The enslavement of Africans during the trans-Atlantic trade that saw thousands of them travel to America had a profound cultural effect. Most of the African communities whose members were enslaved had well-developed cultural practices and beliefs which they sustained even in the advent of their transfer to the New World. Though some of these practices were abandoned altogether upon forceful religious conversion and other measures taken by their slave masters, many others were only adapted into the mainstream American culture and in the end found themselves in their belief systems. The impact and identity of these influences is often underestimated in literature, with many scholars either deliberately ignoring the large influence of Africanisms
