African Americans and the War for Independence 17631783 Essay

African Americans and the War for Independence 17631783 - Essay Example Today's Mande people are heirs to an extremely rich and vibrant historical legacy,the high point of which was the Mali people.The social status of the most ancient families is based on their identification with ancestors who participated with Sunjata in the founding of the empire early in the 13th century. Members of some of these lineages have the status of aristocrat, or horonw. Traditionally, they were proprietors of the land and community leaders, and were expected to conduct themselves with dignity and honor, and to speak only when they had something serious to say. The senior male members of families that traced their descent from a village's founder were eligible to be chiefs. Some lineages claimed descent from distinguished ancestors described in The Sunjata Epic, including Sunjata himself.Mande group is identified its association with Islam. This includes Muslim clerics who are specialists in Islamic studies or leaders of prayer at the mosques. Their Arabic title, imam, has become almami in the Mande languages. Some of these learned Muslims are teachers in Quran schools, where children study the holy book of Islam and are expected to memorize at least part of it in Arabic.The Mande people's own story about the origin of the Mali Empire is usually known as The Sunjata Epic named for Sunjata Keita, who is credited with founding the Mali Empire. The story begins some time around the beginning of the 13th century in Farakoro, Mande chiefdom. Farakoro was near the gold fields of Bur, which had been one of the main sources of gold for Ghana in earlier centuries and would become similarly important for the Mali Empire. The chief of Farakoro was Maghan Konfara (maghan means "chief" and Konfara was another name for his town). Like all chiefs and kings of his day, Maghan Konfara had diviners who would forecast the future. One day the diviners told Maghan Konfara that he would be the father of a great hero, but that the woman who would be the hero's mother had not yet been found. After a long search the woman was finally located in the kingdom of Do ni Kiri. She was Sogolon Cond, a sister of the mansa (king). Sogolon was an ugly, hunchbacked woman, but she had frightening powers as a sorceress and was recognized as the woman who was destined to give birth to this great hero. So she was brought to Farakoro and married to Maghan Konfara, who already had many other wives. Sunjata organized the soldiers of all the Mande chiefdoms into a powerful army that went to war against Soso. After a series of battles, Sunjata's army vanquished Sumaworo and the army of Soso. The unified Mande chiefdoms formed the basis of a powerful kingdom that expanded into all the neighboring territories and became the Mali Empire. The Mande oral traditions do not give dates for the events they describe, but from what was written by Arab geographers, it appears that the defeat of Soso happened some time during the 1230s. African Americans The tendency in the United States was to seek to separate slaves who had come from the same local region in Africa, to make the individuals easier to manage. It was harder for the slaves to develop a common culture, and to organize. Unusually, the slave population in the USA was able to reproduce, meeting the needs of the economy across the growing country, and thus avoiding reliance on illegal slave trading. Increasingly slaves were American-born, rather than recent arrivals from Africa. Families were able to be relatively stable, and many owners saw the economic benefits of an increasing slave population. In the USA, only Africans were kept as slaves, and there was resistance to the idea of emancipation or manumission. White indentured servants and voluntary emigrants, whose living conditions were not necessarily better, but whose legal status was superior, could meet other needs for labor. Where there was discussion of freeing of slaves, from the time of Thomas Jefferson, it was assumed that the freed slaves would be required to