Flying Africans are figures ofAfrican diaspora legend who escape enslavement by a magical passage back over the ocean. Most noted inGullah culture, they also occur in widerAfrican-American folklore, and in that of someAfro-Caribbean peoples.[1]
Though it is generally agreed that the legend reflects a longing for a reversal of theAtlantic slave trade, scholars differ on the extent to which this should be seen as supernatural belief or asallegory: of freedom, death, the afterlife, and even metamorphosis or reincarnation. A common Gullahetiology given for this belief is the 1803 mass suicide atIgbo Landing as a form ofresistance among newly enslaved people, although versions of the legend also occur across the African diaspora.[2][3][4][5]
In a Gullah context, the flying Africans are associated withHoodoo spirituality, and sometimes perform their ascension through a ritual like aring shout. Gullah lore also associates flying Africans with amagical ironhoe that works by itself, and a never-empty pot that they leave behind,[6][7] perhaps relating to the influence of the Yoruba deityOgun on Hoodoo. Another figure described in Gullah lore as flying on occasion and eventually returning to Africa is the folk heroJohn the Conqueror.
Sometimes flight is mentioned as a general ability of select ancestors, outside of the specific context of an African return. Flight could be by an individual, by a married couple (who might have to leave behind their children if not African-born),[6] or as a collective act. In some Caribbean versions,salt prevents people from flying, perhaps linked to thesoucouyant tradition.[8] The means of flight varied, fromlevitation, to growing wings, to turning into birds (sometimesbuzzards),[6] or in the case of the Igbo Landing drownings, they were allegorized as walking on water to Africa.
The legend has been compared to the flying imagery found in a number ofspirituals, and also to the metaphor of a "caged bird".[9] Spirituals in this vein include "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Now Let Me Fly" and "All God's Chillun Got Wings".[10]Harriet Tubman experienced dreams of flying "like a bird" in her youth.[11]
The legend appears a number of times in interviews for the Federal Writers' ProjectSlave Narrative Collection of the 1930s, though given the circumstances these are difficult to interpret; it appears in somewhat greater cultural detail in the slightly laterDrums and Shadows.Zora Neale Hurston includes a Jamaican version in her 1938Tell My Horse, where those who have consumed salt are unable to fly away.John Bennett in 1946 published a story under the title of the spiritual "All God's Chillun Got Wings" as told to him by Caesar Grant.[10] It appears inThe Book of Negro Folklore of 1958, edited byLangston Hughes andArna Bontemps.
Ralph Ellison's short storyFlying Home was written in 1967. It is mentioned in Ishamel Reed's 1976Flight to Canada.Toni Morrison's 1977 novelSong of Solomon references the legend directly, and it is also alluded to in much of her other writing.[12] In interviews, Morrison emphasized the flying Africans as a real folk belief, not a mere metaphor. It also appears in Octavia Butler's 1980Wild Seed,[13][14] Paule Marshall's 1983Praisesong for the Widow and Charles R. Johnson's 1990Middle Passage.[15]
The legend itself is included as the title story ofVirginia Hamilton's 1986 collectionThe People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, and in the 2004 standalone reissueThe People Could Fly: The Picture Book, with enhanced illustrations byLeo and Diane Dillon.
Julie Dash's 1991 filmDaughters of the Dust quotes fromPraisesong for the Widow at Igbo Landing. In Dash's research for the film, she found Igbo Landing had such salience that it was identified by tradition in many local places in the Gullah region.Faith Ringgold utilized elements of the legend in her 1991 illustrated children's bookTar Beach,[16][17] and in subsequent artworks including the 1996 subway mosaicFlying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines at125th Street station, also inspired by the Lionel Hampton composition "Flying Home".Ngozi Onwurah's 1994 filmWelcome II the Terrordome references the appearance inDaughters of the Dust. The legend is the basis for the song "We Could Fly" on Rhiannon Giddens's 2017 albumFreedom Highway.[18]Sophia Nahli Allison began herDreaming Gave Us Wings self portrait series in 2017,[19] including anexperimental documentary inThe New Yorker.[20] Hamilton's collection also inspired the naming of the 2021Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitionBefore Yesterday We Could Fly.