Volume VIII (2008)

that Americans of African decent continuously endeavor to make order out of the chaos that corresponds with atrocities suffered during and after the Middle Passage. While North America and much of Europe experienced a so-called Age of Enlightenment, nearly one and a half million Africans experienced disruptions of kinship bonds, religious practices, and verbal forms of communication.1 These components are necessary for any ethnic or racial group to advance. As various slave communities began developing in the New World, elements of African culture found efficacy through carefully selected retentions, as well as reinterpretations and syncretiztions based on Euro-American and West African world-views. The relationship between Africa and African Americans might never have the relevance that it once did. In fact