"In the face of cultural aggression of all sorts, in the face of all disintegrating factors of the outside world, the most efficient weapon with which a people can arm itself is this feeling of historical continuity"1
"The Islamic Revolts of Bahia: A Continuity of the 19th Century Jihads of Western Sudan"
1:Introduction Revolt, resistance, revolution and social transformation is born out of an oppressed peoples awareness of themselves and the knowledge that their `collective soul' is under attack by their oppressors. To the degree that this cultural cohesiveness persist determines the degree to which the oppressed group will go in order to assure its survival. It is knowledge of one's former culture, religion, social status which germinates the desire for resistance in the face of cultural aggression. However, when the historical conscience and culture of an oppressed group have been erased and destroyed, it determines the manner in which they will resist or if they will opt for resistance at all. African-Americans in the U.S. are examples of a people who, because their collective historical conscience was successfully eradicated, chose not to resist the cultural aggression of their European American aggressors and opted to assimilate and gradually effect change in the society in which they were held captive, by means of `civil disobedience' executed in a non-violent way. This does not mean that there were never examples of slave resistance and insurrections. On the contrary, however, these slave revolts occurred during a time when the Africans in America still possessed some small remnant of their cultural heritage. Nat Turner's mother and grandmother taught him about Africa, which engendered in Nat a sense of self worth and resulted in his eventual call to arms.2
1 Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology, (Lawrwnce Hill Books, Brooklyn, 1991), 212. 2 Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion, (Harper & Row Publishers, New, York, 1975), 84-85.