First, let’s give you a lil’ history. Black folklore, whether African or African American folklore, dates back to the 1700s.
Folktales like the one about the King Buzzard ... Allison, in "The Origins of African-American Culture," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30/3 (1999): 475-481.
By the time she left — in a hurry, at knifepoint — she had collected a slew of stories that would become the first book of African American folklore written by an African American. For Hurston ...