In the1600s Sugar made Barbados the

1
In the1600s Sugar made Barbados the 1 English
Colony.

• The English began aggressively trading in what
  was called "black ivory" during the middle of the
  seventeenth century, spurred on by the need for
  laborers in the hot, humid sugar fields on the
  West Indian islands of Barbados, St. Christopher,
  the Bermudas, and Jamaica.
• Caption, "Gathering the Cane" men cutting cane,
  women gathering the stalks and ox cart to haul
  the stalks to the mill with carter (whip in
  hand).

2

• During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 10-12
  million Africans were moved across the Atlantic.
  Middle Passage (Euro-centric term)

3

• Most went to Brazil and the Caribbean. Only 3-4
  came to U.S.
  
• By the eve of the American Revolution, 50 of the
  U.S. non-native population was African.
  

4

• African cultures were very diverse and complex.

• Africans were a form of immigrant. Although they
  were forced, they came often as teens and early
  adults. They brought with them their culture.

5

• Britain was the 1 slaving nation in the world.
• They brought 900,000 to the 13 colonies from 1820
  to 1860 and over 2,000,000 total.

6

• Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual
  capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam
  throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries.
  Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore
  and Sidi Yahia, were the center of Timbuktu's
  golden age.

7

• 40 to 50 thousand Muslims were enslaved by the
  British.
  

8
1806-1807 Omar Ibn Said in SC

• A daguerreotype photo held by Davidson College. A
  Moslem from the Futa Tora area of present-day
  Senegal, Omar Said was captured in warfare and
  shipped to Charleston, S.C. in 1806/07, just
  before the abolition of the slave trade. He spent
  about 24 years enslaved in South and North
  Carolina. He originally wrote his account in
  Arabic in 1831, at around the age of 61 an
  English translation appeared after his death in
  1864. For details on Said and bibliographic
  references to his life, see Jerome S. Handler,
  Survivors of the Middle Passage Life Histories
  of Enslaved Africans in British America, Slavery
  Abolition, vol. 23 (2002), pp. 25-56.

9
Most slaves entered slavery as a result of
warfare.

• Caption, "chaine d'esclaves venant de
  l'interieure" (chain/coffle of slaves coming from
  the interior) shows six African men with two
  armed guards. The author lived in the Senegal
  region for about two years in the mid-to-late
  1780s and made this drawing from his own
  observations. He provides a detailed description
  of the coffle and the movement of slaves from the
  interior to the coast "Every year the Mandingo
  traders, called slatées or Sarakole Sarakule,
  Sarracolet, etc. Negroes, after having sold
  slaves in exchange for European goods, leave with
  necessary goods for the interior, toward Bambara
  country.

10
No accounts of self-selling or family selling in
slavery. Slaves were captured and linked in
train-like COFFLES. They carried goods and were
coffled to the coast.

• The author lived in the Congo for six years,
  1883-1889, and provides a vivid account of
  slaving activities in the Congo basin. The
  following excerpt describes the illustration
  (captioned " A Slaver's Canoe") shown here, on a
  tributary of the Congo River "I met dozens of
  canoes . . . whose owners had come up and bought
  slaves, and were returning with their purchases.
  When traveling from place to place on the river
  the slaves are, for convenience, relieved of the
  weight of the heavy shackles. The traders always
  carry, hanging from the sheathes of their knives,
  light handcuffs, formed of cord and cane. The
  slave when purchased is packed on the floor of
  the canoe in a crouching posture with his hands
  bound in front of him by means of these handcuffs

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At the coast slaves were sold to African
leaders.The African leaders, in turn, sold the
slaves to European traders.Traders paid with
money, guns, beads, rum, fabric, etc.

• The king of Dahomey's levee," shows king seated
  on his throne, with "amazons" (women soldiers)
  and other members of his court on right, British
  visitors (slave traders?) being entertained.

• The Europeans were often given drink and
  entertainment by the African leaders to keep them
  in port. The longer they were in port the higher
  the price may go for the slaves due to
  competition from other traders.
• Europeans wanted to get out of port quickly. Keep
  prices down and to keep away from yellow fever,
  malaria, and other diseases that the Africans had
  relative immunity to

12

• The English slave traders did their best to dupe
  the native kings, and each native king did his
  best to obtain the maximum amount of goods in
  exchange for the slaves he had for sale.

