Many African Americans in Missouri are the descendants of slaves brought by the French or the Spanish to the Louisiana Territory in the 1700s or by Americans who moved from slave states after the Louisiana Purchase in the 1800s. In Hoecakes, Hambone, and All That Jazz, Rose M. Nolen explores the ways in which those Missouri "immigrants with a difference"-along with other Africans brought to America against their will-developed cultural, musical, and religious traditions that allowed them to retain customs from their past while adapting to the circumstances of the present. ������������ Nolen writes, "Instead of the bond of common ancestors and a common language, which families had shared in Africa, the enslaved in the United States were bound together by skin color, hair texture, and condition of bondage. Out of this experience a strong sense of community was born." Nolen traces the cultural traditions shaped by African Americans in Missouri from the early colonial period through the Civil War and Reconstruction and shows how those traditions were reshaped through the struggles of the civil rights movement and integration. Nolen demonstrates how the strong sense of community built on these traditions has sustained African Americans throughout their history. ������������ Nolen focuses on some of the extraordinary Missourians produced by that community, among them William Wells Brown, "the first black man born in America to write pl