Abstract
Africans throughout the continent had access to information about their brethren in the New World. Distance, geographical barriers, illiteracy and the lack of efficient means of communication never prevented the flow of information from America to Africa. Though the distribution was uneven, information about America and African-Americans reached Africans even in the remotest parts of the continent. Beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Africa was recipient of a steady stream of correspondence, newspapers, periodicals and books from and about the New World, sent from America or brought in by visitors, seamen, churchmen, agents of African-American organizations, and others. To the written documentation were added oral reports, spread by African and foreign sailors who stopped at the ports and by migrant laborers and peddlers who traveled from village to village, region to region. In the twentieth century, these sources of information were supplemented by films. Africans who traveled to America or read about African-Americans were better informed; those who received information second and third-hand were less accurately informed.
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Notes
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© 1997 Yekutiel Gershoni
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Gershoni, Y. (1997). The Shape and Shaping of the African-American Myth. In: Africans on African-Americans. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25339-5_2
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