Middle Passage Dbq Essay

The conditions on the Middle Passage were horrible. The space allotted to each slave was often too small to move the shoulders and the neck and legs were chained down. Many slaves died on the voyage and never made it out of the hull of the slave ships.

Imagine waking up in a near pitch black room, overwhelmed by the smell of death and despair, chained to a board squished in with hundreds of others. As strange as it might seem, at one point that was a reality for some and the suffering they would have to endure hadn’t even begun to begin. These people were victims of the Atlantic Slave trade and were on their way to the Americas to be bought and sold and forced to work. Exploited and abused these people would go on to become a huge part of what made the United States and our history.

The Middle Passage is an event in history that is forgotten and there recognition needs to be on those affected by this event. The Middle Passage was a slave trade that took place between 1450 and 1860. This was an occurrence that was not seen cruel at the time. Slaves were under awful condition and treated poorly. When they were sent on a ship, the conditions for them consisted of the slaves chained close together while standing. If they did not want to eat or did not eat when they were commanded to eat, they were violently abused. Many slaves lost their lives on these voyages and many became sick. The treatment of the slaves were unspeakable. Those in charge of the slaves during the voyages had no respect for the slaves’ needs and drained

During the duration of the Middle Passage, there was an abundance of hardships that had an effect on altering the many different experiences encountered by blacks. Some of these experiences included being shackled, labeled as merchandise, disease, and being crammed. Throughout this passage you will agree with the statement based upon the evidence provided from primary and secondary sources.

Before becoming a slave African Americans were first kidnapped from their homes. The kidnapping process was fast. There was hardly any chance given to scream or fight back against the kidnapper. Those that were kidnapped journey was “to travel, sometimes by land, sometimes by water, through different countries and various nations” (Pearsons, 2011, 149). The slaves transatlantic voyage was called the “middle passage” (Berkin, Cherny, Gormly, Miller, 2013, 82). This middle passage was “a nightmare of death, disease, suicide, and sometimes mutiny” (Berkin, Cherny, Gormly, Miller, 2013, 82). The waters near West Africa were known as the “white man’s grave” because so many white officers and crews of the slave ships died because of diseases and were tossed overboard (Berkin, Cherny, Gormly, Miller, 2013, 82). While the death toll of the crew was great in numbers. The deaths of the black slaves aboard was far greater. These slave ships were hotbeds for many diseases such as “scurvy, yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, small pox, measles and typhus” (Berkin, Cherny, Gormly, Miller, 2013, 83). The

From the moment of capture, African men, women and children endured a relentless chain of pain and abuse. Life onboard the slave ships became a constant battle for survival, as the gruesome conditions below the deck presented formidable physical health problems. Burnside describes the African slaves descent into hell:

How would you react if you were being enslaved due to the color of your skin? I expect that you would want to do everything you could to change the way the world was thinking. In the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass written by himself, Douglass is encountered with numbers of different challenges. He has to adjust to the way he is forced to live, educate himself, and reach his goal of making an escape. Overall, he wanted to expose the evils that followed slavery. Douglass appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos in an attempt to end slavery.

The captives were treated during the Middle Passage like animals. The Europeans needed slaves to work for them, the Native Americans were dying from their diseases, but the people from Africa were immune. The Europeans kidnapped the Africans and forced them to work, with no choice they had to obey. The captives during the Middle Passage were from Africa, but during the passage they were treated like animals. The captives experienced shackles, restraints that looked like a animal or prisoners would be in. (Doc C) Not only that, but the Africans experienced starvation and diseases. They were so close together that diseases spread, as well as diseases, they didn’t even have food, added to this and all the dead bodies were thrown overboard.(Doc

Around the 20 million people who were taken from their homes and sold into slavery, half didn't make it to the African coast, most of those people dying along the way. The captives were about to embark on the infamous Middle passage. Then the first leg of the voyage carried a cargo that often included iron, cloth, brandy, firearms, and gunpowder. They landed on the Africa’s slave coast and the cargo and stuff was traded for Africans. Africans who had made the Middle Passage to the plantations of the New World did not return to their land to tell what happened to those people who suddenly disappeared. Sometimes the Africans were told by white men that they were to work on the field, But they didn’t believe it because it took barely any time

One of the worst aspects of the Middle Passage was the living conditions in which the slaves had to live and their treatment by the crew. While slaves were given food and water, it was very infrequently, and if food was scarce, the crewmembers and slaveholders got preferential treatment over the slaves (Mannix & Cowley 6). Slaves resisted in several ways; they either refused to eat or committed suicide. They knew that they were being fed so they could make strong slaves, and some were too proud to be slaves, so they killed themselves

From the 16th century to the 19th century, millions of African men, women, and children forced to voyage aboard a ship for approximately two months only to become a slave to the European people. This catastrophic event known as the Middle Passage, which not only spread the Africans across the world, but also transmitted raw materials and manufactured goods. The voyage began from Europe to Africa then Africa to the Americans. The main countries that precipitated in this exchange included Portugal, England, France, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Brazil, Brandenburg, the Caribbean, and the Americans

Reading different primary and secondary resources all followed a theme, except the information from the history textbook. The slaves were by far the ones who suffered the most during the Middle Passage emotionally and physically. During the slaves journey to wherever their captain

The journey of the oppression of the African slave begins long before they reach the Americas. This story begins in Africa where abled bodies were ripped from their families and their home land and were forced to endure The Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean. There are numerous recollections of this incident by both slaves and whites. One example was written by Olaudah Equiano who was a slave that wrote about his personal experience of The Middle Passage. Taken as a young child, Equiano had never even seen the shore before so it was of no surprise that he and the

In his writing, there is no one area it basically the whole thing cover it. His writing is set up in phases being brought to being sold, voyage over the ocean, being in the new world and finally getting his freedom. Each part could be an essay onto themselves. In his voyage to the new word he shows what happens one time the slavers had fish to eat. The slavers with the fish, “to our astonishment who were on deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat, as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again and some of my countrymen, being pressed by hunger, took an opportunity when they thought no one saw them of trying to get a little privately; but they were discovered, and the attempt procured them some very severe floggings.” (Perkins 166) In this passage that the slaver treat the Africans as something lower than cattle since cattle would be fed so not to die. To the slavers it was a not matter to them how many made it over only just the strong. This passage with what it shows question why do people at their lowest point in life have to be treated so horrible and this is not the only thing he shows. Also once the reader is done reading it ask can any good treatment to truly be good since they are since a slave and do not have will do what they want. This is just small snapshot in the reading it is recommend to read so to find all of

Robert Hayden’s poem, “Middle Passage”, illustrated the experiences of Black captives and of sailsmen during the journey to America. Reading lines like, “the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there,” and “that crew and captain lusted with the comeliest of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins” angered me. I believe the poem spoke to how whiteness blinded the captains from recognizing black misery and the humanity of the captives. This is similar to silent, white majority of America that cannot identify issues facing Black Americans such as: colorism, police brutality, and economic inequality without stating a reason that reinforces stereotypes of Blacks as lazy and ungrateful. I can recount the conversations had with students and faculty