The Southeastern American culture enveloped them, giving them few opportunities to freely express themselves, whether that be religiously or creatively. The Spirituals became a way for slaves to express themselves, and created a distinct African-American culture separate from their American owners. Claude A. Clegg, a historian at the University of Indiana who focuses on African culture in the Atlantic, examined many different African-Americans of different ages and asked them, “What is Africa to you?”(4). Clegg notes that the Africans that he asked this question to are from different backgrounds and may not be native to Africa, but have some sort of ancestral tie to it. Although there were varying answers, Clegg was able to come to the understanding that Africa has existed in the minds of these people as a “spiritual journey with no end or beginning” which preserves “black nationalism”(Clegg 5). To Blacks that are not native to Africa, it seems that Africa serves as a staple in the African-American sense of nationalism and has the ability to be a uniting factor in their culture. Although Clegg asked this question to African-Americans of a much more recent generation, it is entirely possible that Africa served as a uniting factor in the slave community and helped inspire and create the slave culture that brought up the Negro Spiritual. Guy B. Johnson, a Social Anthropologist, writes in the American Journal of Sociology that the songs seem to be in essence “completely African” (1). Everything about them: the beats, the rifts, the notes, all the musical components of the Spirituals are also found in traditional African culture. Knowing that the actual structure of the songs is derived from traditional African culture explains that the slave culture was a unique blend of their traditions and the influences of America. When a group of people with a specific and deep-rooted culture is taken and placed in an entirely new setting and country, it can be difficult to preserve the displaced culture, especially when it is not the dominant one. Africans managed to push against the overwhelming and persistent White customs and create and preserve their own with the Spirituals and the presence and spirit of Africa still intertwined with their new lives.