Yoruba Americans

Yoruba Americans

Total population
196,000 (estimate) [1]
Regions with significant populations
Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Florida, Louisiana, California and most Southern States.
Languages
English (American English), Yoruba, Nigerian English), French, Spanish and Nigerian Pidgin.
Religion
Christianity, Islam, and Yoruba religion
Related ethnic groups
African Americans, Beninese Americans, Black Canadians, Nigerian Americans, Nigerian Canadians, Yoruba Canadians, Yoruba people

Yoruba Americans (Yoruba: Àwọn ọmọ Yorùbá Amẹrika) are Americans of Yoruba descent. The Yoruba people are a West African ethnic group that predominantly inhabits southwestern Nigeria, with smaller indigenous communities in Benin and Togo.

History

Further information: Slave Coast of West Africa and Yoruba people in the Atlantic slave trade

The first Yoruba people who arrived to the United States were imported as slaves from Nigeria and Benin during the Atlantic slave trade.^[2][3] This ethnicity of the slaves was one of the main origins of present-day Nigerians who arrived to the United States, along with the Igbo. In addition, native slaves of current Benin hailed from peoples such as Nago,^{[note 1]} Ewe, Fon, and Gen. Many of the slaves imported to the modern United States from Benin were sold by the King of Dahomey, in Whydah.^{[4][6] [note 2]}

The slaves brought with them their cultural practices, languages, cuisine^[8] and religious beliefs rooted in spirit and ancestor worship.^[9] So, the manners of the Yoruba, Fon, Gen and Ewe of Benin were key elements of Louisiana Voodoo.^[10] Also Haitians, who migrated to Louisiana in the late nineteenth century and also contributed to Voodoo of this state, have the Yoruba,^[11] Fon, and Ewe among their main origins.

Cuban immigrants brought with them the Santería religion, a child of the Yoruba religion and Catholicism.^[12]: 1150 In New York City Santería was founded by Oba Ifa Morote.^[12]: 1150 Born in 1903 in Cuba, he immigrated to NYC in 1946, took the name Padrino, and began practicing as a babalawo.^[12]: 1150

On May 23, 1980, the city's animal health authorities raided the apartment of one of Padrino's followers on East 146th Street in the Bronx.^[12]: 1150 The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) had complained about Santería's practices of animal sacrifice.^[12]: 1150 Three goats and eighteen chickens were removed from the dwelling.^[12]: 1150

In the colonies, masters tried to dissuade the practice of tribal customs. They also sometimes mixed people of different ethnic groups to make it more difficult for them to communicate and bond together in rebellion.^[13] Today, many African Americans share ancestry with the Yoruba people.^[14][15]

After the slavery abolition in 1865, many modern Nigerian immigrants of Yoruba ancestry have come to the United States starting in the mid-twentieth century to pursue educational opportunities in undergraduate and post-graduate institutions. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which allowed for a significant number of Nigerians of Yoruba ancestry to immigrate to the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, after the Nigerian-Biafran War, Nigeria's government funded scholarships for Nigerian students, and many of them were admitted to American universities. While this was happening, there were several military coups and brief periods of civilian rule. All this caused many Nigerians to emigrate.^[16] Most of these Nigerian immigrants are of Yoruba, Igbo and Ibibio origins.

Yoruba have often found American habits of pet keeping very strange, culturally unfamiliar.^[17]: 18

List of Yoruba Americans

• Cudjoe Lewis, one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade
• Matilda McCrear, one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade
• Scipio Vaughan, slave
• Brendon Ayanbadejo, football player
• Femi Emiola, actress
• Lola Ogunnaike, entertainment journalist
• Adewale Ogunleye, football player
• Toyin Falola, historian
• Oluwatoyin Asojo, biochemist
• Hakeem Olajuwon, basketball player
• Oye Owolewa, politician
• Wale, rapper
• Kehinde Wiley, artist
• Harold Demuren, aeronautical engineer
• Oshoke Abalu, architect and futurist
• Toluse Olorunnipa, political commentator
• Abiola Irele, literary scholar
• Babatunde Ogunnaike, chemical engineer
• Ilesanmi Adesida, physicist
• Akintunde Akinwande, electrical engineer
• Kamaru Usman, mixed martial arts fighter
• Chamillionaire, rapper
• Tomi Adeyemi, novelist
• Wally Adeyemo, United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury
• Luvvie Ajayi, blogger
• David Oyelowo, actor
• Dot da Genius, music producer
• Tanitoluwa Adewumi, chess player
• Deji Akinwande, electrical and computer engineering professor
• Akinwumi Ogundiran, archaeologist
• Bamidele A. Ojo, political scientist
• Kunle Olukotun, computer scientist
• Mojisola Adeyeye pharmacist and professor
• Fela Sowande, musician and composer
• Nelson M. Oyesiku, neurosurgeon
• Olufunmilayo Olopade, hematologist
• Yewande Olubummo, mathematician
• Kate Okikiolu, mathematician
• Rick Famuyiwa, film director
• Temie Giwa-Tubosun, entrepreneur
• Folakemi T. Odedina, pharmacy professor
• Bo Oshoniyi, soccer player
• Sope Aluko, actress
• Sade Baderinwa, news anchor
• Folake Olowofoyeku, actress
• Tunde Adebimpe, lead singer of TV on the Radio
• Adebayo Ogunlesi, lawyer and investment banker
• Jimmy Adegoke, climatologist
• Dayo Okeniyi, actor
• Arike Ogunbowale, basketball player
• Benson Mayowa, football player
• Bayo Ojikutu, creative writer
• Adebayo Alonge, entrepreneur
• Tosin Abasi, founder and lead guitarist of Animals as Leaders
• Nelson M. Oyesiku, neurosurgeon
• Lola Eniola-Adefeso, chemical engineer
• Deborah Ayorinde, actress
• Jacob K. Olupona, scholar of indigenous African religions
• Mobolaji Dawodu, fashion designer
• Stephen Adebanji Akintoye, historian
• Ade A. Olufeko, artist and technologist
• Toyin Ojih Odutola, graphic artist
• Esther Agbaje, attorney and politician
• Abiodun Koya, classical opera singer
• Ibiyinka Alao, architect
• John Dabiri, aerospace engineer
• Adewale Ogunleye, football player
• Tobi Jnohope, footballer
• Ayo Dosunmu, basketball player
• Oluwatoyin Salau, murder victim

