When immigrants reach a new land, their old ways die hard.

This has been the case with

most immigrant groups to the New World. The language, customs, values, religious beliefs, and
artistic forms they bring across the Atlantic are reshaped by the new realities of America and, in
turn, add to its fabric. The rich traditions of Africa combined with the British colonial experience
created a new ethnicity the African American. Through slavery to the American Revolution to
the Civil War to the Great Depression to the Civil Rights movement to modern day, the African
American culture has remained unique and has helped shape the very fabric of the American
society.
Much of African history is known through oral tradition. Folk tales passed down through
the generations on the African continent were similarly dispatched in African American
communities. Some did learn the written word. Poet and slave Phillis Wheatley is still studied.
Her writings vividly depict the slave experience on the eve of the American Revolution. Others
kept the folktales and oral traditions alive and they used them to help other slaves escape slavery
on the Underground Railroad. Some prominent African Americans involved with the
Underground Railroad and the abolition of slavery include: Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Tubman,
Sojourner Truth, and Henry Box Brown.
After the Civil War, African American slaves were set free. They tended to stay in the
South, but little changed as White Americans imposed Jim Crow laws. These laws limited
African American rights and privileges. But African Americans continue to contribute to the
American culture and fight to have their voice heard. In 1909, W.E.B. DuBois founds the
N.A.A.C.P. and it would serve as the countrys most influential African American civil rights
organization. During this period, there were many African American universities founded:
Hampton University, Tuskegee University, and Howard University. These institutes and other

historically black colleges and universities helped produce such great contributors to American
History as: Booker T. Washington, Daniel Hale Williams, and Dorothy Lavinia Brown. A change
was coming to the Southern way of life in the form of a pest.
The Boll Weevil destroyed crops and the way of life for millions of Southerners. Causing
many African Americans to migrate north to look for jobs and a new of life. The 1920s and
1930s saw a new literary, artistic, and intellectual movement in the African American Culture
called The Harlem Renaissance. This time saw an increase in and molding of African
American music, an increase in African American writers and literature, and a grow in the
African American intellectual movement. Some prominent people involved with this movement
include: Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Claude McKay, and Aaron Douglas.
This renaissance and the people that fueled it, helped shape the minds that would lead the
Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was from 1954-1968 and was the most
important push for equal rights in the African American culture. Some important individuals
involved with the Civil Rights Movement are: Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcom X,
and Thurgood Marshall. This movement led to African Americans being seen and treated as full
and equal American citizens. This movement saw the abolition of Jim Crow laws, the end of
segregation, and the end of separate schools.
All these movements leads us to the African American culture we have today, with the
music, literature, education, and clothing that we associate with the African American culture.
These experiences have helped shape and form the unique and picturesque the African American
culture. They have led to more of an equal opportunity in all aspects of life for African
Americans and for all peoples.