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This chapter begins by considering Léopold Sédar Senghor's argument that French West Africans should unite in a “primary federation” that would in turn be part of a confederation of equal nations, including European France. Not all in Africa agreed with Senghor, but by 1958, the cry of “African Unity” had become practically ubiquitous. However, African political leaders faced a double problem in reconciling African unity with the realities of post-loi-cadre Africa. The tensions between a political reality in which territory played a large part and an ideal of a strong and united Africa taking its place in the world would frame political debates among African political elites for the next several years.

Presents conceptions of secrecy West Africans brought with them to Brazil: the interpretive separation of superficial appearance from “deep knowledge,” the face presented in public (ori ode) versus the inner head (ori inu), the layered nature of knowledge, which is ultimately bottomless, and the secret society of the Ogboni earth cult among the Yoruba. Additionally, the chapter recounts the nineteenth‐century context and motivations for a second historical layer of secrecy generated in response to repressive slave laws and policing, and the construal of Candomblé as illegal sorcery. Candomblé is interpreted as a secret society that was both built upon West African ideals of secrecy and constructed in Brazil as a religion that was seen, but not penetrated, and whose members concealed their affiliations with the orixás. Finally, in a third use of secrecy, the chapter demonstrates how masters with reason to fear it attributed extraordinary powers to exotic Candomblé.

This book chronicles the experiences of first and second generation West African immigrants and refugees in the United States during the last four decades. Drawing on field work and oral histories of West African immigrants aggregated in various locations from West Africa to the West Indies to destinations like metropolitan Atlanta, the book examines how significant segments of black America are forging new meanings and interpretive frameworks for understanding the paradigm of the Atlantic World. More specifically, it explores the transfiguration in the diversity and complexity of the role of the new West African diaspora in the recent history of the black Atlantic. It considers the intricate patterns of adaptation and incorporation among the immigrants and their children, along with the impact of the recent postcolonial and voluntary immigration of West Africans on the changing meanings of “African Americanness.” It also tackles issues of cultural identity formation and socioeconomic incorporation among immigrants and refugees from West Africa, and whether these migrants will become the newest African Americans.

This chapter examines the trajectory of West African immigrants' experience in the United States by focusing on the complexities of their premigration history. It begins by tracing the precolonial origins of regionalism in West Africa, with particular emphasis on the peoples who lived in the West African region before the colonial era and how they interacted with each other and began to carve the characteristics of the region. It then discusses the most influential developments that shaped and illustrated the interconnectedness of the peoples of West Africa, including the Islamic Revolution or jihads of the nineteenth century. It also considers how the interplay between European imperial nationality and African ethnicity affected the history of West Africa and West Africans, as well as the ways in which the Africans moved toward developing a sense of nationhood and citizenship in relation to ethnicity and postcolonial regionalism. Finally, it explores the impact of intraregional migration on West Africa and West Africans and the migration of West Africans to the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1957, Ghana gained independence, completing its rapid political progress from a British colony to one of the first African nations to secure its freedom from European rule. For British businessmen, their presence at the celebrations represented a further dimension of public relations policies and other political and business strategies undertaken in response to the development of African nationalism and the transfer of political power in the Gold Coast. As early as 1941, members of the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM) had begun discussing the future role of business associations in promoting company interests, in part prompted by opposition from non-European traders to the prominent wartime role of AWAM. In the gold mining industry, the 1945 strike provoked a conviction at Ashanti Goldfields Corporation that the company needed to be better equipped to cope with an uncertain future. This book has demonstrated the importance of incorporating politics into studies of business during the period of decolonization.

This chapter examines the different approaches and outcomes that shape the West African immigrant employment experience in America. In particular, it analyzes the kinds of occupations performed by West African immigrants in the United States, as well as the detours that underlie these patterns of work and socioeconomic mobility among the newcomers. More often than not, the positions the immigrants were trained for and held at home are not available options for them in the United States. The jobs that West Africans find themselves doing in their new settings represent what is termed an “occupational detour.” This chapter considers the aspirations, qualifications, and accomplishments of West Africans and their children for the American labor market. It also discusses the employment detours of West African immigrants as they make their way into a variety of sectors of the U.S. labor force, with particular emphasis on the experiences of nurses and taxi drivers.

This chapter examines the success of young West African immigrants and refugees as well as the 1.5 and second generations in the United States. It begins with an overview of the “student-immigrant” tradition as a key element in the West African narrative of success and goes on to discuss the role of education in the upward mobility and achievement of the adult immigrant generation from West Africa. It then considers the so-called “second generation advantage,” based in part on the newcomers' ability to capitalize on the dexterity of their “in-between” status. It also describes the creative ways that young West Africans blend the different cultural components of their fluid ethnic affiliations especially with regards to music, food, fashion, and festive culture. Finally, it explores how the young newcomers develop social relationships not only with other West Africans but also with members of other minority populations such as those from the Caribbean and Latin America.

This chapter examines the contentious relationship between West African immigrants and African Americans. West Africans, like other black immigrants, have adapted and assimilated in three main domains: within the reconfigured African ethnicities, within the milieu of African Americans, and within mainstream America. The newcomers have benefited from the dividends of the civil rights movement since the post-1965 wave came to America. The complicated face of race in the United States nonetheless has been lost on many of the West African diaspora, who instead see only a postracial America. This chapter first considers the divide between West African and African American Islam and goes on to discuss the killing of Amadou Diallo as the turning point in the public's awareness of a growing West African presence in America. It then explores racial politics and alliances between black immigrants and African Americans and concludes with an assessment of how West African immigrants' increasing interactions with the native-born continuously redefine the meanings of African American race and culture.

