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THE IGBO

Igbo people are a diverse ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria.
They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects.
Today a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism.
Igbo people are one of the largest and most influential ethnic groups in Nigeria.
There are over 30 million Igbo's living in Nigeria alone and millions more scattered across the globe.

ORIGIN

The origins of the Igbo are still "unclear", some believe that they are indigenous to "Igboland" in South-East Nigeria whilst others believe that they are of Hebrew descent.

There is however considerable evidence linking the Igbo to Hebrew descent.

The Igbo and Hebrew biblical customs permit a man to marry his brothers widow and raise the children.
(This custom is no longer in practice due to Christianity).

Both Igbo and Hebrew customs have a tradition of lengthy funeral ceremony (Genesis 50:1-3)

Both have a common circumcision date on the eighth-day following the delivering of a male child.

Igbo and Hebrew customs also use intermediaries in marriage negotiations, this is practicable in Igboland up till now.
Abraham did it while negotiating Rebecca for Isaac (Genesis 24.)

Olaudah Equiano (an Igbo ex-slave in the atlantic slave trade) who is said to have travelled widely, happened to be the first person to write about the Igbo before his death in 1797.
Equaino, in one of his findings, discovered that some names amongst the Igbos such as Uburu and even the "Igbo" itself are derived from Hebrew words.
Hebrew - Heeboe - Ebo(e) - I(g)bo

Other Igbo names that stem from Hebrew and the bible include Eze, Chi, Adah and Obi along with many others.

The Hebrew word "Abia" found in the bible is also the name of an Igbo state "Abia State".

IGBO & THE DIASPORA

The Igbo were affected heavily by the Atlantic slave trade.
Igbo slaves were known for being rebellious and having a high count of suicide in defiance of slavery.

In the United States the Igbo were found the most common in the state of Maryland (coincidentally where there is a predominant population of recent Igbo immigrants) and Virginia, so much so that some historians have denominated colonial Virginia as "Igbo land".

With a total of 37,000 Africans that arrived in Virginia from Calabar in the 18th century, 30,000 were Igbo according to Douglas B. Chambers.

The Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia estimates around 38% of captives taken to Virginia were from the Bight of Biafra (Igboland).
Igbo peoples constituted the majority of enslaved Africans in Maryland.

Chambers has been quoted saying "My research suggests that perhaps 60 percent of black Americans have at least one Igbo ancestor.

The state of Kentucky, which was carved out of the Colony of Virginia had received many of Virginia's slave owners and their slaves as people started migrating westward. These migrations spread out the population of African slaves in America, including Igbo slaves. Here the Igbo population had already become heavily creoleized alongside other African ethnicity's that were taken in significant numbers to America.

Ebo Landing is located in St. Simons, Georgia.
The creek is near Sea Island on the southeast coast of St. Simon Island.
In the 1850s a group of chained enslaved Igbo people were being held on the beach. They had just arrived to America on board the slave ship, The Wanderer, which crashed when the vessel ran ashore. While being held on the beach, the slaves made a suicide pact. Instead of living the rest of their lives in chains, they ran, chained to each other, into the water and drowned.

GENEOLOGY TRACING

Many in the diaspora have traced their geneology back to the Igbo people including black diasporan figures Paul Robeson, Forest Whitaker, Blair Underwood and Bishop TD Jakes.

DIASPORAN IGBO LINKED WORDS

Red bone is a term used by diasporan blacks to describe a black person of fair skin tone.
This term actually derived from the term Red Ibo which was used to describe light skinned Igbo slaves.

Given that "Ebo" was a corruption of Igbo, some claim that this is the base of the language known as Ebonics (Ebo-nics) and the word Ebony.

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