What was that tradition? It is the love of family. Although Africa is a vast and diverse continent, one similarity at the center of the African tradition was the family, which was also the religious, economic, and political unit encompassing a wide circle of extended kinship. For Black people, slavery in this country disrupted this most essential structure, since slavery allowed for no legal marriage, no legal family, and no legal control over the children. Nevertheless, even during slavery, women took care of children not their own, and many slaves protected each other in spite of tribal and language differences. And as soon as slavery ended, women and men went about trying to put the family back together. The stories of former slaves trying to locate their families is inspiring, to say the least. And many of these stories are told at reunions.
And so Black people became like other families. They reconnected, engaged in legal marriages, raised children like others and did all the things that were like the white families around them. The system was different from what they had come from in Africa, but they were in a new world. The former slaves faced, of course, the worst kind of discrimination and racism when they were freed, but they managed to raise families. They did a superb job, when one looks all that they had to face and have since faced as African Americans.
That African Americans survived at all is glorious, but much of the survival is due to the fact that they helped each other, that they took care of each other, that they extended themselves not only to blood relatives but also to others. The extended family was crucial. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and unrelated individuals who were considered part of the family all were in the neighborhood and gave moral, psychological and financial support. Raising others’ children became a natural phenomenon in African-American life. Caring for others within the family structure and community was not only a value carried over from the African legacy, but also a reaction to discrimination and the fact that many social and human services were not offered to the black community.
However, family structures in America, regardless of race and ethnicity and for a variety of reasons, have changed. In the process, the role of the extended family has diminished. But for Black Americans it was a greater loss than for other groups because it had been such a tradition and had played such an important role in survival. Speaker after speaker at African American events expresses this sentiment no matter what the topic. The feeling can also be heard on Black oriented radio talk shows as people tell the stories of those other than their parents who provided nurturing during childhood. They talk about people who carried familial ties but were not blood relatives.
In their book, Black Extended Families (1978), Joanne and Elmer Martin detail many of the reasons for the deterioration of the extended family and the loss of kinship ties even when families live in the same city.1 They note the impact of urbanization and government programs on extended family functions. Case studies of migration of people from rural areas to urban areas such as the book Sea Island to City (1969) by Clyde Kiser, chronicle the diminishing of the social control function of the extended family. 2
But families are now reconnecting. And in so doing, African Americans are making a real contribution. The revival of the extended family through the reunions was a finding of my study, i.e. not an insight that I started out with. And after my initial research I began to refer to the reunions as a catalyst for change.
let us know how that turns out pleighboi.
