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captured Africans, Middle Passage, slavery, transatlantic slave trade

Click to Listen to “First Time I Saw Big Water” produced and composed by Bernice Johnson Reagon, performed by Bernice Johnson Reagon and Toshi Reagon for the PBS-WGBH film score for series Africans in America, Executive Producer Orlando Bagwell Shackled and forced from the interior, the bush, often marching for weeks and months African captives destined for the transatlantic slave trade endured hardships beyond our imagination. Many had never seen Read More

Source Documents for Blog Visitors, February 2012

African American History, African American music, African Diaspora, African ethnic groups, Afro-Latinos, burial ceremonies, captured Africans, descendants of slaves, enslaved women, ethnic studies, Mexican Americans, oral history, Slave economy, slave ships, slavery, transatlantic slave trade

This project is committed to getting out information to those who are interested. We pledged to provide readers quarterly with materials that we base the posts upon, so here are the second quarter’s materials as promised by category with annotation. Articles: African Burial Ground Project: paradigm for cooperation? by Michael Blakey (Museum International, UNESCO, 2010). Professor Blakey is on our project’s advisory board and worked continuously on the Manhattan African Burial Ground Project. Read More

Personal Stories of Captured Africans

African ethnic groups, Afro-Latinos, captured Africans, Middle Passage, oral history, transatlantic slave trade

In a previous post, The Descendant Community, November 16, 2011 the role of oral history in formal scholarship was acknowledged. Frequently first hand accounts and family stories make an event or experience not only more powerful, but also personal in a manner that research text does not. This project is dedicated to remembering ancestors, uncovering and listening to people who usually are forgotten. They seldom have the opportunity to tell Read More

Captured African Women

captured Africans, enslaved women, Middle Passage, slave ships

In 2012, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) will focus attention on the role of women in African American history. With a scheduled conference in the fall, a call for papers has gone forth to scholars. We are especially looking forward to presentations related to the Middle Passage. The role of African women in resisting enslavement and enabling emancipation leaves little doubt that their Read More

Who Were They?

African Diaspora, African ethnic groups, captured Africans, transatlantic slave trade

For the most part, it is not known from which specific communities enslaved Africans came. Over the years, scholars vary in defining their connection to specific ethnic groups on the Continent. Our best method eventually may be DNA testing throughout the Diaspora, undeniably they were from Africa – north, south, east, west, central, coast and interior. Predominantly they were adult males in their prime. In the beginning, before the demand Read More

Why Africans? A Perfect Storm of 159 Years

African American History, captured Africans, Native Americans, slavery, transatlantic slave trade

As a student of American history in college my ongoing questions were, ” Why Africans became the slave of choice in the Western Hemisphere. How and why was their enslavement so pervasive?” Responses ranged from physical: easier to identify; hardier than indigenous and European people; socio-political: their governments and institutions did not have the required international power and structure to protect their members; cultural: they were the pagan “other,” associated 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