A Journey Through the Transatlantic Slave Trade
The stories and words of captured slaves:
This activity will take you on a journey ‘Up from Slavery' through the voices of enslaved Africans. You will begin at the stage of capture and go though the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic. You will learn what it was like to be auctioned and sold as if you were cattle, then to work on the plantations in the Caribbean or Americas under the cruel whip of the slave master. You will have an insight into how enslaved Africans were punished and how people were made to suffer under slavery.
Read each passage and answer the corresponding questions.
Directions
Talk to the text:
- As you read each passage you are to high light at least 4 to 5 things from each passage that stand out. Put a negative symbol (-) by statements that are negative, and a positive symbol (+) by those that are positive.
- Circle any words you do not know and put a question mark (?) over them.
- Writ 3 to 4 words in the margins that come to your mind as we read each passage.
Answer the corresponding questions to each passage on your own paper. When you are done, staple your work to this document and turn it in.
Capture
The Man:
QuobnaOttobahCugoano was born in about 1757 on the coast of present day Ghana in the Fante village of Agimaque. He was abducted in 1770 at about the age of thirteen and sold into slavery on the West Indian plantations of Grenada. At the end of 1772 he was taken to England where he became one of the first and most radical Africans in England to fight against slavery.
His Story, In His Words:
"…I must own, to the shame of my countrymen, that I was first kidnapped and betrayed by some of my own complexion… but if there were no buyers there would be no sellers. So far as I can remember, some of the Africans in my country keep slaves, which they take in war, or for debt; but those which they keep are well fed, and good care taken of them, and treated well... But I may safely say, that all the poverty and misery that any of the inhabitants of Africa meet with among themselves, is far inferior to those inhospitable regions of misery which they meet with in the West Indies, where their hard hearted overseers have neither regard to the laws of God, nor the life of their fellow men… Some pretend that the Africans, in general, are a set of poor, ignorant, dispersed, unsociable people; and that they think it no crime to sell one another, and even their own wives and children; therefore they bring them away to a situation where many of them may arrive to a better state than ever they could obtain in their own native country. This specious pretense is without any shadow of justice or truth and if the argument was even true, it could afford no just and warrantable matter for any society of men to hold slaves. But the argument is false; there can be no ignorance, dispersion, or unsociableness found among them, which can be made better by bringing them away to a state of a degree equal to that of a cow or a horse…"
Who is more to blame for Quobna’s enslavement, the buyers or the sellers? Explain your answer. Why did some believe they were helping Africans by enslaving them, and what were Quobna’s thoughts on this.
The Middle Passage
The Man:
Olaudah Equiano was born around 1745 in the village of Essaka in the interior of today's eastern Nigeria. He was abducted at the age of ten, taken to the West Indies and then sold to a Virginia planter. Shortly afterwards he was bought by an Officer in the British Navy, who took him to London and into service in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years War. In 1766 Equiano bought his freedom and went on many different trading voyages in North America, the Mediterranean, the West Indies and the North Pole. He later returned to England where he worked for the resettlement of enslaved Africans in Sierra Leone and became very involved in the British abolition movement.
His Story, In His Words:
"…The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board…When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on deck and fainted… I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a smell in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life…The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number of the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died…This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable..."
If you had experienced what Olaudah went through, how do you think you would have reacted to it? Explain why you believe you would have reacted in such a way.
What does it say about Olaudah that he survived? While Explaining your answer refer back to the text.
Auction and Sale
The Woman:
Mary Prince was born in Bermuda in about 1788. She arrived in London, still enslaved, in 1828 with her 'owners', who she ran away from after they refused her the right to buy her own freedom. She learned about the Anti-Slavery Society and, for a while, worked for in the movement. But she was lonely and missed her own country, and her husband, Daniel James. She decided to make her life story public by writing an autobiography. She wanted to let the people of England know the truth about slavery from her experiences, both as an enslaved African and a woman.
Her Story, Her Words:
"He took me by the hand and led me out to the middle of the street, and turning me slowly around, exposed me to the view of those who attended the venue. I was soon surrounded by strange men who examined and handled me in the same way that a butcher would a calf or a lamb he was about to purchase, and who talked about my shape and size in like words…I was then put up to sale… the people who stood by said that I had fetched a great sum for one so young a slave. I then saw my sisters led forth and sold to different owners…When the sale was over, my mother hugged and kissed us and mourned over us, begging us to keep a good heart…It was a sad parting, one went one way, one another, and our poor mammy went home with nothing."
What does Mary’s Story tell you about the buying and selling of enslaved persons? Use the text to explain your answer.
How do you think slavery shaped the way that slaves viewed family? Explain your answer.
The Plantation and Punishment
The Man:
Esteban Montejo spent his childhood as an outdoor slave on a Cuban sugar plantation, where the laborers were housed in shacks and bred like cattle. He ran away and survived in the forest for a long time and returned to the plantations when slavery had been abolished in Cuba. In 1895 he fought in the War of Independence and he was very proud to be a free man and a soldier. The story of his life was recorded when he was 104 years old.
His Story In His Words:
"…We worked nonstop. We would spend as many as 48 straight hours in the sugar cane refinery. The heat was sweltering and there were no breaks and no food. I saw many a man and woman get their hand crushed in the gears of a cane press. The foreman always kept a hatchet ready so that the hand could be cut off on the spot rather than stopping the press… I saw many horrors in the way of punishment under slavery. The stocks, which were in the boiler-house, were the cruelest. Some were for standing and others for lying down. They were made of thick planks with holes for the head, hands and feet. They would keep slaves fastened up like this for two or three months for some trivial offence. They whipped the pregnant women too, but lying face down with a hollow in the ground for their bellies. They whipped them hard, but they took good care not to damage the babies because they wanted as many of those as possible. The most common punishment was flogging. The overseer would flog us with a rawhide lash, leaving giant whelps on our skin. They also had whips made of the fibers of some jungle plant which stung like the devil and tore the skin off in strips…”
How do you think that slave owners and their foremen justified treating slaves in such a way?
Identify three issues that our modern world is faced with and compare them to the form of slavery that you have been reading about. What issues did you and your group identify; how are they similar to what you read about and how are they different?