Human Wastage: The Price of Doing Business

African American History, African Diaspora, Middle Passage, Slave economy, slave ports, slave ships, slavery, transatlantic slave trade

In researching this project, I have started reading The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker (2008). He argues that the African transatlantic slave trade was the first rung in the ladder of global capitalism, or what we know now as a global economy that all governments, many businesses and people are attempting to understand, modify or control. One sentence in the introduction struck a chord because it directly relates to Read More

Brown Trucks

African American History, African Diaspora, ancestors, captured Africans, descendants of slaves, transatlantic slave trade

In many ways there are brown trucks everywhere. So many events around the world reinforce our efforts to remember ancestors who suffered the transatlantic slave trade. On August 23, 2011 (The International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition) the UN made a final formal call for the design of the monument to be installed at the UN to memorialize the trade’s horrors, and Irina Bakova who Read More

The Project Begins

burial ceremonies

After 25 years the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project has gone from a dream to reality! The project formally honors, remembers and brings closure to the millions of Africans who died during the Middle Passage to North, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe during the Atlantic slave trade. It repairs the circle of living and ancestors that has been broken for more than five hundred years. Personally, I believe each of Read More