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African American culture is both part of, and distinct from American culture. From their earliest presence in North America, Africans and African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, and language to American culture. more...

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Language

Distinctive patterns of language use among African Americans arose as creative responses to the hardships imposed on the African American community. Slave owners often intentionally mixed people who spoke many different African languages to discourage communication in any language other than English on their plantations. One response to these conditions was the development of pidgins, simplified mixtures of two or more languages that speakers of different languages could use to communicate with each other. Some of these pidgins eventually became fully developed Creole languages spoken by certain groups as a native language. Significant numbers of people still speak some of these Creole languages, notably Gullah on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. African American Vernacular English, also called Black English or Ebonics, is a unique dialect of English spoken by many African Americans that shares some grammatical and orthographical features with Creole and West African languages. Words such as \"gumbo,\" \"goober\" and even some AAVE slang expressions, such as \"hep cat,\" which have made their way into the American mainstream, are West African in origin. Ebonics is particularly prominent among teenagers

Religion

Enslaved Africans brought their own religious beliefs and practices with them when they were forced on ships from Africa to the New World, but slaveowners mounted a systematic and brutal campaign to de-Africanize them, and strip them of their mostly animist, polytheistic, or Muslim beliefs. African religious practices, considered \"heathen\", were strictly forbidden, and drums were outlawed for fear that the talking drum would be used by slaves to communicate over distances to plot rebellions.

Christianity

See also: African American church

See also: Christian views on slavery

When Pope Nicholas V instituted hereditary slavery of Africans with his Dum Diversas, he did so by classifying Africans as Muslims and pagans. Thus, for centuries it was expected that slaves who converted to Christianity would have to be freed. For this reason, slave owners prevented their \"property\" from learning about Christianity.

Later, Christianity was used as a tool to subjugate slaves and make them easier to control. Whites deliberately omitted or downplayed its equalizing and liberating elements and dogma and emphasized passages of the Bible that urged obedience to one's master and piety. However, slaves seized upon the story of Moses leading the \"children of Israel\" out of Egypt to the \"Promised Land,\" and Old Testament notions of a fierce, warrior God who protected his faithful.

Read more at Wikipedia.org