took a mantra voiced by of Malcolm X (Nation of Islam period) and used it as a criteria for the 'foundations of Black America.' Some historians call this illicit process 'presentism,' although the word has not been soundly accepted in the general lexicon.