See also

• African diaspora
• Odunde Festival
• African Americans
• Nigerian Americans
• African Americans in Louisiana
• Lucumi people
• Yoruba Canadians
• Afro-Jamaicans
• Afro-Puerto Rican
• Afro-Cubans
• Afro-Brazilians
• Saros
• Yoruba people
• Yoruba language
• Igbo Americans

Notes

1. (Yoruba subgroup,^[4] although exported mainly by Spanish,^[5] when Louisiana was Spanish)
2. Indeed, Dahomey was one of the main proslavery Kingdoms of West Africa during the colonial period of the Americas and the nineteenth century, arriving to his maximum economic splendor to late of the eighteenth century thanks to its slave trade with the European traders of many areas of the Americas (from the U.S. to Brazil). The majority of his slaves were, from that time, to second half of the nineteenth century, of Yoruba origin.^[7]

References

1. "Yoruba Language | Joshua Project".
2. Stephen Prothero (2010). God is Not One. ReadHowYouWant.com. p. 278. ISBN 978-1-45-9602-57-1.
3. Joseph E. Holloway (2005). Africanisms in American Culture (Blacks in the diaspora). Indiana University Press. p. 250. ISBN 978-0-253-2174-93.
4. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (2005). Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. University of North Carolina. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-80-787-68-62.
5. Kein, Sybil (2000). Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color. LSU Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2601-1.
6. "Question of the Month: Cudjo Lewis: Last African Slave in the U.S.?", by David Pilgrim, Curator, Jim Crow Museum, July 2005, webpage:Ferris-Clotilde.
7. EL ELEMENTO SUBSAHÁRICO EN EL LÉXICO VENEZOLANO (in Spanish: The Sub-Saharan element in the Venezuelan lexicon).
8. Pableaux Johnson; Charmaine O'Brien (2000). New Orleans. Lonely Planet (World Food). p. 26. ISBN 978-1-864-5011-00.
9. Martin A. Klein (2002). The A to Z of Slavery and Abolition (Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series). Issue 40 of Historical dictionaries of religions, philosophies, and movements. Scarecrow Press (Pennsylvania State University). ISBN 978-0-810-8455-96.
10. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (1995). Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Louisiana State University Press. p. 58.
11. "Shotgun Houses". National Park Service: African American Heritage & Ethnography. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
12. Jackson, Kenneth T.; New-York Historical Society (2010). The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven, Connecticut, US: Yale University Press. pp. xix+1561. ISBN 978-0-300-18257-6. OCLC 842264684.
13. Law, Robin (1997). "Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: "Lucumi" and "Nago" as Ethnonyms in West Africa". History in Africa. 24: 205–219. doi:10.2307/3172026.
14. Fouad Zakharia; Analabha Basu; Devin Absher; Themistocles L. Assimes; Alan S. Go; Mark A. Hlatky; Carlos Iribarren; Joshua W. Knowles; Jun Li; Balasubramanian Narasimhan; Stephen Sydney; Audrey Southwick; Richard M. Myers; Thomas Quertermous; Neil Risch; Hua Tang (December 22, 2009). "Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans" (PDF). Genome Biology. 10 (12). Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco: R141. doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141. PMC 2812948. PMID 20025784. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
15. "Complex genetic ancestry of Americans uncovered". Phys.org. Science X Network. March 24, 2015. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
16. Encyclopedia of Chicago: Nigerians in Chicago Archived January 20, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Posted by Charles Adams Cogan and Cyril Ibe. Retrieved May 2, 2013, to 16:30 pm.
17. Agwuele, Augustine (2016). The Symbolism and Communicative Contents of Dreadlocks in Yorubaland. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. ix+210. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-30186-0. ISBN 978-3-319-30186-0. LCCN 2016937716. ISBN 978-3-319-30185-3.

External links

• "Yoruba Descendants in North America".