Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2007 by Leslie, La Vonne Jackson

Gomez, Michael A. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 385 pp.

This book, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of Africa Muslims in the Americas, is a "social history of the experiences of African muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean" (p. i). Michael Gomez takes on an ambitious task in relating the historical connections of Islam in the lives of people of African descent from early Africa to the western hemisphere up to the twentieth century. The book is divided into two sections with the "first discussing African Muslims in the Americas through periods of enslavement." The second part examines, "Islam's development in the United States." In doing so, the author examines the Quran and African Americans "acceptance of Muhammad" (p. ix).

Michael Gomez is a well published Professor of History at New York University, with research interests on the African Diaspora, Islam, and West African history. He is clearly knowledgeable on the relationship of Islam in the experiences of Africans and their descendants. The information he provides is impressive and his comparative methodology is a model for studies on the subject. In Black Crescent, Gomez relies on impressive secondary sources with information on the Muslim experience in the Diaspora.

The first chapter describes Ladinos, Gelofes, and Mandingas in the Americas. The author points out that Muslims came to America with Christopher Columbus, and in the 15th and 16th centuries, Muslims lived in the western hemisphere. Subsequently, Gomez shows this trend continued throughout later centuries until Muslim presence became evident in the slave trade. He describes how Muslims introduced Europeans to trade in Africa that resulted in the transatlantic slave trade. He does an excellent job revealing intricate information on how the African slave trade progressed, starting with Portugal, then Spain. Gomez points out that Muslim slaves had a presence in the New World from the beginning by participating in the exploration and occupation of the New World. The most recognized, of course, was a Moor named Estevanico, or Estevan, an "Arabic black from Azamor, in Morocco," who aided in colonizing New Mexico and Arizona. Moor referred to a caste, a designation that "did not intend to imply racial factors, but rather cultural characteristics of Islam." (p. 5).

According to the author, the first Africans to carry out a revolt in the New World in opposition to slavery, were probably Muslims from Senegambia who proved to be most formidable in resisting bondage. The first recorded resistance occurred in 1503 in Hispaniola, which caused the rulers of Spain to suppress "further shipment to the colony of enslaved Ladinos, or persons possessing knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese languages and cultures, with connections to Senegambia, Islam, or both." Despite fears of Ladinos, those remaining in the colony served as personal attendants (p. 4).

Black Crescent also sheds information on Muslims in Sahara and Sub-Saharan Africa when Africa had the great western Sudanic kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay, from the 9th century to the 15th. The kingdoms domination in the trans-Saharan trade facilitated relations with the Islamic world. For many centuries, Islam in Senegambia, and elsewhere in West Africa, remained the religion of merchants and rulers, as well as the faith of the elite (p.11).

In examining Muslim Africans in the Caribbean, Brazil, Latin America, and North America, Gomez explains how slavery and politics affected them. He provides evidence to show slave owners sometimes preferred Muslims to expatriates from West Africa. Despite the significance of Islam in relation to slavery, it failed to become dominant among slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil; although in earlier years, it proliferated in Trinidad. Muslims in Trinidad who identified with West Africans acquired "commercial gains, prosperity, and elevated status." In the United States, Islam became a "social and political force." In the early American South, Muslims were generally viewed by slaveholders as "more intelligent, more reasonable, more physically attractive, more dignified people" (p. 173).

Gomez provides information on Noble Drew Ali and Islam among contemporary African Americans. According to the author, Noble Drew Ali is "the bridge over which the Muslim legacies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries crossed over into the Muslim communities of the twentieth and twenty-first" (p. 203). He goes even further in discussing Islam among African Americans by focusing on the Nation of Islam and its leaders beginning with W.D. Fard Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X. In the final chapter, "Malcolm," Gomez provides revealing information on Malcolm X's personal and religious life, with emphasis on Alex Haley's Autobiography on Malcolm (p. 341-42). The author asserts that "it was Malcolm X's ability to effectively and articulately combine nationalism and pan-Africanism with the religious message of the Nation of Islam's teachings" (p. 375).