Yoruba Americans

Yoruba Americans

Total population
(1,800,000 (2000 US Census)[1])
Regions with significant populations
Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, Louisiana, California and most Southern States.
Languages
American English, African American Vernacular English, French, Yoruba
Religion
Christianity, Islam and Yoruba religion
Related ethnic groups
Yoruba people, African Americans, Nigerian Americans, Beninese Americans

Yoruba Americans are Americans of Yoruba descent. The Yoruba people (Yoruba: Àwọ̀n ọ́mọ́ Yorùbá) are an ethnic group originating in southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin in West Africa.

History

The first Yoruba people who arrived to the United States were imported as slaves from Nigeria and Benin during the Atlantic slave trade.^[2] This ethnicity of the slaves was one of the main origins of present-day Nigerians who arrived to the United States, along with the Igbo and Hausa. In addition, native slaves of current Benin hailed from peoples such as Nago (Yoruba subgroup,^[3] although exported mainly by Spanish,^[4] when Louisiana was Spanish) -, Ewe, Fon and Gen. Many of the slaves imported to the modern United States from Benin were sold by the King of Dahomey, in Whydah.^{[3][5] [note 1]}

The slaves brought with them their cultural practices, languages, and religious beliefs rooted in spirit and ancestor worship. So, the manners of the Yoruba, Fon, Gen and Ewe of Benin were key elements of Louisiana Voodoo.^[7] Also Haitians, who migrated to Louisiana in the late nineteenth century and also contributed to Voodoo of this state, have the Yoruba^[8] and Ewe as their main origins. The Yoruba, and some northern Nigerian ethnic groups, had tribal facial identification marks. These could have assisted a returning slave in relocating his or her ethnic group, but few slaves escaped the colonies. In the colonies, masters tried to dissuade the practice of tribal customs. They also sometimes mixed people of different ethnic groups to make it more difficult for them to communicate and bond together in rebellion.^[9]

After the slavery abolition in 1865, many modern Nigerian immigrants have come to the United States to pursue educational opportunities in undergraduate and post-graduate institutions. This was possible because in the 1960s and 1970s, after the Biafra War, Nigeria's government funded scholarships for Nigerian students, and many of them were admitted to American universities. While this was happening, there were several military coups and brief periods of civilian rule. All this caused many Nigerians to emigrate.^[10] Most of these Nigerian immigrants are of Yoruba, Igbo and Ibibio origins. Today, most African Americans share ancestry with the Yoruba people.^[11][12]

Notable Yoruba-Americans

• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Brendon Ayanbadejo
• Rockmond Dunbar
• Femi Emiola
• Donald Faison
• Glenda Hatchett
• Angélique Kidjo
• DeLisha Milton-Jones
• Nas
• Adewale Ogunleye
• Hakeem Olajuwon
• Safiya Songhai
• Wale
• Kehinde Wiley
• Cassandra Wilson

See also

• African diaspora
• African American
• African Americans in Louisiana
• Lucumi people
• Afro-Jamaican
• Afro-Puerto Rican
• Afro-Cuban
• Afro-Brazilian
• Saros
• Nigerian American
• Yoruba people

Notes

1. Indeed, Dahomey was one of the main proslavery Kingdoms of West Africa during the colonial period of the Americas and the nineteenth century, arriving to his maximum economic splendor to late of the eighteenth century thanks to its slave trade with the European traders of many areas of the Americas (from the U.S. to Brazil). The majority of his slaves were, from that time, to second half of the nineteenth century, of Yoruba origin.^[6]

References

1. "Table 1. First, Second, and Total Responses to the Ancestry Question by Detailed Ancestry Code: 2000". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 2013-06-19.
2. Stephen Prothero (2010). God is Not One. ReadHowYouWant.com. p. 278. ISBN 978-1-45-9602-57-1.
3. Gwendolyn Hall (2005). Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. University of North Carolina. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-80-787-68-62.
4. Google books: Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color. Wrote by Sybil Kein.
5. "Question of the Month: Cudjo Lewis: Last African Slave in the U.S.?", by David Pilgrim, Curator, Jim Crow Museum, July 2005, webpage:Ferris-Clotilde.
6. EL ELEMENTO SUBSAHÁRICO EN EL LÉXICO VENEZOLANO (in Spanish: The Subsaharian element in the Venezolan lexicon).
7. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (1995). Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Louisiana State University Press. p. 58.
8. "Shotgun Houses". National Park Service: African American Heritage & Ethnography. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
9. "Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: 'Lucumi' and 'Nago' as Ethnonyms in West Africa"
10. Encyclopedia ofChicago: Nigerians in Chicago. Posted by Charles Adams Cogan and Cyril Ibe. Retrieved May 2, 2013, to 16:30 pm.
11. Fouad Zakharia; Analabha Basu; Devin Absher; Themistocles L. Assimes; Alan S. Go; Mark A. Hlatky; Carlos Iribarren; Joshua W. Knowles; Jun Li; Balasubramanian Narasimhan; Stephen Sydney; Audrey Southwick; Richard M. Myers; Thomas Quertermous; Neil Risch; Hua Tang (December 22, 2009). "Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans" (pdf). Genome Biology (Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco) 10 (12). doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
12. "Complex genetic ancestry of Americans uncovered". Phys.org. Science X Network. March 24, 2015. Retrieved April 13, 2015.