The purpose of this investigation was to examine the latent factor structure of the Coping With Problems Experienced (COPE) inventory, and to compare this structure to an imposed, culturally relevant latent structure with a sample of African Americans. The alternate, latent structure was derived from an Africentric framework, as well as from empirical findings on coping behaviors of African Americans. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test both models. CFA results indicated that the alternate latent structure represented the best overall fit to the data, with the original latent structure yielding a moderately acceptable fit. Implications for the use of the COPE with African Americans are discussed.