Questions for Class Discussion

1. How did African Americans work to adapt their native traditions under the conditions of New World slavery? What kinds of traditions were most successfully preserved?
   
   
2. What enabled African Americans in the Chesapeake region to develop societies whereunusually for the history of slaverythe population reproduced and grew through natural increase? What does this suggest about the nature of families under slavery? How might these circumstances have affected the relationship between slaves and slaveholders?
   
   

Suggested Student Exercises

• Use photographs of art objects or other materials from one of the particular cultures or regions of Africa from which a substantial number of slaves came to America (e.g., the Guinea Coast, Benin, Ivory Coast, or Angola), and have students consider characteristics that may have passed into African American culture.
  
  
• Examine some of the areas along the Atlantic coast where economic and social conditions, including the density of slave populations, made for a more extensive survival of African elements within African American cultures. (The most famous and well-studied is the Gullah culture on the Georgia and South Carolina sea islands.)