Toshi Sakai and I have been doing field research on manifestations of the Africanity of Panama for more than a decade. A major element of this Africanity is the amazing number and density of African place names throughout the nation. We have visited many of these places. What has surprised us as much as...
Without Understanding the Africans in the Atlantic World, You Cannot Have a Clear Understanding of What the Modern World Is ~ Dr. Charles H. Long, Historian of Religions Essay by Dr. Sheila S. Walker The African Diaspora and the Modern World was the title of the 1996 conference I organized, with support from UNESCO,...
Reflecting on the images I selected from my stacks of stills and miles of video to share on this website, I realized that they portray the evolution of my experiences in and research about the Global African Diaspora. They visualize when, where, and how I began, continued, and continue to discover this Diaspora for...
When I made my first journey to Africa, eminent scholars who with the support of respected institutions studied African Americans as problems were insisting to us and proclaiming to others that we had no culture and definitely no African heritage. My experiences in Cameroon demonstrated the contrary as well as teaching me about the...
I left the United States for the first time at age nineteen to spend a summer living with a family in Cameroon in Central Africa. That brief, intense experience determined the rest of my life. Africa was portrayed then, in movies and on television, by Tarzan, Jungle Jim, and their female counterpart, Sheena, Queen...