Skip to main content

6. African Americans in the British New World

West African society at the point of European contact, the middle passage, the growth of slavery in the colonies, and the culture built under it.

6. African Americans in the British New World

This engraving from an 1860 issue of Harper's Weekly magazine shows the tightly packed conditions of a slave ship. Many Africans died during the grueling middl…

6a. West African Society at the Point of European Contact

Art, such as this bronze head from Benin, is used to recount the history of the kingdom and its rulers. Powerful kingdoms, beautiful sculpture, complex trade…

6b. "The Middle Passage"

Harvard College LibraryThis illustration depicts what one reporter saw on the upper deck of a slave ship — "about four hundred and fifty native Africans, in a…

6c. The Growth of Slavery

Howard PyleThe Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now New York, received its first large shipment of slaves directly from Africa in 1655. Africans were the immigra…

6d. Slave Life on the Farm and in the Town

In the first decades of European settlement in America, the physical labor of establishing homes, agriculture, and commerce was carried out by "bound" laborers…

6e. Free African Americans in the Colonial Era

Library of CongressBenjamin Banneker, a free black born in Maryland, 1731, was an almanac publisher When Crispus Attucks earned his unfortunate claim to fame a…

6f. "Slave Codes"

The Granger Collection, New YorkNat Turner was inspired by visions of the Spirit to lead a slave uprising in Virginia on August 22, 1831. Slaves did not accept…

6g. A New African-American Culture

Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan-African holiday which celebrates the best of African history, thought, and culture. When immigrants reach a new land, th…