Question

How did spirituals help African Americans deal with slavery?

The songs helped enslaved people preserve traditional language.
The songs helped people communicate plans and ideas of escape.
The songs encouraged people that slavery was better than life in the North.
All answers are correct.

Answer 1

The great collision of cultures that began with the invasion and settlement of the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade resulted in an intermingling of African, European, and Native American customs; the result was a new mode of life in the colonies. Africans were especially affected because slavery forced cultural compromise upon them. Still there was much from their old lives they retained and much from the new they were willing to adopt.

The first African Americans were only enslaved physically; mentally and spiritually they retained a certain independence despite a variety of external oppressions. Whether the political control of a colony was held by the Spanish, French, Dutch, or English, African Americans still had enough autonomy and cultural leverage to influence the development of new American ways of life.

For generations the historical profession's obsession with political power at the expense of cultural history inhibited our understanding of African culture and its importance. Getting at the truth was all the more difficult because African-American studies were inconveniently bounded as far as the historical profession normally divided things. They were defined neither by particular disciplines nor by particular colonial systems. Aggravating the problem was a scarcity of evidence, since black slaves left few written records and white observers were rarely interested in African-American life. We know far more about African-American culture in the nineteenth century, when the African component was probably more diluted, simply because there is so much more evidence about it.

Scholars interested in the African-American heritage have had to reconstruct a context for their work by backtracking across the Atlantic to the cultural traditions of literally hundreds of African societies. Then came immersion in the colonial systems of Spain, France, Holland, and England, which set the political rules of colonial life. Native American peoples had to be examined for their interactions with African Americans. Then the various blendings between source cultures--African, European, and Native American--along with Creole cultures, including the African-American cultures of the Caribbean, Latin America, and Brazil, had to be considered. It was, and remains, a daunting task. But since scholars fortunately share what they learn, insights from one region have often illuminated material from another so that the full importance of African-American culture in shaping the Americas is becoming ever more apparent.

Answer 2

i think its B

Answer 3

@christina042903 thanks boo :* and thanks @raely21

Answer 4

no prob :*:*:*:*:*

Answer 5

you're welcome