For generations, Southern blacksmiths have worked West African symbolism into gates, rails, and window bars, evidence that the craft has grown with every hand that grasped the hammer. The Craft Archive Fellows, arranged in partnership with the Center for Craft, examine how African-American blacksmiths carried on that tradition through wrought iron.
The article is titled “African-American Blacksmiths Forge a Lineage of Sankofa,” and it focuses on the Sankofa symbol, a bird that turns backward to retrieve an egg from its back. That image carries a simple meaning: “go back and fetch it,” or return to the past to find what you need for today.
Seeing the Ironwork
She was raised moving between New Orleans and Savannah without ever paying attention to the ironwork around her. It wasn’t until she went to New York City that she paused mid-sentence to take a picture of a window holding two metal Sankofa symbols.
She felt right at home the moment she saw that single piece of ironwork, and she has since made a point of noticing Sankofa symbols whenever she spots ironwork on gates, stair rails, or window bars. The symbols turned up exactly where she expected them to:
- Usually black
- Sometimes painted white
- Sometimes incorporating leaves, flowers, or, in New Orleans, the fleur-de-lis
But again and again, she noticed that familiar heart.
The woman was well-versed in West African customs, including Ghanaian Adinkra symbols, and knew Sankofa. In Akan, it roughly means “go back and fetch it”, an urging to look back and reclaim what’s needed for the present. Sometimes it’s a bird turning backward to retrieve an egg from its back. Sometimes it takes on the shape of a standard heart with inward-spiraling coils.
The Question Behind the Research
The author questioned whether the Sankofa symbol on tools was merely ornamental, or if it held a deeper meaning tied to ancestry and memory. She also asked whether the message was ever understood by those within the Black community.
She shifted her focus away from interviewing blacksmiths and scholars and digging through the archives. What she wanted to do instead was investigate how cultural knowledge gets passed down, and how we recognize cultural continuity when the evidence isn’t laid out in a neat line.
Dr. Earnestine Jenkins Explains the Pattern
Dr. Earnestine Jenkins, a professor of art history who curated a 2022 exhibition on African-American blacksmithing at the Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, helped her understand why that evidence rarely falls into a neat line. “Whenever people migrate,” Dr. Jenkins explained, “naturally, they don’t do the things the same way they did them in their homeland. They have to make adaptations.”
What travels through change is not the absence of it, but rather what persists despite it.
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