Rethinking Ourselves

Researchers have identified many tribes, ancient cultures and flavors tossed into this salad we call African-American.  In recent decades, geneticists, genealogists, anthropologists and historians have discovered (and confirmed) what have been my suspicions about who we really are.

This is the first of several installments of non-sequential posts I call “Rethinking Ourselves” wherein I’ll explore how the sciences and social sciences communities may be redefining what we know about ourselves.

Tribal Origins of African Americans

Fulani Woman

One thing I know: there’s no cookie-cutter Black person in this country … or anywhere. 

It’s not like living in Ghana, Benin, Togo or Nigeria where everyone’s pretty clear which tribe they belong to. There they live with as much certainty of their ancestry as, say, an Irishman knows he’s Celtic.

For us, four centuries of cultural suppression and identity assassination robbed us of what our African-born cousins take for granted. They see themselves according to tribes, not race.

Turns out, African Americans descend from 46 tribes, say Boston University Professors of History and African-American Studies, Linda Heywood and John Thornton, in an article published in The Root.[i] 

Historians have compiled tribal lists over the years. Here’s their version:

Country/Location	Tribe/Ethnic Group
Angola/Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Angola Zambia/Angola Benin Cameroon Gambia/Guinea Ghana/Togo/Benin Ghana Ivory Coast/Ghana Guinea-Bissau Liberia Nigeria/Cameroon Nigeria/Benin Nigeria Senegal Senegal/Gambia Senegal/Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Niger, Liberia Guinea-Bissau Senegal/Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Niger, Liberia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea-Bissau	Yaka, Chokwe, Lunda, Kongo, Luba Mbundu, Oyimbundu Luchaze Fon, Mahi, Bariba Duala, Tikar, Bamun, Bamileke Jola Ewe Ga, Gurma, Dagomba Akan, Asanti, Fanti Blanata, Biafara, Temne Kru, Kpele Ibibio Yoruba Hausa, Ibo/Igbo, Ijaw/(Ijo), Efik, Igala, Kalab ari, Itsekiri, Edo Wolof Serer Mandinka Fulbe/Fulani/Peulh/Fula Sierra Leone: Balanta, Falupo, Mende, Susu, Nalu, Bran[ii]

             
In his book, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, the late, known expert and John’s Hopkins historian Philip D. Curtin figured 3.5 million Africans were exported to North America and the Caribbean between 1711 and 1810. (Importing Africans to the U.S. officially ended in 1808). Curtin arrived at that figure after investigating shipping records and port data, according to a New York Times obituary. He died in 2009 at 87.[iii]

Below is a table illustrating the regions Curtin said were probably the ancestral homes of African Americans:

Senegambia (Senegal-Gambia): 5.8%

Sierra Leone: 3.4%

Windward Coast (Ivory Coast): 12.1%

Gold Coast (Ghana): 14.4%

Bight of Benin (Nigeria): 14.5

Bight of Biafra (Nigeria): 25.1%

Central and Southeast Africa (Cameroon-N. Angola): 24.7%[iv] 

Here is another list of tribes in those regions that were likely affected. You’ll find some tribes here not included in Heywood and Thornton’s list.

SENEGAMBIA: Wolof, Mandingo, Malinke, Bambara, Papel, Limba, Bola, Balante, Serer, Fula, Tucolor

SIERRA LEONE: Temne, Mende, Kisi, Goree, Kru.

WINDWARD COAST (including Liberia): Baoule, Vai, De, Gola (Gullah), Bassa, Grebo.

GOLD COAST: Ewe, Ga, Fante, Ashante, Twi, Brong

BIGHT OF BENIN & BIGHT OF BIAFRA combined: Yoruba, Nupe, Benin, Dahomean (Fon), Edo-Bini, Allada, Efik, Lbibio, Ljaw, Lbani, Lgbo (Calabar)

CENTRAL & SOUTHEAST AFRICA: BaKongo, MaLimbo, Ndungo, BaMbo, BaLimbe, BaDongo, Luba, Loanga, Ovimbundu, Cabinda, Pembe, Imbangala, Mbundu, BaNdulunda

Other possible groups that maybe should be included as a "Ancestral group" of African Americans:

Fulani, Tuareg, Dialonke, Massina, Dogon, Songhay, Jekri, Jukun, Domaa, Tallensi, Mossi, Nzima, Akwamu, Egba, Fang, and Ge.
[v]

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Further Reading

The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census, Philip D, Curtin, (1969), pg. 221.Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin press.