This chapter examines seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European and American travel journals to reveal the manner in which they portrayed West Africans in order to create the moral and social justifications for slavery and racial stereotypes. It argues that European travelers often ignored the ritualistic purpose of West African music and dance and instead reduced West Africans to servants, prostitutes, and entertainers. These societal positions were developed on the premise of European hegemony and aimed to create an African commodity. Throughout West Africa, music, song, and dance were important cultural expressions. However, from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, European and American travelers distorted these expressions in order to project and fulfill their own desires. This chapter shows how travel narratives presented the identity of West Africans as malleable and capable of being shaped according to the desired purpose of the gazer. Through their creation of the innate dancers and singers, it contends that travel journals contributed to the subjugation and reconfiguration of the black body through its neglect of the actual culture and tradition of the performing arts.

This chapter examines how transnationalism emerged as a vital component of West African immigrants' everyday life in the United States. More specifically, it considers how West Africans systematically maintained homeland ties and transoceanic connections. It first discusses the different patterns of West African transnationalism, such as sustaining solid bonds between America and their African homelands through visits for vacations, weddings, burials, and the temporary relocation of American-born children. It then explores how the immigrants strive for “comfortable homes” in the United States while sustaining and enhancing ties across nationalities, ethnicities, continents, and American states and cities. It also describes the virtual and actual boundary crossings that reflect connections beyond a singular link between homeland and host societies. Finally, it explains how transnational networks enabled the newcomers, through their homes of origin and other locations of the West African diaspora, to shape their American experiences.

The ‘peaceful invasion’ of refugees and allies during the Second World War included significant numbers of ‘coloured’ colonials responding to the needs of the merchant marine, munitions factories and armed services. It became apparent that war-time accommodation, hospitality and recreation for the new ‘coloured’ arrivals, primarily from the West Indies, could not be provided in discrete self-contained manner. Account had also to be taken of the long-term disadvantage and discrimination endured by the resident ‘coloured’ population, mainly West African. The League of Coloured Peoples and the recently formed Colonial Office Welfare Department both established a presence in Liverpool (where tensions were heightened by the arrival of black US troops) and extended their respective remits to consider the needs of long-term residents. The priority for both agencies remained colonial development, a project not to be hindered by adverse experience of the ‘colour bar’ for those in Liverpool, whether temporarily or permanently.

From the earliest incursions into the Americas by Spanish explorers to the California Gold Rush and to the Oklahoma land rush, African Americans have been present at every frontier and have been active participants in transforming those frontier settlements into thriving communities. Those experiences have been represented in a variety of forms, memoirs, novels, film, and television, even as literary and cultural criticism has neglected that body of work. This chapter surveys the field of texts related to the African American West and establishes three central concepts for understanding those texts, erasure, double-consciousness, and the trickster tradition. All three concepts are representational strategies used by African American artists to adapt unfriendly and even hostile cultural narratives (such as the genre western) to articulate their own experiences.

This chapter examines the rise of a West African enclave economy in America. In particular, it considers how entrepreneurship and self-employment became the most conspicuous marker of the West African diaspora in America. It explores how some of the new West African entrepreneurs moved from work in the wage economy to start and manage their own business ventures in order to capture opportunities that distinctly favored their West African backgrounds and American experiences. It also discusses the economic culture within which the West African immigrants function as entrepreneurs and its importance for the specific detour opportunity areas in which they have established their businesses, especially restaurants and clubs, hair braiding, health care staffing and pharmacy, grocery stores or African supermarkets, and fashion production and merchandising. Finally, the chapter explores some of the reasons for the weakening or demise of West African businesses in America.

This chapter explores the underlying and long-term effects of the Second World War on the future of Elder Dempster and its relationship with West Africa. It focuses on the political and economic independence of West African colonies, and the resulting major changes in the structure and organisation of its trading areas, including the formation of independently owned shipping lines. The chapter describes the greater momentum of the establishment and extension of new ports at the end of the war, and reports the corresponding dramatic increase in West African trade. It concludes with an analysis of the decline in Elder Dempster’s share of West African trade, and provides a calculation of its profitability and success in the post-war era.

This chapter examines the ancestral origins of the religious context of West African àsé and how it has been reinvented, negotiated, altered, secularized, and accommodated in Brazilian culture as axé. It investigates how musicians have reinvented and secularized sacred axé of Candomblé in popular songs that they link with African roots, black identity, and Afro-Brazilian culture. The chapter describes a type of “global spreading” of axé in popular culture through commercial recordings and performances by international artists and Carnival organizations. It also suggests that axé concepts often mediate racial identities and social classes.

This final chapter evaluates the accuracy of the previous forecasts and predictions made in 1972. It assesses Elder Dempster’s successes and failures whilst taking into consideration the changing global economy and overall decline of British trade and shipping. It discusses alternative strategies that might have enabled the Company to remain viable in the rapidly changing business world of West Africa and prevent its eventual sale to Delmas Vieljeux in 1989. The chapter concludes with a report of the enormous progress and profit made by the Ocean Group at the end of the 20^th Century as a result of its transition away from traditional maritime activities to land-based enterprises.