in the Americas
Slavery, the institution and the people who were a part of it, has had a tremendous and long lasting influence on the Americas’ history and peoples. Lingering notions of European difference and African inferiority – both intimately linked to slavery – still remain, along with a host of related questions about race, ethnicity, bias and human rights.
Africans came with the first Europeans to the Americas in exploratory and exploitative missions as seafarers, pirates, workers, and slaves. Scholars have documented the presence of Africans on the expeditions of Columbus to the Caribbean, Cortez to Mexico, Narvaez to Florida, Cabeza de Vaca to the United States Southwest, Hawkins to Brazil, Balboa to the Pacific, Pizzarro to Peru, DeSoto to the North American Southeast, and Jesuit missionaries to Canada. The first Africans designated as slave laborers arrived in the Caribbean in 1518.
As the need for labor grew with expansions in agriculture, mining, and other businesses, so too, did the number of enslaved Africans expand. Brazil and the Caribbean enslaved the largest numbers of Africans and for the longest span of time, with Brazil and Cuba maintaining importation until the 1880’s.
From 1500 to 1890 it is estimated that Brazil enslaved at least 4 to 6 million Africans; the French Caribbean – 1.6 to 2 million Africans, the Dutch Caribbean – 500 to 750 thousand Africans, the English Caribbean – 1.8 to 2.2 million Africans, the Spanish Caribbean and mainland colonies 1.6 to 2.3 million Africans, and the British mainland colonies (soon to become the US) 500 thousand to 1 million African people. Of the 8 to 12 million Africans enslaved, an additional 20 percent or 1.6 to 2 million African people did not survive the Middle Passage (also known as the Atlantic Crossing).
Enslaved Africans were used in the mining of gold and silver in South and Central America, sugar plantations of the Caribbean and cotton and rice plantations in North America. In North America, the Africans were sold at the major port cities like Chesapeake Bay (Virginia), Charleston (South Carolina), Savannah (Georgia), New Orleans (Louisiana), and Galveston (Texas).
Although many Africans were familiar with forced labor in their homeland, however, it did not diminish the horrors they were to encounter in the Americas. In Africa, enslaved families were kept together, sex (between masters and slaves) was often forbidden, slaves were often allowed to buy their own freedom as well as that of their family members.
Despite the devastating impact of slave life on black kinship, the family was the slaves’ most important survival tool. The family flourished not so much because of stability but its flexibility and fluidity. The extended family of persons related by blood, marriage, and long standing familial-like contact was its most persistent and essential characteristic.
Religion, dance, music and food were vital aspects of the enslaved person’s cultural life. The enslaved exhibited traits drawn from their ancestral past and blended with what they found in the Americas. While many converted to Christianity, especially as Baptists and Methodists, others held onto their Islamic faith and other religious rituals and beliefs derived from Africa. Scholars note that because the enslaved were able to rely on their own cultural references within their daily lives, it allowed them to withstand the psychological inhumanity of enslavement. It allowed them to survive.
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Updated September 26, 2011. Questions and comments contact webmaster. www.MCCPAD.org