13
Slaves were kept in forts along the coast.

• Caption along top "Cape Coast Castle, on ye Gold
  Coast of Guinea." This seems to be one of several
  variations of an engraving made by Henry
  Greenhill in 1682 a copy is in the British
  Library. See P.E.H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin
  Law, Barbot on Guinea 1678-1712 (London, 1992),
  vol. 2, after p. 392 and associated text. In the
  1690s, an account of the Royal African Company's
  forts in West Africa

• Surveyed in March 1756 by Justly Watson, Director
  of Engineers, this colored manuscript plan shows
  storerooms, warehouses, apartments for European
  personnel, etc. In the upper right hand corner
  (marked by the letter A) is the "women slave
  yard." The inset contains a note saying "The
  figures 1654 are upon the keystone of the arch to
  the warehouse."

14
Slaves traveled through the door of no return

• Interior courtyard, where slaves were assembled,
  and "Gate of No Return," the passageway through
  which slaves were led to beach and from there to
  waiting ships. (Photographed by Michael Tuite in
  Ghana Aug. 1999).

15
to waiting boats that took them out to the slave
ships.
16
There were no ports or natural harbors along the
African coast.

• Photo looking west to site of former Elmina town,
  destroyed in 1873 shows beach and surf. (Slide,
  courtesy of Merrick Posnansky taken in Ghana,
  1973)

17
Slaves were placed in the cargo holds of the
ships and packed tightly.

• Cross section of decks, "tight packing" of
  slaves, storage areas. This ship sailed from La
  Rochelle in 1784, picked up about 500 Africans
  from north of the Congo River, and sold its
  slaves in St. Domingue. Details on what was
  apparently the only slaving voyage of this ship
  can be found in D.Eltis, S. Behrendt, D.
  Richardson and H. Klein, "The Transatlantic Slave
  Trade

• Artist's reconstruction of "spoon" position in
  which slaves were kept in the hold.

18
Revolts were attempted often, but rarely
succeeded.
19
Ships might load on anywhere from 200 to over 600
African slaves, stacking them like cord wood and
allowing almost no breathing room.

• Title and caption, "Representation of an
  Insurrection on board a Slave-Ship. Shewing how
  the crew fire upon the unhappy slaves from behind
  the Barricado, erected on board all slave ships,
  as a security whenever such commotions may
  happen." Enlarged section from "Plan and Sections
  of a Slave Ship," a fold out drawing included in
  the Wadstrom volume. Wadstrom notes "It was taken
  from a sketch which, with the explanation
  attached, was communicated to him Wadstrom at
  Goree in 1787."

20
The crowding was so severe, the ventilation so
bad, and the food so poor during the "Middle
Passage" of between five weeks and three months
that a loss of around 14 to 20 of their "cargo"
was considered the normal price of doing business.

• Enlarged section of original colored map, showing
  North and South Atlantic, with bordering
  continental areas in Europe, Africa, North and
  South America.

21
The 14 to 20 of the Africans who died along the
way were often thrown overboard.
22
The surviving slaves entered the Charleston port,
being briefly quarantined on Sullivan's Island,
before being sold in Charleston's slave markets.

• The African American Coastal Trail. Marker
  commemorating point of entry of countless
  enslaved Africans. ... infantry regiment, active
  during the Civil War, and the "pest houses" where
  Africans were quarantined
• After their horrific "Middle Passage," over 40
  of the African slaves reaching the British
  colonies before the American Revolution passed
  through South Carolina.
• Some refer to Sullivans Island as the Ellis
  Island for African Americans.
  
• Photo courtesy National Park Service.

23
Slaves were taken to the slave markets in Charles
Town

• Slave Market.Photo by Derrick R. Jordan.

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where they were sold to the highest bidder.

• Slaves being sold, white onlookers and
  purchasers. Sketch drawn by "our special artist,"
  Mr. Davis who witnessed the scene shown in this
  drawing. Accompanying Davis was W. H. Russell, a
  correspondent for the London Times who gives a
  detailed description of the slave auctions he
  viewed while traveling through the South. The
  location is not identified in the article, but it
  was sent from Montgomery, Alabama

25
Families were often separated.

• Shows a man and woman (with child in arms) on
  auction block, surrounded by white men. Article
  in the ILN accompanying this "sketch by our
  special correspondent" (G.H. Andrews) provides a
  lengthy eyewitness description of slave sales in
  Richmond, part of which is excerpted here "The
  auction rooms for the sale of Negroes are
  situated in the main streets, and are generally
  the ground floors of the building the
  entrance-door opens straight into the street, and
  the sale room is similar to any other auction
  room . . . . placards, advertisements, and
  notices as to the business carried on are
  dispensed with, the only indications of the trade
  being a small red flag hanging from the front
  door post, and a piece of paper upon which is
  written . . . this simple announcement--'Negroes
  for sale at auction' . . . ." From here there
  follows a detailed description of the scene shown
  in the illustration and the auction process (pp.
  138 -140). A composite engraving, combining the
  auction block and people on the right shown in
  this image with the image of a slave being
  inspected for sale (see image NW0027) was
  published in the French publication
  "L'illustration, Journal Universel (vol. 37
  1861, p. 148), misleadingly giving the
  impression that the scene is an original
  depiction of a slave sale in South Carolina

