© 2004 by Dee Galloway
No portion of this material may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the author.

The African concept of Sankofa, which means "to go back and get it," encourages one generation to speak to and have an impact upon another across time and space. In American literature, novels, drama, and volumes of poetry that look to the experience of Africans and African Americans in America are Sankofa; anthologies of African American literature are Sankofa; books of African American literary criticism are Sankofa. All scholarship that attempts to illuminate the African foundations of African American literature is truly the effort to "go back and get it." It is Sankofa.

This section of the Spirituals Project Multimedia Website is an adaptation of an undergraduate thesis written to fulfill the requirements for a Bachelors degree in English Literature from the University of Denver. It examines the influence of the spirituals on the themes and structures employed by African American poets, including how this influence is manifested today in the Hip-Hop culture's synthesis of music and poetry known generically as "rap." Throughout the discussion is an exploration of how this ongoing influence can be seen as the continuation of the traditional African concepts of temporality known as Sankofa,Sasa and Zamani. I hope that this discussion will help to illuminate the ongoing influence of the spirituals on the development of American culture, as well as expand and deepen the reader's experience of poetry created by African Americans.