An African American is an American of African descent. In the book "African Americans in the Colonial Era", the story is told 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, a

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 of 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 when marched from one African disease environment to another." Such environments included savannas where sleeping sickness could have been contracted in the forests, drier and higher areas caught malaria or yellow fever in the wetter lowlands, and different strains of influenza and other diseases often lurked in regions even closer to their original homes. " Death rates varied across the slave-trading area and through time; they are impossible to estimate with accuracy. It is clear, however, that the African man, woman, or child sold to a ship captain for conveyance to the new world was already a survivor."

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1051
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)