Research & Reference
- The Slave Trade: National ArchivesAt the Constitutional Convention in 1787, delegates fiercely debated the issue of slavery. They ultimately agreed that the United States would potentially cease importation of slaves in 1808. An act of Congress passed in 1800 made it illegal for Americans to engage in the slave trade between nations, and gave U.S. authorities the right to seize slave ships which were caught transporting slaves and confiscate their cargo. Then the "Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves" took effect in 1808. However, a domestic or "coastwise" trade in slaves persisted between ports within the United States, as demonstrated by slave manifests and court records.
- Transatlantic slavery - Statistics & FactsAround 1500, the Atlantic slave trade emerged alongside the expansion of the Iberian empires. The Portuguese circumvented Africa and established lucrative trade routes stretching as far as East Asia, while the Spanish colonized the Americas.
- The Transatlantic Slave TradeAmerican port cities from New England to New Orleans were shaped by the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Streaming Media
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: What Too Few Textbooks Told YouSlavery has occurred in many forms throughout the world, but the Atlantic slave trade -- which forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas -- stands out for both its global scale and its lasting legacy. Anthony Hazard discusses the historical, economic and personal impact of this massive historical injustice.
- Bloodlines of the Slave TradeExamines the lives of two people whose only connection is a genetic link to John Armfield, one of the most notorious slave traders of the 1830s. Rodney Williams, who is Black, and Susanna Grannis, who is white, each trace their ancestry back to their distant ancestor, detailing the diverging paths their lineages took. While their relationship to this past is fundamentally different, and they never meet in the film, they both share in the telling of the horrific domestic slave trade and the ongoing reverberations of slavery.
- The Middle PassageRelives the 400-year era of transatlantic slave trade when millions of Africans were kidnapped and shipped to the New World.
- The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course Black American HistoryToday we're learning about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which brought millions of captive Africans to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries, with the largest number of people trafficked between 1700 and 1808. We'll look at the ships and crews that brought enslaved people across the ocean via what was known as the Middle Passage and explore the horrific conditions that these captives endured.
Perspectives
The Last Slave Ships
A stunning behind-the-curtain look into the last years of the illegal transatlantic slave trade in the United States Long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed in the early nineteenth century by every major slave trading nation, merchants based in the United States were still sending hundreds of illegal slave ships from American ports to the African coast. The key instigators were slave traders who moved to New York City after the shuttering of the massive illegal slave trade to Brazil in 1850. These traffickers were determined to make Lower Manhattan a key hub in the illegal slave trade to Cuba. In conjunction with allies in Africa and Cuba, they ensnared around two hundred thousand African men, women, and children during the 1850s and 1860s. John Harris explores how the U.S. government went from ignoring, and even abetting, this illegal trade to helping to shut it down completely in 1867.
Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807
Despite the vast literature on the transatlantic slave trade, the role of sailors aboard slave ships has remained unexplored. This book fills that gap by examining every aspect of their working lives, from their reasons for signing on a slaving vessel, to their experiences in the Caribbean and the American South after their human cargoes had been sold. It explores how they interacted with men and women of African origin at their ports of call, from the Africans they traded with, to the free black seamen who were their crewmates, to the slaves and ex-slaves they mingled with in the port cities of the Americas. Most importantly, it questions their interactions with the captive Africans they were transporting during the dread middle passage, arguing that their work encompassed the commoditisation of these people ready for sale.
Barracoon
New York Times Bestseller * TIME Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 * New York Public Library's Best Book of 2018 * NPR's Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 * Economist Book of the Year * SELF.com's Best Books of 2018 * Audible's Best of the Year * BookRiot's Best Audio Books of 2018 * The Atlantic's Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered * Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 * The Christian Science Monitor's Best Books 2018 * "A profound impact on Hurston's literary legacy."--New York Times "One of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison "Zora Neale Hurston's genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece."--Alice Walker A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade--abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.