Senegalese American

Senegalese Americans

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo Akon George Lewis Ira Aldridge Gabourey Sidibe
Total population
19,487 (2013 American Community Survey)
Regions with significant populations
New York City (Harlem, Brooklyn), New Jersey, Chicago (Illinois)
Languages
American English Wolof French
Religion
Muslims, Christians and Practitioners of traditional religion of Senegal.
Related ethnic groups
African Americans, American groups of West Africa (Gambian, Ivorian, Malian, Guinean, etc.), French

Senegalese Americans are Americans of Senegalese descent. In the surveys of 2008, 12,151 people claimed to be of Senegalese origin or descent in the United States. However, many African slaves exported to the United States were also of Senegalese origin (arrived together to other Africans of other origins but who also came of Senegalese ports). Thus many African Americans may also have some ancestors of this country.

The first people from present-day Senegal arrived in the modern United States arrived as slaves from several slave ports of Senegal. The Senegambia area (moderns Senegal, Gambia and Bissau-Guinea) was an important slave trade during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both for the United States and Latin America, exporting many slaves to the Americas. Most of the slaves who came specifically from present-day Senegal were imported to the modern United States mainly from the Saint-Louis port, as well as from Goree Island (while, also are registered some slaves from Galam port in South Carolina). So, Goree Island, located a few miles off the coast of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean, was the place from which the Europeans and Americans organized the export of slaves to the former British colonies of North America, during the seventeenth and eighteenth, and even after of the official abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, displacing maybe 50,000 slaves from there (although according to the Slave House curator, 20 million slaves were exported from the Goore island to the modern United States).

However, not all slaves collected from present-day Senegal were actually from there: many of them hailed from other African places, having been taken and sold in Senegal ports by the kings and aristocracies of other parts of Africa, as a consequence of tribal clashes, greed, etc... Since these ports, they are purchased and exported to the Americas. While, most Africans sold into slavery in the Senegal region would have departed from that slave zones at the mouths of the Senegal River to the north, and from the Gambia River to the south, caming from several places, among which highlighted Futa Tooro and Bundu.

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Wikipedia