The Transatlantic Slave Trade
Free and enslaved Africans familiar with Iberian (from the Iberian Peninsula) culture that journeyed alongside Europeans in the earliest explorations to the Americas.
Who were the Ladinos?
Many enslaved Africans brought these to the Americas, which enslavers exploited for profit, such as: Blacksmithing, Basket-weaving, and Cultivation of rice and indigo
What were valuable skills?
African Americans developed specializations that enslavers commodified, including: Painting, Carpentry, Tailoring, Music, and Healing
Despite the commodification of their skills, African Americans used them to:
In 1839, Sengbe Pieh, a Mende captive from Sierra Leone, led a group of enslaved Africans to fight for their freedom, resulting in their successful takeover, in this revolt.
What was La Amistad Revolt/Rebellion?
The publication of these diagrams catalyzed the abolitionist movement by providing tangible evidence of the horrific conditions endured by enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage.
What were slave ship diagrams?
The circulation of these diagrams raised immense public awareness, humanizing the plight of enslaved Africans and generating empathy for their suffering.
Moreover, Black visual and performance artists have used slave ship diagrams as a means of processing the historical trauma of the slave trade. Many have employed these images as powerful tools to honor the memory of the more than 12.5 million Africans who were forcibly transported over 350 years. Others have reclaimed the iconography of the slave ship as a symbol of resilience, resistance, and the enduring spirit of African people, transforming the image from one of oppression into one of remembrance and celebration of their ancestors.
Stringed instrument created by African Americans which has its roots in West African stringed instruments like the akonting and the ngoni.
What was the banjo?
African Americans recreated instruments similar to those found in West Africa, such as rattles made from gourds, or the banjo, a staple of African American music.
African instruments were adapted and modified by enslaved Africans in the Americas. The use of drums played a central role in African American music, serving as a powerful means of communication, cultural expression, and community building.
African Americans incorporated elements of West African drumming techniques and rhythms into their music, creating complex polyrhythmic patterns that laid the foundation for many American musical genres.
The second stage of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
What was The Middle Passage?
Refers to enslaved people being bound to institutions rather than individuals like on plantations.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Provide examples.
What was Institutional Enslavement?
Developed in response to slave rebellions in an effort to prevent future uprisings.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Provide examples.
What were Slave Codes?
Slave Codes defined chattel slavery as a race-based, inheritable, and lifelong condition, reducing enslaved individuals to property rather than persons and systematically denying them basic human rights and legal protections.
The South Carolina Slave Code of 1740 imposed even harsher restrictions on enslaved people, such as banning drumming and assembly.
A movement led by Black advocates who believed that true Black nationalism, unity, pride, and self-determination could only be achieved if African Americans emigrated—or relocated—outside of the United States.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Identify ideal actions for relocation
What is Emigrationism?
Emigrationists sought to establish Black communities in regions with significant Afro-descendant populations, shared histories of resistance against slavery, and favorable climates. Latin America (Mexico), the Caribbean (Haiti), and West Africa (Sierra Leone. and Liberia) were considered prime destinations for relocation due to their cultural ties to the African diaspora and their histories of Black-led independence movements.
These "stories" played a crucial role in the abolitionist movement by exposing the brutality of slavery to a wider audience, humanizing enslaved Africans, and challenging the notion that they were content in bondage.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Provide an example.
What were Slave Narratives?
For instance, authors like Frederick Douglass, in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Olaudah Equiano, in his bestselling The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), used their stories to assert their intelligence, creativity, and moral character, dispelling racist stereotypes and advocating for the inclusion of Black people in American society.
Phillis Wheatley's poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" (177) stands as a groundbreaking work in African American literature, written by the first published Black poet in America. Her unique perspective as an enslaved woman who received an education challenges prevailing 18th century notions about race, intellect, and artistic capability.
Slave narratives also served as powerful tools for political and social change. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) exposed the sexual exploitation of enslaved women and called for the abolition of slavery.
The process by which something without economic value is assigned economic value, in this case to dehumanize Africans.
What is commodification?
These "events" were sites of punishment for those who resisted being sold, with public whippings, beatings, and the forced separation of families being immensely prevalent.
Hint: Excerpt from Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, 1853
What were Slave Auctions?
This allowed enslavers to assert their dominance and instill fear in enslaved Africans as a way to prevent resistance. Moreover, the treatment of enslaved people as mere commodities to be inspected, bought, and sold, stripping them of their humanity and inflicting generational trauma on those separated from their kin.
In 1739 where enslaved Africans in South Carolina staged the largest armed slave uprising in the British North American colonies prior to the American Revolution.
What was the Stono Rebellion?
Activism by these individuals highlighted the unique challenges they faced at the intersection of race and gender discrimination.
Who were Black women activists?
Their struggles were distinct from those of both white women—who often ignored racial oppression in the women's rights movement—and Black men, who sometimes overlooked gender oppression in abolitionist organizing. This reality later informed the development of intersectionality, a sociological framework that examines how overlapping social identities create distinct experiences of discrimination and privilege. Black women’s advocacy underscored the compounded effects of racism and sexism, making it clear that both forms of oppression had to be confronted together in the pursuit of true equality.
Black women played a crucial role in both the abolitionist movement and the fight for women’s rights. Their activism challenged the hypocrisy of a society that sought to abolish slavery while continuing to deny women—especially Black women—full citizenship and equality. Their work not only helped advance the abolitionist cause but also laid the foundation for the women’s suffrage movement, insisting that the fight for women's voting rights must include all women, regardless of race.
Also known as sorrow songs and jubilee songs, these emerged as a powerful musical and faith tradition among enslaved African Americans, allowing them to articulate the hardships they faced and the hopes they held for a better future.
