Well the slave trade ended in the 1860’s, so that was more than 100 years of being seperated from Africa. Most blacks are Christians and I think most black kids are more familliar with Santa Claus, European Fairy Tales and Itallian food than any of Africa’s cuisine or myths or religions or language.
However, did any piece of African culture, brought by the slaves, every integrate into American society? I am not talking about fake holidays like Kwanzaa but genuine african culture?
And how did the slaves feel about accepting Christianity over Africa’s native beliefs? One atheist was wondering why most black americans are christians when christianity was forced on their ancestors.
Jazz and blues music is supposed to have some African influence. The blues also led to rock and roll.
I have no idea what American popular music would look like without African influence. The blues evolved in part of field chants by slaves, and without the blues, there’s no jazz or rock music.
Southern cooking is very African influenced: okra (and by extension gumbo), yams, paella, etc., all have African roots and were cooked by Africans centuries before the first slave ship sailed. In addition, the slaves found ways of making the crappy food allotments they were given taste good with seasonings and cooking methods and this found it’s way into white culture: red beans & rice (rice was already a staple of some African diets- in fact planters in the rice growing regions of Lousiana and South Carolina specifically sought slaves from the rice growing regions of Africa because they not only knew how to tend the crop but even how to make basketry and tools specific to its cultivation), certain types of sausages, chitlins (still eaten by many white southerners but originally the intestines were given to slaves), catfish (ways of cleaning and frying this scavenger in corn meal were from slaves who supplemented their rations by fishing), etc…
The single greatest influence is probably as stated above: 20th century music. See an energetic black Baptist choir perform and intersplice it with scenes from an African tribal singing and dancing and you’ll see far more resemblance (and I’m not just talking about skin tone and ethnicity) than an intersplice of a white choir singing the same song. The church became the main conduit for the transmission of intellectual black culture for centuries and music was one of the main exports. Much of today’s hellfire/brimstone Fundamentalist culture is also derivative of black religious traditions far more than white Protestantism (the cadences, the volume, the movements, etc.).
It is absolutely amazing to me how much African culture survived in the lives of their descendants in America when deliberate efforts were made to stomp it out. From the blatantly African animism of voodoo to the colorful robes of 1900 black Alabamian choirs to some of the incredible carvings on plantations throughout the south (very reminiscent of African statuary), they lost much of their tribal identity but they maintained much of their basic west African heritage.
A year or so ago I got into a respectful debate with Alice Walker (who was giving a speech/reading where I work) over the merits or lack of in Joel Chandler Harris. Walker was born and reared by poor black farmers in Eatonton, GA where Harris was born and reared a century before. (I’ve actually read descriptions of Harris as a naive little “the happy darkies are singing!” white plantation boy but in reality he was the illegitimate son of a poor white mother and while he did grow up on a plantation it was in a cabin out back rather than in the big house- he had a lot more in common with the black children than the white in everyway but skin color.)
Walker hugely resents the veneration of Harris and feels that he violated her culture (that of rural black southerners) by popularizing the Uncle Remus tales. (Uncle Remus was an amalgam of several older black people, male and female, Harris knew growing up who told similar stories.) I feel differently: knowing how many oral histories and traditions have died in the electronic “we put the media in immediate” culture of the 20th/21st centuries I fear that it’s very possible the stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and the like could conceivably have died were it not for Harris, and these are some of the most purely African constructions to cross the Atlantic (though the animals changed in the oral retellings to reflect the new surroundings). Many black intellectuals at the time of Harris were frankly embarassed by them as they reeked to them of plantation culture and slavery and forced illiteracy, but by dusting them off and exposing them to children across the world (and never once attempting to claim them as solely his own creations) Harris indelibly preserved them. Though ymmv.
In any case, a long way of saying that the Uncle Remus stories are another example of African culture existing in American culture.
There are American English words that derive from African roots.
There are also African influences in American cuisine such as peanuts, yams, rice, and other foods.
There has certainly been African influence on modern music and modern art, no doubt about it.
But even before that hit in a big way, there was influence on literature. Have a look at my Teemings piece on Bugs Bunny:
http://www.pursam.org/teemings/issue12/calmeacham.html