26

• Men, women, and children being sold are displayed
  on a raised platform. Illustration accompanies an
  article ( "Sale of Slaves at Charleston, South
  Carolina") by an English traveler who observed
  the scene that is shown. He compares slave
  auctions in South Carolina and Virginia. In the
  latter, the auction is "hidden as much as
  possible in out-of-the-way places" while in
  Charleston, it takes place in a central part of
  the city a detailed description of the
  Charleston auction is given

27
Many of these slaves were almost immediately put
to work in South Carolina's rice fields. Writers
of the period remarked that there was no harder,
or more unhealthy, work possible.

• Men and women at work carrying bundles of rice.
  "We wandered over perhaps 700 acres . . . . The
  men and women at work in the different sections
  were under the control of field-masters. . . .
  The women were dressed in gay colors, with
  handkerchiefs . . . around their temples. Their
  feet were bare . . . . Most of them, while
  staggering out through the marshes with forty or
  fifty pounds of rice stalks on their heads . . .
  indulged in a running fire of invective against
  the field-master. . . .The 'trunk-minders', the
  watchmen . . . promenaded briskly the
  flat-boats, on which field hands deposited their
  huge bundles of rice stalks, were poled up to the
  mill, where the grain was threshed and separated
  from the straw, winnowed, and carried in baskets
  to the schooners which transported it to
  Charleston... (King, p. 435). The Scribner's
  article notes that the rice mill was located near
  the wharf between Morris island and Sullivan
  island so that the "rice-schooners" had easy
  access to the mill.

28

• In fact, these Carolina rice fields have been
  described as charnel houses for African-American
  slaves. Malaria and enteric diseases killed off
  the lowcountry slaves at rates which are today
  almost unbelievable. Based on the best plantation
  accounts it is clear that while about one out of
  every three slave children on the cotton
  plantations died before reaching the age of 16,
  nearly two out of every three African-American
  children on rice plantations failed to reach
  their sixteenth birthday and over a third of all
  slave children died before their first birthday.
  Rice's macabre record of slave deaths has been
  traced to two primary factors - one was malaria,
  the other was the infants' feebleness at birth,
  probably the result of the mothers' own chronic
  malaria and their general exhaustion from rice
  cultivation during pregnancy.

29
Many slaves brought the knowledge of rice
planting, cultivating, and harvesting with them
from Africa.

• The slave traders discovered that Carolina
  planters had very specific ideas concerning the
  ethnicity of the slaves they sought. In other
  words, slaves from the region of Senegambia and
  present-day Ghana were preferred. At the other
  end of the scale were the "Calabar" or Ibo or
  "Bite" slaves from the Niger Delta, who Carolina
  planters would purchase only if no others were
  available. In the middle were those from the
  Windward Coast and Angola.
• Carolina planters developed a vision of the
  "ideal" slave tall, healthy, male, between the
  ages of 14 and 18, "free of blemishes," and as
  dark as possible. For these ideal slaves Carolina
  planters in the eighteenth century paid, on
  average, between 100 and 200 sterling in
  today's money that is between 11,630 and
  23,200!

30
African immigrants also brought their culture
including music, dance, basket making,
storytelling as well as the Gullah language.

African dance at the Kwanzaa Karamu. Photo by
William Green. n
31
The African culture has had a tremendous positive
influence on the development of South Carolina
culture.

• Caption "Musical Instruments of the African
  Negroes," shows various percussion (e.g., drums),
  stringed, and wind instruments. These
  "instruments of sound," Stedman wrote, "are not a
  little ingenious, all are made by themselves,"
  and he provides a detailed description of the
  items shown in the illustration. See Richard and
  Sally Price, eds. Narrative of a five years
  expedition against the revolted Negroes of
  Surinam transcribed for the first time from the
  original 1790 manuscript

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• Once in South Carolina what was the lives of
  these slaves like? How did they live? What did
  they eat? What did their houses look like? How
  did they prepare their food? What kinds of
  possessions did they have? What did their pottery
  look like? White masters had little or no
  interest in recording these details for future
  generations. Slavery was an economic issue and
  the only details worthy of being consistently
  recorded were those related to the value of their
  slaves or the value of their production. The
  daily lives of these new African-Americans was
  probably poorly understood and certainly of
  little importance to the planters. These are all
  questions that were largely left to archaeology.
  

.

• Down by Hope Plantation, by Bernadette Cali.