How have historians over different generations thought about the question of whether enslaved people were able to retain African culture and/or build a new culture in America? What was the importance to enslaved people of their culture? How did their culture help slaves cope with and/or resist slavery?

“In slavery the Negro existed in a kind of cultural void. He lived in a twilight zone between two ways of life [those of Africans and white Southerners] and was unable to obtain from either many of the attributes which distinguish man from beast [i. e. culture].”
-historian Kenneth Stampp, 1956

“When Israel was in Egypt’s Land,
Let my people go,
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go.
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt’s Land.
Tell ol’ Pharaoh,
Let my people go.”
-spiritual