Introduction
Abstract
Introduction SAGE Publications, Inc.1974DOI: 10.1177/002190967400900301 Roger D.Abrahams John F.Szwed * The editors gratefully acknowledge the dispatch with which the contributors dealt with us, the help of Frances Terry in typing the manuscripts, and the financial assistance of the National Institutes of Mental Health, MH 17216 and the American Philosophical Society. THIS GATHERING OF ARTICLES is a harvesting of some of the second fruits of the Black Studies movement. Discovering Afro-America is our designation for this scholarly dimension of the growing recognition of the integrity and power of black individuals and communities. These essays, written by young scholars with a variety of backgrounds, demonstrate that one major area of this discovery is in cultural continuities. Not that this is really a discovery from the historical point of view. It is really a rediscovery of some of the verities which have reemerged every twenty-five or thirty years in the last century. And the most important of these: that Afro-Americans have a unique history and culture not wholly stemming from the desperate experience of enslavement, racism and poverty. Perhaps the most important aspect of the discovery of Afro-America has been the growing recognition that blacks have been studied before, often by