1987 AD: Judaism Was Brought To America By Black Slaves From West Africa

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“But what about the south of this margin of Saharan contacts? In the reign of Jean II of Portugal nearly 700 Jews were taken from their kin and deported to the island of Sao Thome on the west coast of Africa. This island is close to Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabon. Escaping from Sao Thome the Jews emigrated to the coast of Angola between 1484 and 1499. They must have settled in several Portugese colonies and over the centuries mixed with the indigenous black population. Near the Congo in Gabon in 1776 Black Jews, called Bavumbu (or even Mavambo, Mayomba, May or Mavumbu), lived on the coast of Luango by the river named the Rio Muni. It would seem that they adopted Christianity at the same time as maintaining their Judaism. By 1847 David Livingstone discovered a group of educated Blacks living in the interior some 200 miles from the coast of Luando. These Blacks were called the Jews of Angola. They were good merchants, learnt easily and had a knowledge of Portugese law and history. They were often employed as clerks and writers. For Livingstone there was no doubt but that these people were the descendants of those who had been deported from Portugal in the fifteenth century. Other evidence supports his intuition. In Savage Africa Winwoode Reade writes of having met in Guinea Blacks claiming to be Portugese around 1864. Closer to our time Dr. J. Krepel noted some time after the First World War, that a large community of Black Jews existed in the interior of Dahomey. These Jews had the five books of Moses written on old parchment in Hebrew.” (p 232)

Black Portuguese In 1864 West Africa

Winwoode Reade’s account of a black Portuguese presence in 1864 West Africa is also mentioned by Sir Richard Francis Burton, in his book, A mission to Gelele, king of Dahome (1864 AD). He writes the following about an entire congregation of Negro Portuguese being kidnapped and sold into the Transatlantic Slave Trade:

“Some of the kidnapping tales that still linger on this coast, show the straits into which, at times, men were driven for a cargo. At Annobom, where the people are Negro Portuguese, they are ever looking forward to hearing mass from the mouth of a priest. A Spaniard learning this, dressed up a pair of ecclesiastics, landed them, and whilst the function was proceeding, seized the whole congregation, and carried them triumphantly to market.”¹

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Black Slaves Spoke Maghrebian Arab, Ancient Hebrew and Local Patois

“In Southern Nigeria the natives call Black Jews the strange people on the Emo Yo Quaim. They are called the B’nai Ephraim the sons of Ephraim. They claim that their ancestors came from Morocco and this is supported by Godbey who noted that their language is a mixture of Maghrebian Arab, ancient Hebrew and local patois: for example abu meaning father became y aba, umm for mother is close to the Hebrew word. These Emo Yo Quaim Jews live in the ondo district and have a copy of the Torah.” (p 235)

Judaism Was The Religion of Slaves Brought To America

“The study of customs and rites and the analysis of the semantics of these African tribes have led many of their observers to propose some hypotheses and even to draw some conclusions. Doctor Allen H. Godbey reached the following conclusion: ‘These factors have a very specific significance if we consider the presence of Judaism among the American Negroes. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were transported to America from West Africa during the trade which started some 400 years ago. What traces of Judaism still remained among the Negroes of West Africa at that period? To the extent that they were persecuted they were more likely than other Negroes to be seized during wars and sold as slaves. It is virtually certain that many part Jewish Negroes were among those sent as slaves to America. How many of them would have been able to conserve some Jewish customs is another question. This conclusion put forward by Godbey, which argues for the existence of a more or less recurrent Judaism in West Africa in the same places as those from which the Negroes were taken, is shared by others, such as Maurice Delafosse. But most significantly it has been adopted by a class of educated Black Americans as a key argument to demonstrate that the Jewish religion is the traditional religion of Africans brought in slavery to the American continent.” (p 235 – 236)

Sources

1. Burton, Sir Richard Francis. p 191. A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome: With Notices of the So Called “Amazons,” the Grand Customs, the Yearly Customs, the Human Sacrifices, the Present State of the Slave Trade, and the Negro’s Place in Nature, Volumes 1-2. p 23. https://books.google.com/books?id=BjU6AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA191 ↩︎