At Least One

ancestors, Middle Passage, slavery

Material written earlier for the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project stated that possibly each of us in the African Diaspora is related to at least one person who died during the Middle Passage. Mistakenly I thought that only in Brazil was there a word to describe a kinship that developed between and among people who together on the same ship had survived the Atlantic crossing. Loosely translated it Read More

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