Essays on Middle Passage

I gasped for fresh air as I was unloaded with the rest of my fellow captives. Months of putrid stench made the fresh air seem almost unbreathable in its goodness. My joints ached and standing seemed a chore. This was no the young body I had left Africa with; then again, I was not the same woman who had left Africa. Months on a slave boat witnessing unspeakable horrors had changed me. I still was unsure what was to come, but it had to be an improvement upon the past couple months of my life. I hadn’t a ...

Slavery existed in the Americas from the early colonial days and its rapid rise was observed in the XVIII-XIX centuries in Brazil, the Caribbean and the British and French colonies in Northern America when the world trade was actively growing and there was a shortage of labor. The major countries in Europe were able to turn the slave trade into a very profitable business. At first the Portuguese and later the Dutch and the English began to export slaves from the West African coast to the different destinations in the New World. The Middle Passage became a vital part ...

____(3) 1.  Select which category [in parentheses] this documentary fits into and explain why you think it best fits that classification. (awareness/social concerns, biography, research/informative, investigative) This documentary fits best into the category of awareness/social concerns because the slave trade was a terrible event that more people need to be aware about because it destroyed the lives of many African families for at least 400 years. ____(3) 2. Discuss at least three major themes within this documentary, using examples from the film to support your choice. Your discussion should consist of a paragraph for each theme and ...

Annotated Bibliography: African American History

Mayer, R. (2000). "Africa As an Alien Future": The Middle Passage, Afrofuturism, and Postcolonial Waterworlds. Amerikastudien / American Studies, 45(4), 555-566. Palmer, C. A. (1995). From Africa to the Americas: Ethnicity in the Early Black Communities of the Americas. Journal of World History, 6(2), 223-236. According to Ruth Mayer’s Africa as an Alien Future (2000), there remains a connection between the African Diaspora community and the motherland. In the author’s words, African culture remains evident even in contemporary works such as “literature, installation art, [and] pop music” in which the passages between Africa and ...

McKissack P C & Mckissac F (1995) “ The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa” and The Gale Group Inc (2003) “Middle Passage”. Dictionary of American History In the first article by the McKissacks, the authors illuminate important aspects of the African American heritage by introducing three main kingdoms of medieval Africa. Songhay, Mali and Ghana were the main countries. Based on contemporaneous accounts, folklore and modern scholarly research, the authors’ discussions covers the customs, people, political history and origins of these civilizations. The authors provide insightful information about the world history and also Africans particularly ...

The forcible removal and transportation of millions of African men and women to the Americas took place for over three centuries starting in the mid 1400’s and ending in the late 1800’s. The importation and enslavement of Africans resulted in great economic growth as well as a resettling of the American Continents. An estimated 6.5 million people came to the Western Hemisphere. 83 percent of the people arriving were African slaves. The slave trade sets the precedence for capitalism. This was because the labor of the slaves generated great wealth for businesses in America and Europe. The ...

They call me Jenny, but my name is Abebi. I live in the cotton fields, in a row house down by the river, where the big house casts a shadow over everything in the evening. It’s in Virginia, outside a place called Jamestown, but I am not of this land, my blood runs in Nigeria. I was born 1813 in the savanna, where the wild beasts roam, and raised where the waterfalls washed the dust from my hair, and smelled sweet and clean. Nothing like the muddy water of the south. I don’t think I’ll ever ...