| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Walter C. Rucker. The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America. (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World.) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 288. $49.95.

Since W. E. B. Du Bois affirmed, in his 1903 opus, The Souls of Black Folk, that before 1750 the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves, the issues of African retentions have sharply divided scholarship on slave revolts and black American life. Among studies of early American at one extreme stands Jon Butler's contention that African religions suffered a spiritual holocaust in colonial America and, by implication, had little effect on slave rebellions. Michael Mullin and Ira Berlin created a middle ground by contending that rebellion and revolt against the slavocracy emanated largely from acculturated enslaved people. Extending Du Bois's explanation is P. Sterling Stuckey, who maintains that Africanity remained strong in African American life well after the end of the legal Atlantic slave trade. Bolstering Stuckey's findings are newer works from John C. Thornton and Michael Gomez that link Africanisms in North American societies to a black Atlantic culture. Now comes Walter C. Rucker in a well-organized study to provide new evidence of the importance of Africanisms in black American slave revolts. His book is highly useful for interpreting slave revolts, but ultimately is unsatisfying in measuring the debate.

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