Even before the Mayflower touched ground off Cape Cod, African
Americans were living in British North America. Although slavery
itself was not foreign to West Africans, the brutal nature of
the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the nature of colonial
slavery was without parallel in African history. Millions of
people deemed savages by their new "masters" were uprooted from
their ways of life and forced to adopt new ones. Europeans and
even some Africans would participate in the slave trade that
brought millions of Africans to the New World. African slave
traders would ruthlessly bring their captives from the interior
of the continent where they would await the business transaction
that would take them thousands of miles from their homeland.
Slaves bound for the North American British colonies overcame
tremendous odds to reach their destinations. The dreaded "Middle
Passage" often claimed half or more of its human cargo. Most of
the survivors lived harsh lives as plantation slaves. Some lived
in the towns and lea