Origins of Black Americans: a response to Thandi Chunga

A badly whipped slave showing his horrible scars

Thandi Chunga is a young protege of mine who has never ceased to amaze me. The little boy is still doing his primary school education in Mzuzu but his passion for history even surpasses mine. It is true that I read the biographies of Shaka, Hannibal, Haile Selassie, Hitler, Erwin Rommel, Stalin, Charles de Gaulle, Walter Rodney, Guevarra, Napoleone Bonaparte, Karl Marx Olaudah Equiano and Toussaint L'overture while still in primary school. But believe me, Thandi might even have read more biographies than the my thirteen listed above. The little Thandi always has something historical to tell me. In fact, this little boy approaches issues with the mentality of a professional historian. The last time we met he wanted to find out if the presence of blacks in America is owed to slave trade as per what was taught to him at school. This is an attempt to assist my protege.

It is true that native African Americans are a product of slave trade. We might therefore conclude that while all other races went to America as free people, only black men went there as captives in chains. But you may be interested to know that the African continent experienced two major systems of slave trade: West African or Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and East African or Arab Slave Trade. Native blacks in the western diaspora including those in America are those whose forefathers were captures during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. These were mainly captured from countries presently known as: Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Northern Angola. The east African slave trade on the other hand targeted east African countries like Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. Captives from the east African region were mainly sold in the Indian sub-continent and the far east although some crossed the Atlantic ocean went as far as Brazil in  South America.

Although the first African slave was bought 1441 by the Portuguese explorer Antao Goncalves in the Guinea region, African slaves did not arrive in America until the 1660s. The first African slaves arrived at Jamestown in 1619 when a Dutch trader exchanged his contraband of African slaves for food. Initially the African slaves became servants and held a legal position similar to some poor white people who traded several years' labour in exchange for passage to the Americas. But things changed in the 1880s when a racial based slave system was adopted. Henceforth, the African slaves were dehumanised and forced to live in sub-human bondage.

From 1619 to the 1830s cargoes of African slaves were shipped to the Americas by various merchants. It has been suggested that about 20 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic ocean during the notorious Trans Atlantic Slave trade. The conditions of travel in the middle passage, as the Atlantic ocean was referred to during the Trans Atlantic slave trade, were barbaric and inhumane. Slaves were chained and packed like spoons on various decks of the slave ships. Little wonder therefore that many did not make it to America since they died in transit. Such "unfortunate" people were just thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. It is estimated that about 4 million people died within the middle passage. So when the Atlantic ocean will run dry one day, expect to see millions of skeletons of black people who died on these ill-fated journeys.

In America slaves were badly treated just like anywhere in the world. They never had any rights at all since they were never considered as people in the first place. Sometimes biblical verses were used to support and justify enslavement of black people. This only worsened the treatment of the slaves. Women got raped in broad daylight, right before their own children, by lusty whites. Men and boys were beaten to death often times for no apparent reason. Many tried to escape but once they were caught the punishment they underwent was horrible beyond imagination. Blacks had embraced Christianity after their encounter with whites but they were forbidden from attending any christian gatherings even amongst themselves. Some were given up to 200 lashes for disobeying this order. Just look at the image above to understand what those lashes could do to people. The slaves were even forbidden from calling out the name Jesus or Lord when ever they were being beaten by their masters.

Slaves in the United States of America were officially freed on 1st January 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln issued an Emancipation Proclamation granting slaves freedom although the American Civil War was not yet over. These people did not return to Africa, they stayed in America. However there were some who returned to countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone with backing from the United States government. So the origins of blacks in the USA and other parts of America can be traced back to the Trans Atlantic slave trade. But not every black person in the USA is a descendant of a slave, there are many people who went to settle in America after the emancipation of slaves in the federation.