Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Present 129By combining “drumming,” singing, and elaborate and
competitive dances, the Juba/Charleston resembled West-
Central African military dances and derivative martial arts.
Th e Juba/Charleston was also characteristic of the various
dance styles—inspired by West-Central African cultural
elements—performed at the aptly named “Congo Square”
in New Orleans during the early 19th century. Interest-
ingly, many of the Congolese from West-Central Africa
arriving in Louisiana aft er 1800 were transported there
from South Carolina, which demonstrates the remarkable
amount of interconnection in the African Diaspora. In
addition to the Juba/Charleston, West-Central Africans
were important in the development of baton-twirling,
jazz music, and break dancing—an art likely derived from
a West-Central African– inspired Brazil martial dance
known as capoeira.
Between 1701 and 1800, 45 percent of Africans en-
tering Virginia from identifi able regions were embarked
on ships leaving ports in the Bight of Biafra. Th us, Vir-
ginia imported a disproportionately large number of
Igbo-speakers and others from Calabar and surround-
ing regions. As Lorena Walsh, James Sidbury, and Doug-
las Chambers contend, this emphasis on Igbo imports
played a signifi cant factor in the rise of Afro-Virginian
culture. One cultural implication of the presence of so
many Igbo-speakers was the proliferation of Igbo terms
and concepts—okra, buckra, obia—or discrete Igbo cul-
tural practices (e.g., the Jonkonu celebration, funerary
customs, and spiritual beliefs) in Jamaica, Virginia, and
other regions of the Anglophone Americas that imported
signifi cant numbers of Africans from the Bight of Biafra.
Another implication, discussed by Sidbury, was the pos-
sibility that Gabriel Prosser—leader of a failed Richmond
slave revolt in 1800—was accorded a great deal of respect
and veneration because of his blacksmithing skills and the
spiritual powers associated with this trade among the peo-
ples living near the Niger River delta and Senegambia. In
fact, three separate blacksmiths were claimed to have been
part of the leadership core of this attempt to capture and
raze the capital of Virginia.
Information regarding imports into areas such as North
Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, the Middle Colonies (with
the exception of New York), and the New England colonies
is scanty at best, and scholars can detail the slave trade in
these regions only through inference and suggestive evi-
dence. As the principal port of entry for enslaved Africans,of the fi ndings of Stuckey, Gomez, Margaret Washington,
Douglas Chambers, and others, but it also opens new pos-
sibilities in the study of the formation of African American
culture.
Although the nature of African ethnic enclaves var-
ied over time, it is now possible to pinpoint the nature of
these concentrations and track specifi c cultural infl uences.
Between 1701 and 1800, 26 percent of enslaved Africans
from identifi able regions and embarking on ships to the
Carolinas came from West-Central Africa. Th e 1739 Stono
Revolt, initiated principally by enslaved Angolans from
West-Central Africa, forced the proprietors and slave own-
ers of South Carolina to reduce their reliance on Africans
from this region. Also, because of the emphasis on rice cul-
tivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry and sea islands,
Africans from rice-producing regions of Upper Guinea—
Senegambia (25 percent) and Sierra Leone (9 percent)—
became important demographic factors and largely replaced
the earlier West-Central African import stream. Th ese three
cultural contingents played active roles in the formation
Gullah and Geechee culture. Elements of the West-Central
African, Senegambian, and Biafran (11 percent) contingents
of South Carolina’s slave population apparently created an
alliance in 1822, under the leadership of Denmark Vesey,
in an attempt to foment a rebellion. Although the details
of this conspiracy are currently in dispute, it is clear that
separate bands of Gullahs, Igbos, Mande-speakers, French-
speaking Saint-Dominguans, and American-born slaves
had formed and found between them areas of commonality.
In some ways, this could have been an early expression of
Pan-Africanism.
Many dance forms in the United States were infl uenced
by West-Central Africans, particularly in regions in which
they were heavily concentrated. Th e Charleston—formerly
known as the Juba—was a dance that in form and timing
had analogues in the martial dance styles of the Kongo
Kingdom. Charleston, South Carolina, the fi nal destina-
tion of thousands of West-Central Africans, was so as-
sociated with this dance that the Juba became known as
the “Charleston” by the early 20th century. Even the word
“Juba” has a West-Central African origin, meaning “to beat
time in a rhythmic pattern.” In a typical performance, older
black men would rhythmically “pat juba” by slapping their
hands on their thighs—in imitation of the drum—while
others would perform the dance. Both the patters and the
dancers would sing as an integral part of the Juba dance.