Lesson #41 - The Atlantic Slave Trade
Our major topic for today will be the African Slave Trade.
The Atlantic slave trade
Consider these to be guiding questions as we look at the Atlantic slave trade:
- How did the Atlantic slave trade begin?
- How did the slave trade function?
- What was the impact of the slave trade?
Here's are two excerpts from the PBS series, "Africans in America." The first is on The Atlantic Slave Trade and the second is on The Middle Passage.Here, Tom Feelings uses art and text to try to capture the "Middle Passage" and its impact on the Africans who endured it.
Timeline of Slavery This covers some of the major events in the slave trade, particularly those involving the United States.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record is a series of more than 1000 images collected by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
The Debate over Reparations
Here's an article that, while getting a little old, helps introduce you to the debate over reparations in the United States:
- "Does nation owe blacks for slavery?"
- Here's a 2006 update on the issue from MSNBC.com: "Advocates quietly push for slavery reparations" Notice that you can "vote" your opinion later in the article.
In order to discuss this as a group, we'll frame the issue in the following resolution. We'll start by assigning you to one side (affirmative or negative), but you'll later be free to express your own opinion.
Resolved: that the United States should pay monetary reparations to African-American descendants of slaves and to African nations whose development was impacted by the Atlantic Slave Trade.Let's hear what you have to say on this topic... If we have time, we can consider the validity of some of these related statements.
- The legacy of slavery continues to impact society today.
- Racism continues to impact American society.
- Governments should be held responsible for their past policies, even if their current policies are very different.
- Money is an appropriate apology for a past wrong.
- Other groups of people deserve reparations more than African Americans.
- The United States can say with confidence that it guarantees equal rights to all of its citizens.
HOMEWORK for tomorrow - Thursday, May 31st
Please finishing your reading for the year with "The Columbian Exchange and Global Trade." It's Section 4 of Chapter 20. Your final reading quiz of the year will be matching.
