... meant that the transportation of the bodies of Africans across the Atlantic Ocean transformed them into slaves and created a new kind of man: the African American. The second function of the slave ship was to build a new community after the dispersal of the previous one. The word "shipmate" ... overboard, thereby escaping from this intolerable life. Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African had evoked the horrors of the transatlantic passage. Equiano vividly recounts the shock and isolation that he felt during the Middle Pass...

• Word Count: 4160
• Approx Pages: 17
• Grade Level: High School

... 's independence era in the early 1960s had also broadened popular knowledge of its people and their society. Cooper identifies elements of the deeply expressive language she calls Jamaican that incorporates African-derived words and grammar and in which proverbs play a powerful, semantic role. For Cooper, Bennett's "performance poetry" represents one end of the spectrum of Jamaica's mostly unwritten ... singer-DJs like Shabba Ranks, Yellowman, or Josey Wales reigns supreme. Whereas reggae performers like Bob Marley or the late Peter Tosh often sang with idealism about political themes, ...

• Word Count: 3725
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography

... to offset the debilitating effects of the Middle Passage. Officers, usually boatswains, mates, and surgeons, were armed with whips such as the cat-o'-nine-tails and forced the African captives to dance. The crew's power was enforced through such torture devices as thumbscrews and iron collars. There were several tubs in each compartment below deck in which slaves could relieve ... past, historians have argued that Africans were a low-cost labor alternative to scarce Indian labor (scarce, because most Indian populations were destroyed by disease) or expensive European labor. African skin...

• Word Count: 5818
• Approx Pages: 23
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... considered "house slaves"# which was started by the Muslims. It is stated "Moslem traders in Africa bought Sudanese Negroes across the Sahara to North African ports and sold them to Mediterranean towns as house slaves."# This began an evolution of Negroes as the distinguished group for slavery. "As the ... Portuguese made their discoveries of land and Negroes along the African coast in the fifteenth century, the trade in slaves rose"# but the slave trade as an industry for Negro slaves did not start until John ... began to argue whether the conditions Africans had to endure were right. T...

• Word Count: 3801
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School