An African American is an American of African descent. In the book "African Americans in the Colonial Era", told is how this descends came about. When Africans were brought from Africa to the new world to become slaves, many changes occurred in their culture. Among these changes in culture, has emerged a new race. The African American.

When slavery began in English North America, nearly all the slaves came from the coast and interior of West and West Central Africa. "A few came from the Mozambique coast or Madagascar, around the Cape of Good Hope". In coming to the Americas, these Africans kept religion as the heart of their culture. "African slaves came to the New World with strong religious beliefs and thoughts of the afterlife. But religious belief is personal and often developed individually, and the private world of the religion was a sanctuary which slaves could turn during periods of anxiety and stress that were such a large part of their lives. African religions, of course, were not all alike, but West and West-Central Africans held some patterns of beliefs in common." Slaves arrived here hoping to continue their own religious beliefs but forced upon them, although not

In conclusion, you can see the changes in the black culture that these blacks unfortunately had to go thru. These changes occurred in religion, ways of subsistence, family life, disease matters, and many more. The religion forced upon them was hard to handle and ways of living seemed to that of little indifference than that in Africa. The family lives here in Colonial America improved because of the culture that was brought over from Africa. Without it, many black slaves could not have survived the hardships they were facing. The diseases had a great affect on the white folk as well as the black. The diseases that the blacks were immune to helped them survive longer here in America. Other changes did occur in the African culture that came with the black slaves, but I feel I have highlighted the main ones that played an important role in the forming of the African American.

When the Africans arrived in the new colonies their nutritional intake status was that of poor. They lived a nutritional nightmare. The result of this malnutrition was diseases many that were largely foreign to whites. Some of these were rickets, pica, (often called "dirt eating"), hookworm, and pellagra ("black tongue"). "Of course malnutrition often made slaves more susceptible to common disease and made them more vulnerable to secondary infections once they had been wounded or had acquired a common ailment." On the other hand there were also diseases that the slaves were immune to. "Overlooked for many years were the epidemiological difficulties slaves experienced whe

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Approximate Word count = 1053
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)