ABSTRACT
Under the harsh and inhuman conditions of the plantations in the New World, people of a heterogeneous cultural background, who had originally spoken different languages and had adhered to different beliefs, had forcefully been turned into African slaves. When slavery was finally abolished, the concrete attachments of many New World Blacks to the African continent had been severed. Moreover, the racist ideology that had accompanied slavery and continued to run through the American postbellum society resulted in the negative stereotyping of Africa as a cannibal-infested darkness. Many Black Americans held on to such a derogatory image of the continent. Blyden's cultural nationalism and racial ideology, therefore, were the result of an intellectual dialogue with his contemporaries. Blyden's attitude toward Africa was full of ambivalence and even outright contradictions. The continent was the cradle of humanity and civilization, a source of self-respect and pride for Black people all over the world.
