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Introduction “When we look at and visualize a map of Africa, you have to visualize the Nile River and realize that that river is like the womb of a ­ woman. And out of this womb came a series of ­children. Let us not call it civilization . . . ​white ­ people have so mis-­used the word civilization ­ until the word has lost its mean- ing: let’s call it a Culture [and through it] came a series of cultures that devel- oped and moved down that river—­a ­ great cultural highway—to establish a way of life and create a way of life (religion and history) that is ­ going to be so rich that mankind ­will steal from them . . . ​from then on. And the rape of the culture—of that river—­would change the world for all time to come.” —­Dr. John Henrik Clarke Many scholars have found themselves in an uphill ­ battle to solidify a definition of culture. Although a worthy task, like Sisyphus, they become stumped by the ever-­ changing and fluid nature of the term. Thus, rather than defining it, let’s simply provide a working definition of the concept in order to frame this body of work. Culture functions as an intangible force that saturates our surroundings, while planting its roots within us. It provides the method by which an individual/group works to produce the par­ ameters on who ­ will be identified as us or them. Like a fish out of ­ water, culture cannot exist without its context hence, it is through this venue that meaning is established. But how does meaning-­making occur? In ­ Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, du Gay et al. (1997) posited, We give ­things meaning by the way we represent them, and the principal means of repre­sen­ta­tion in culture is language. By language, we do not only mean language in the strict sense of written or spoken words. We mean any system of representation—­ photography, painting, speech, writing, imaging through technology, drawing—­ which allows us to use signs and symbols to represent or re-­present what­ever exists in the world in terms of a meaningful concept, image or idea. Language is the use of a set of signs or a signifying system to represent ­things and exchange meaning about them. (13) It is through this working definition of culture that African American Culture: An Encyclopedia of ­ People, Traditions, and Customs pre­sents itself to the public. In a sense, language is the glue that has connected African Americans’ identity(-­ies) with a blend of traditions and customs that are dispersed throughout Africa. As