National Geographic News
“Gullah Culture in Danger of Fading Away,” Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune

June 8, 2001

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/0607_wiregullah.html

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[i] African Ethnicities and Their Origins

 By: Linda Heywood and John Thornton  | Posted: October 1, 2011 at 12:26 AM

http://www.theroot.com/buzz/african-ethnicities-and-their-origins

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] New York Times, June 16, 2009, by William Grimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/us/16curtin.html?_r=0

[iv]The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census, Philip D, Curtin, (1969), pg. 221.Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin press.
[v] Compiled by Kwame Bandele based on a student email exchanged on the University of Chicago bulletin board. 

Following the oral trail

My mother was recently rummaging through an old box of my great Aunt Lucy’s memorabilia when she found two pieces of paper, stapled together, with Aunt Lucy’s recognizable scribbling.

It reads: “Anderson Marrow, my great-grandfather, was half-white … the founder of Philadelphia Church … and his daughter, Rebecca married Sam Cross, who was part Indian from Connecticut, Hartford, Connecticut … and by him, she had four children – Anderson, Weldon, Lucy and Edith.”

“… He (Anderson) also gave the land and timber for the church to be built. My great-grandmother told me during slavery, a group of slaves would meet in the woods to sing praises to God. After that, the church was built.”

Many of us can say we grew up hearing these stories. I certainly did. But our elders didn’t seem to give historical meaning or context, so I couldn’t grasp their relevance. Instead, they dropped clues in such a lackluster way, I all but dismissed them as fantasy folklore.

Not anymore.

In recent years, I’ve discovered our Cross-Marrow elders left a trail of breadcrumbs that’s more like gold dust. They spoke in snippets -- torn bits of paper from the family book.  We have to listen carefully to sift the nuggets.

For instance, Aunt Henrietta (“Hen-retta”) Cross Hatton Clark once told me she suspected our ancestors were Pequots.  Our research into the Crosses has led us to a possible  connection with three New England Native American tribes: the Narragansett, Pequot and, maybe, the Wampanoag.

A Connecticut-based genealogist told us she found our family name while researching New England African-Native American families. She said she’s certain Abraham Cross came from a Narragansett family. She also suspects Amos Cross’ wife, Eliza, could be Pequot.

While we’re a little ways from definitively proving it, we’re close.

Where do we fit?

Historians and genealogists look to DNA to map human genetic origins and migration patterns. Well-known Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is helping to piece together African-Americans’ true composition. In his 2009 article, he suggests that DNA paints a different picture of our genetic origins than our oral traditions lead us to believe.

“Here are the facts: Only 5 percent of all black Americans have at least 12.5 percent Native American ancestry, the equivalent of at least one great-grandparent. Those “high cheek bones and “straight black hair” your relatives brag about at every family reunion and holiday meal since you were 2 years old? Where did they come from? To paraphrase a well-known French saying, “Seek the white man.”[1]

Besides our obvious African ancestry, we already know some streams of our bloodline lead to Europe. Like so many African-Americans families, we accept our elders’ beliefs that our range of skin and eye color comes from an elusive “Indian” relative. But, as Gates has proven, saying so doesn’t make it so.

Now, we’ve come across clues that may substantiate what our elders have been telling us all along. If that’s true, we’re among that tiny 5 percent of African Americans with Native American ancestry. Proving it could cast our family in a unique place in American, African American and Native American history.

That’s what I mean by context.

-- SDSC

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[1] The Root, “Michelle’s Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours

In defiance of law, social convention and what some “believe,” an enormous amount of “race mixing” has long been occurring in the U.S.”

 By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.  |  Posted: October 8, 2009 at 11:50 AM http://www.theroot.com/views/michelle-s-great-great-great-granddaddy-and-yours

Memories of "Grandma Beck"

By Eleanor D. Bullock Shelton

Rebecca Marrow Cross Lewis

July 2, 1847 – January 1, 1950
 
As a child, I remember my great-grandmother Rebecca Marrow Cross.

I looked forward to the once-a-week visits to Grandma Beck’s house during those hazy Summer afternoons. There she’d be … sitting on the porch in her rocking chair that just barely fit her. Her apron, spanking white, covered her calico dress.

