This article argues against the long-standing penchant to interpret the architecture of enslaved and free Africans in the Americas as evidence of West African cultural survivals. Conversely, this article reflects on the recent practice of repurposing amortized and discarded shipping containers to suggest that the earliest generation of free blacks in Jamaica similarly erected creative architectural responses to the intense pressures of colonialism. These buildings represent strategies by free blacks to fashion a way of life with limited material availability, shaped by intensive climatic conditions and oppressive racial injustices.
