This study focuses on the influence of Akan culture and history on ideas of freedom among maroons, free blacks and slaves in Jamaica and New York during the 18^th century. The trans-Atlantic slave trade dispersed tenets of Akan culture throughout the Americas with the common themes of identity, access and community emerging in Jamaica and New York to resist slavery. The life of the priest Okomfo Anokye (c.1635–1720) and the installation of an Akyem Abuakwa stool in Akuapem in 1733 were central themes of southern Akan culture related to freedom and resistance to enslavement in the region labeled the Gold Coast of West Africa. Akan captives in the Americas expressed elements of this culture throughout the 18^th century. In Jamaica and New York the role of priests and sorcerers was important to resistance and rebellion against slavery by maroons, slaves and free blacks, who idealized cosmologies and traditions from in and around the southern Akan states. They coordinated anti-slavery actions in the Americas as kumfu-men, obeah-men and later myal-men, not unlike their predecessor's resistance to invasion and enslavement in West Africa. This work examines Akan cultural transference in Cudjoe's Treaty of 1739, Tacky's Rebellion in 1760 in Jamaica and the Uprising of 1712 and 1741 "Conspiracy" in New York. It also shows how Akan affiliation declined in the latter 18^th century, as the slave trade and influences of Christianization and the Enlightenment grew. St. Mary's Rebellion of 1780 and Second Maroon War of 1795 in Jamaica and the closure of the African Burial Ground in 1795 in New York demonstrated this process.