RELENTLES REISTANCE 1
Relentless Resistance of the African in the Americas
Scott Vick
North Carolina A&T State University
HIST 106- Section 4
Dr. Ernest Hooker, Instructor
Fall 2017
RELENTLES REISTANCE 2
Throughout history, African people, have always resisted the social and economic
restrictions that have been placed upon their lives in the Americas. This paper’s goal is to not
prove this fact but to show through examples in history that despite the harsh conditions of
traveling to a new world on a slave ship, to life on a plantation and having systematic roadblocks
placed in their way the African in the Americas always resisted and in their resistance, they
managed to influence the lives of their own captors.
In order to understand the ability of the African in the Americas to resist by either covert
or overt means to maintain a semblance of their native culture even in their adjustment to the
culture of their captors, you must first understand where they came from and the significance
their ancestral lineage played in their acculturation. Most historians disprove the theory that
Africans in the Americas derived from the kings of Kush as no archaeological facts that support
the claim that the kings of Kush retreated to the region bringing with them all their knowledge,
history and achievements such as iron making. Instead, the slave in the America’s cultural roots
come from an ethnically, and culturally diverse West African civilization that came from its own
independent roots.
The West African civilization before European slavery was rich and vibrant with its own
political framework which included kingdoms and city-states each with their own langue and
culture.
Three of the most prominent and powerful kingdoms of West Africa where Mali, Benin,
and Kongo. each had monarchs who ruled over a complex political structure which aided them in
governing thousands of people.
RELENTLES REISTANCE 3
West African civilization was agrarian cultivating crops and as early as 1000 BCE having
domesticated animals to help them. Farming was not easy but they still found ways to produced
millet, rice, cotton, and sorghum herded cattle, goats and the ability to make iron tools and
weapons (Hines, 2016).
West African life can be summed up in one word “family”. Within the villages in which
they lived, they had lineages that consisted of extended families and clans which descended from
a common ancestor. They had a family structure that included both the traditional and
polygynous households (Hines, 2016). In both family structures, the men took care of their
families, the women were respected and the children were raised to be strong and independent
with a high regard for the ancestral background as they learned cultural traditions from stories
