Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP)
Remembering Ancestors
Although this blog writer is not a trained economist, patterns can be discerned. Debt, credit, and product are the means to power and control for a select group of people in the world. The history and development of the Western Hemisphere easily illustrates this. Most modern societies are built upon credit: the good kind known as investment and the bad kind known as debt. During the initial expansion of the Read More
Click to listen: Remember Me Photographed at dawn, we look eastward to our ancestors’ motherland. How did they live into tomorrow? Yet most did. They are who we were, are and will be. “Remember Me” accompanying this post was arranged by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, and performed by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and Toshi Reagon. See Posts: Not One or the Other, Who Were They?, Music and Song, Where Did Read More
What a sensitive subject the idea of reparations has become! Related to the transatlantic slave trade, making amends for imposing slavery is a concept that embroils class, race, and involves social, political, and economic issues across the board. Suddenly conversations become emotionally charged. People who reject the concept outright line themselves against those demanding repayment. The different approaches can be bitter and deep – and even among those who think Read More
Through conditioning and experience, especially after age 35, African Americans, almost to a person, understand the United States from a different perspective than other Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois described it as living in two worlds, having two voices. In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois said that African Americans were neither African nor American, but both. That has held true throughout the history of the United States. For example, Black Read More
The African Diaspora that resulted from the transatlantic slave trade is referenced frequently in our blog posts. Our particular project relates to the two to six million Africans who did not survive the ocean voyage, and placing markers in their honor at primary Middle Passage ports where Africans arrived. The widespread dispersal of these captured people is illustrated as we survey the history of specific regions: North America, Central America, Read More
Have we been sold a bill of goods throughout US history? From affirmative action to one-man-one-vote, to waging war to make the world safe for democracy, and then examining the creation of the Electoral College, and the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence are there not some contradictions between national rhetoric and the historical record? More aggressive critics wonder whether citizens have been “hoodwinked, flimflammed, or bamboozled” when Read More
In Honduras mining was the most important industry, occurring originally near the Guatemalan border and in the interior. However by the 1540s, mining had shifted eastward toward the Rio Guayape Valley. Between 1540 and 1640 there were more Africans than Europeans, and in 1545 alone there were 2,000 Africans working the gold and silver mines. With continual slave rebellions from 1548 to the 1570s and near depletion of known sources Read More
The nations comprising Central America are Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Until the 1650s Africans comprised a larger portion of the population than European and mestizo combined in Santiago de Guatemala (Guatemala) which was the Spanish Empire’s capital for all of Central America. Although Africans and their descendants have lived throughout this region for more than five hundred years only Nicaraguans easily acknowledge their Black Read More