2. The Akan of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire
3. The Mbundu of Angola (includes Ovimbundu)
4. The BaKongo of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola
5. The Igbo of southeastern Nigeria
6. The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria
7. The Mandé of Upper Guinea
8. The Wolof of Senegal and The Gambia
9. The Chamba of Cameroon
10. The Makua of Mozambique
According to Wikipedia, these are the tribes that exported the great numbers of men and women into the Atlantic Slave Trade. It was the term 'Wolof' that got my attention as I was reading through that material tangential to some other thinking I've been doing on the blog.
I seem to recall that it was J.A. Rogers who gave in his books some accounting of those tribes and gave pictures of the facial features of all of them. Sadly, I can't recall if it was specifically Rogers or which book it might have been, though pops had three or four of his best sellers. But I do recall taking in material as a pre-teen that helped imprint in my mind that we black Americans were different. The Wolof was tall and bearded, he had a thin face. There was some friend of the family that I immediately recognized as Wolof.
As for us, I fancied that we would be considered Akan. My favorite book at the time on the subject was Kwaku, A Boy of Ghana. It's on one of my shelves somewhere.
I wonder where I might come to find that stuff again. I'll make sure to look it up the next time I get back to that portion of the Bowen Library chez Pops.
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