Thomasina Clay

3 Pages 662 Words

Throughout history, we have watched a vass array of video’s on the African American experience this is a summary of those videos.

One of the first video’s that we watched this semester was the middle passage on February 19, 2002. This video was an explanation of the original slave trade passage. The middle passage is also known as The Transatlantic Slave Trade, or the Triangular Trade System. This system of slave trade existed for thousands of years. The start of the middle passage began in 1441 with the transportation of twelve slaves. Slaves were traded for many things such as rum, gold, and other valuables. The way the middle passage worked is that those in power traded and sold those individuals in less fortunate circumstances. The slave trade destroyed Africans sense of family by separated them to make a profit. The industry worked so fast that Richard Drake a famous slave hunter captured around three hundred slaves in around an hour. Even though Africans were captured for the purpose of transportation, they were not directly loaded onto ships they were transported for factories first, for what they call the seasoning process. The seasoning process is what they go through to get the slaves ready for their journey. The conditions on the ship were so bad. The slaves often slept in their own feces and never really ate. Even though this passage was a horrible sin, many slave ship owners named their ships names like Liberty, Jesus, or Gift of God. In fact, many had no conflict with slavery and Christianity. One slave owner while transported slaves wrote the church hymn “Amazing Grace”. The middle passage was outlawed in 1808, but slaves continued to be smuggled in until the last slave ship in 1862. The middle passage was a dirty little secret that know one wanted to talk about. It was grueling and heartbreaking what these slaves had to endure.
Another video that we watched was entitled Brown Eyes and Blue Eyes. This was ...