Hint: often carried double meanings
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: Provide Examples
What were Spirituals?
The lyrics of spirituals often drew upon biblical themes of suffering, redemption, and deliverance, which resonated deeply with the experiences of enslaved people and provided a source of comfort and strength in the face of adversity. The emotional intensity of spirituals, with their haunting melodies and impassioned vocal performances, served as a cathartic release for enslaved African Americans, allowing them to express their pain, sorrow, and longing for freedom.
At the same time, spirituals also conveyed messages of hope and resilience, with lyrics that spoke of the promise of a better life in the afterworld and the belief that God would ultimately deliver them from the bonds of slavery. The dual expression of hardship and hope in spirituals reflects the complex emotional landscape of enslaved African Americans, who found solace and strength in their faith even as they endured the unimaginable cruelty of slavery.
The lyrics of spirituals often carried double meanings, with biblical themes of redemption and deliverance serving as coded messages about opportunities to escape slavery via the Underground Railroad.
For example, songs like "Wade in the Water" and "Follow the Drinking Gourd" contained hidden instructions for enslaved people seeking to flee, with references to navigating by the stars and avoiding capture by slave catchers
The use of double meanings in spiritual lyrics allowed enslaved African Americans to communicate about resistance and escape in plain sight, without arousing the suspicion of their enslavers
The first stage of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
What was Capture and Forced Marches to Coastal Dungeons?
A seventeenth-century law that determined a child's legal status based on their mother's status rather than their father's.
What was Partus sequitur ventrem?
This law resulted in the automatic enslavement of children born to enslaved mothers, regardless of the father's status—whether free or enslaved. It served as a tool to uphold racial hierarchies and perpetuate the institution of slavery.
The design of partus sequitur ventrem aimed to prevent mixed-race children born to Black women from inheriting the free status of their fathers.
This legal doctrine reinforced racial hierarchies and power dynamics by systematically denying freedom to mixed-race children through paternal lineage, further entrenching the institution of slavery.
Partus gave male enslavers the right to deny responsibility for the children they fathered with enslaved women, most often the result of sexual assault by the enslaver. This allowed enslavers to avoid any legal or financial obligations to their mixed-race children.
Especially after the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves was passed by Congress in 1807 (but took effect in 1808), partus commodified enslaved women's reproductive lives by incentivizing enslavers to sexually exploit them for the purpose of increasing their enslaved population. Since new enslaved people could not legally enter the country, enslaved women's fertility became a valuable asset to enslavers, as each child born represented a potential increase in their wealth and labor force. Their commodification, however, led to the dehumanization and further oppression of enslaved African American women.
The only uprising of enslaved people that resulted in overturning a colonial, enslaving government.
What was The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)?
The revolution transformed the French Colony of Saint-Domingue into into Haiti, the first Black republic free of slavery and created the second independent nation in the Americas, after the United States.
The success and notoriety of the revolution was a reflection of the demonstrated power and agency of enslaved Africans to fight for their freedom and self-determination, and inspired uprisings across the Americas.
A fervent abolitionist who rejected gradual abolition, advocated for immediate freedom, and used strong language to condemn slavery and its supporters.
Hint: "I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD"
Who was William Lloyd Garrison?
A language spoken in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, which blends English with multiple West African languages
What is the Gullah language?
The % of all enslaved people came to the United States
What is 5%?
The Constitution references slavery in these three provisions, enshrining it in federal law.
What is...
Afro-descendants who escaped slavery and established free, self-governing communities like the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina.
Who were Maroons?
Maroon communities were often located in remote, inaccessible areas (mountains, forests, swamps) to avoid recapture. As a result of their isolation, they developed their own social, economic, and political structures outside the plantation system while also maintaining elements of African cultural traditions and creating new, syncretic practices. Most importantly, maroon communities served as havens for runaway slaves and centers of resistance against slavery.
Maroon communities emerged across the African diaspora as self-liberated enslaved people formed autonomous societies in remote areas. These communities blended diverse African cultures, developed unique identities, and faced constant threats from colonial forces seeking to recapture them.
Maroon wars were fought to protect hard-won freedom and negotiate treaties with colonial governments. Leaders like Bayano in Panama and Queen Nanny in Jamaica became symbols of resistance, using guerrilla tactics to defend their communities' autonomy against European colonizers.
Locations in North America
All in remote areas:
Maroon communities extended well beyond the United States (remember, 95% of enslaved people were taken to places outside the United States). For instance, in Spanish America (Colombia, Cuba, Mexico), Maroon communities were called Palenques, while in Brazil, they were called Quilombos.
The most photographed man of the 19th century, with over 160 images taken of him. His prominence as an abolitionist and orator made him a popular subject for photographers, surpassing other notable figures.
Who was Frederick Douglass?
"Through his photographs, he was able to challenge the racist stereotypical portrayals of African Americans. His portraits always depict a stern look, sans with the slightest smile, always well-dressed, and with carefully styled hair. A stark contrast of how African Americans are portrayed at the time – usually in caricatures or menacing drawings with exaggerated features."
Enslaved people adapted Christian hymns they learned from European missionaries and slaveholders, infusing them with these rhythmic and performative elements from their African musical traditions
What were call and response, syncopation, hand clapping, and improvisation?
These African musical elements
dded a new dimension of energy and expressiveness to the hymns. By combining biblical themes with African musical sensibilities, enslaved African Americans created a distinct and powerful form of American sacred music that laid the foundation for later genres like gospel and the blues
The adaptation of Christian hymns allowed enslaved African Americans to express their faith and spirituality in a way that resonated with their cultural heritage, even as they were forced to adopt the religion of their enslavers