Session 3
Religions of Black America
Speaker: Professor Mansa Bilal King
Date: February 19, 2012
Time: 2 p.m
Location: Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam
Summary: Between approximately 1500 and the mid 1800s, millions of Africans were transported to the Americas. In the beginning, they were predominantly followers of ethnic customary religions (often called Voodoo and Hoodo) with a minority (estimates range from 10% – 40%) being Muslim. By the late 1700s, Christian conversions began to sweep the group now known as African-Americans. However, pockets of Vodou followers survived. No well-documented cases of Islamic transmission exist. Yet, in the immigrations, politics, and social upheavals of the early 1900s Islam and Islamic ideas re-emerged among African Americans. Around the same time, West Indian and Latino immigrants (especially Cubans) are credited with resuscitating ethnic customary religions. However, these religions had been merged with Catholicism and Native-American customary religions. So it was that African-Americans would began a modern re-appropriation of our African past. One hundred years later, Muslims, Vodou/Santeros/Kamou, and various syncretists are competing with Christianity for the soul of Black America. This talk will be a dialog about religion in Black America, and which groups have appropriated Black Religion (see Sherman Jackson’s Islam and the Blackamerican for more on Black Religion).
Speaker Bio: Mansa Bilal Mark King, Ph.D. was born Mark Alexander King to African-American parents in Harvey, Illinois. He has yet to live in one city longer than 6 years. The list of places in which he has lived includes: Washington, DC, Memphis, the St. Louis metro Area, Kansas City, Baltimore, the Nashville Metro Area, and Atlanta. As he moved through these cities, Mark found himself living among different groups of people. Sometimes they were almost all European American. Sometimes they were almost all Black American and the more recent Black immigrant groups. Sometimes they were a mix of the two, with varying numbers of Latin and Asian Americans present as well. The environments also differed by social class. Sometimes they were mostly poorer families, sometimes they were mostly middle income families, sometimes they were in the suburbs and sometimes in the city. He even spent summers with extended kin in small-town, rural Arkansas.
These experiences gave the young man little choice but to become a social scientist. In the early 1990s, he pursued a liberal arts education at Howard University. After earning a BS in psychology, he later worked in education research and technical assistance. Finally, he pursued a joint master’s and doctoral degree in sociology. His studies focused on race, ethnicity, education, families, poverty, and the world-system.
As a college student, he traveled to Bermuda and Puerto Rico. Later, he visited Senegal, The Gambia (took shahada), Saudi Arabia (for Hajj and Umrah), and Ghana. Not only has his life has revolved around physical mobility; it has also involved a spiritual journey. Dr. Bilal built a spiritual understanding of the world by drawing from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Traditional African religions, and Native American religions. Then, in 2006 he found the best of everything in Islam.
Today, he focuses on our shared identity as human beings – Bani Adam. In his daily decision-making he seeks to thank the Creator and do his small part in making the world a better place.
