This book describes and attempts to explain the significance of women in roles of ritual authority as observed in Afro-Baptist rural folk church communities of North Central Florida beginning in 1980 and last observed in 2007. It advances intra cultural comparisons of rural Floridian folk Afro-Baptists and other Afro-Baptists in the North and South during the same time period. Gender-defined roles in Floridian Afro-Baptist churches and families emphasize matrifocal social organization, kinship ties, and the valorization of motherhood complemented by male corporate leadership. This book examines the transmission by African Americans, within their religion, of selected traditional African beliefs and practices that at once reflect and shape contemporary social reality to be harmonious with their core cultural values. Following Clifford Geertz's model of the dual nature of religious patterns, which simultaneously explain and shape reality, this book argues that Afro-Baptist women's church roles in Florida reflect and transmit African-derived cultural values and social forms that are materially significant to their day-to-day family life. Ethnohistorical and ethnographic data are presented that support this argument. The search for African continuities and transformations has significance in contemporary American society, which extends beyond the purely academic considerations of a few scholars of African American studies and Anthropology. Political, social and economic evidence of deeply ingrained prejudicial social attitudes based upon racial and class distinctions persist in our society threatening national cohesiveness and the democratic ideal. Understanding the sociocultural patterns of diverse groups in America as the unique expression of their cultural heritage is a sine qua non to achievement of a true democracy that embraces the concepts of cultural diversity and cultural pluralism as strengths that promote the maintenance of an open society.
About the Author: "She Has Landed Many A Thousand" With this book, at age 84, Audrey L. Brown, begins another phase of her many faceted careers. During her life, she has engaged and recorded African American life, history, and culture first as a health care professional, then as a cultural anthropologist. Audrey's marriage with James Brown Jr., a visual artist, took her to Florida in 1980 and to her immersion in rural Afro-Baptist cultural traditions. This in turn led to her to completing a master's degree in Applied Anthropology (University of Florida 1983-1984) and conducting research in Religion and Health Maintenance among Florida Afro-Baptists, funded by the NIH 1984-1987. Her study of religion and health among the Jamaica Revivalists and Spiritual Baptist of Barbados, as a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, followed at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill (1988-1989). Five years later, she completed a doctorate in Anthropology (Ph.D. American University, 1999). In her seventies Dr. Brown developed African American Heritage and Ethnography (Southern Colonies (1500s-1807)) a Web-based, Distance Learning Course, for the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. James Brown Jr. was born in Harlem in 1939. He spent the first 10 years of his life shuttling between New York where his parents lived and his mother's, mother in Florida. The summer sounds of the Florida church hand clapping, foot stomping, moans and groans merge with his recollections of Harlem winter sounds in Sunday morning church and Sunday afternoon Apollo Theater where his mother took he and his sister. The images James Brown created the illustrations of this book while living in Florida during the 1980s, works that in turn mirror his childhood memories of church life in Florida. James Brown Jr. began drawing and painting around 4 years of age.. James Brown Jr. completed his BA in Fine Art at the University of South Florida and his Masters of Fine Arts from Howard University, College of Fine Arts. He trained in the National Museum of African Arts Docent program and served as a docent at the museum for five years. He has an extensive resume of juried exhibitions both solo and group. He was one of 10 artists selected to participate in 2012-13 ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY, a core program of Research Center for Arts and Culture, National Center for Creative Aging. The program documents and archives the works of nationally recognized senior artists.