Her stepdaughter stood next to her fanning the flies away. I never could figure out who this person was that spoke little but kept in time, fanning with the rocking. It was many years later I learned her name: Fannie. No one spoke much about her or to her. For the most part, she was invisible.

When my mother Elnora, grandmother Harriet, Aunt Henrietta, my sister Lillian and I came up to the gray wooden house with its protruding logs and small cloudy windows, you had a sense this house, worn with age, was a testimony to years of struggle and survival.

Grandma Beck was a regal figure sitting on her throne. I was hesitant to go near her. She had a commanding presence. Her lips unsmiling, her huge hands scarred from picking tobacco, and her piercing large brown eyes – instinctively said she was no one to mess with.

In a commanding voice, she said, “y’all come on up here and sit a while … Elnora, c’m’over here!”

A smile flashed across my mother’s face as she planted a kiss on Beck’s cheek.

 “… and who these chillim there? Y’all c’mon over here!

I walked slowly towards her until I felt her strong hands lift me on her soft pillow-like lap. Suddenly I felt safe in her arms.“How you, Harriet?” she motioned for her daughter-in-law to take a seat on the straw one her husband, Samuel, made years earlier.

“Been fine, Beck.” She turned her attention to my mother.

             
“Elnora, these chillum sure has growed up …” Her face softened and her eyes dampened. My mother smiled, knowing the statement was one of approval. Without warning, Beck yelled an order to Fannie to bring out some watermelon and cantaloupe. Fannie rushed to the command and the planks on the porch squeaked as she almost ran through the screen door. Fannie appeared with her boney hands gripping an oversized “melon.”

I climbed down from Beck’s lap. My sister and I laughed as we tried to out-do each other spitting seeds. We finished with our mouths wet with juice. Wiping our lips on our bare arms, we dropped the rind in the bucket reserved for making watermelon rind pickles.

My sister and I knew automatically that it was grown-up time. As we ran off to explore the woods, we heard Beck, Grandma, Mama and Aunt Henrietta laughing.

I was too young to ask questions of my Great-Grandma Beck. All I was told was she was related to the white Thomas F. Marrow Family.[i]Indeed that is true. Her father, Anderson Marrow[ii], was half-brother to Daniel Marrow[iii]. [iv] 

Like many female slaves who were subject to the sexual advances of their master’s, Anderson’s mother was unable to resist Thomas F. Marrow’s advances. Thomas fathered six children with his wife, and (according to long-held family accounts) Anderson, by his slave.[v] 

My Aunt Lucy, my mother’s sister, told how ‘ole man Drury S. Marrow,[vi] with a long white beard, visited his niece Grandma Beck when she was a child. She told the story of him pulling her to him with his cane and it ‘scared her to death.’

Discovering my great-great-grandfather was a son of his master, Thomas F. Marrow, raised a myriad of unanswered questions, and feelings of anger and sorrow. How did Anderson feel, knowing his master was also his father? How did his mother cope with being a slave “mistress?’ Did she feel shame being unable to escape the sexual exploitation of Thomas? Was she subjected to abuse by the wife of Thomas? How were they treated by the other slaves? 

As I continued to reflect, I wondered how deep were the wounds that pierced the heart of an enslaved soul. That they survived slavery is a testimony to their strength, fortitude, resilience and self-determination.

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[i] An inventory of the Property of Thomas F, Marrow,  (1847) North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.

[ii] Ibid. Recorded birth in 1824.

[iii] Report from court, September term 1857, Granville, North Carolina. Equity, September Term 1857, Daniel Marrow and others against Drury S, Marrow, Executor of Thomas F. Marrow, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.

[iv] Five generations of Marrow oral tradition maintained and passed on by Rebecca Marrow Cross Lewis. Additional sources include the will of Anderson Marrow.

[v] Ibid,

[vi] Drury S, Marrow – presumed to be Anderson’s half-brother -- inherited Anderson, b. 1824, his wife, Lucy, b. 1827 and “Becky”, b.1847 following his father Thomas F,. Marrow’s death. Report from court, September term 1857, Granville, North Carolina. Equity, September Term 1857, Daniel Marrow and others against Drury S, Marrow, Executor of Thomas F. Marrow, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.