Transcription
1713 on the ship Henry Ed Marie. Chained Africans crossed the Atlantic with no room to stand. [music and singing]
Many died before land appeared. Their bodies were thrown into the ocean behind a ship. The ocean saw. Listen to this closely. This happened to your bloodline. This was planned for profit. Your ancestors still survived it. The water remembers your ancestors [music] names.
Millions crossed the Atlantic in [music] chains. [singing] Many never touch land alive. >> [music] >> You are here because they refuse to die quietly. [music] Yeah.
From the 1500s to the 1800s, European [music] ships cross West Africa, Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, and the Netherlands built this trade. They bought and kidnapped [music] African people for labor in the Americas. Historians estimate that 10 to 12 million Africans survived [music] the cross and millions more died before reaching shore.
People were taken from Angola, Synagal, Ghana, [music] Nigeria and Congo. Many were marched hundreds of miles to slave ports and chains at ports like Elman Castle and Bonnie. [music] Families were separated forever. The crossing became known as the middle passage. [music]
Ships packed human beings below deck like cargo. Some ships held more than 400 people at once. The British ship Brooks [music] became famous for how tightly people were packed. Men, women, and children were chained together for [music] weeks or months. Many could not sit upright. Disease spread fast in the heat below deck. Dysentery [music] fever, dehydration, and starvation killed thousands.
Women were sexually [music] abused by crew members during the voyage. Some captive jumped into the ocean rather than live in [music] slavery. In 1781, the crew of the slave ship zone threw more than 130 Africans into the sea [music] for insurance money. The owners went to court demanded payment for the murder people. Allow the Equana [music] road about the smell the chains and the screaming in this 1789 [music] book.
Your ancestors lift the organized torture created for money. >> Do not look away from this history. They counted black bodies as cargo. >> But your ancestors [music and singing] kept fighting the water remembers your ancestors names. [music] Millions cross the Atlantic in chains. Oh, many never [music] lie. You are here because they refuse to die quietly. >> Yeah.
The middle passage helped [music] build the economies of Europe and America. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean depended [music] on enslaved labor. Cotton plantations in the American South [music] depended on enslaved labor. Banks, shipping companies, and insurance firms made fortunes from slavery. Cities [music] like Liverpool and Bristol grew rich from slave voyages in the United States.
Slavery [music] expanded after the invention of the cotton chin in 1793. By 1860, [music] nearly 4 million enslaved black people lived in America. Congress banned the importation of enslaved Africans [music] in 1808. But slavery continued inside the country. [music] Children were still sold away from parents at auctions. >> [music] >> Black families were still whipped, branded, and controlled by force.
The Civil [music] War ended legal slavery in 1865 with the 13th amendment where black Americans and face black [music] codes lynching segregation and voter suppression in 1896. Py v Ferguson legalized segregation across [music] America. Red lining in the 1900s block many black families from owning homes.
Many schools still hide the full [music] truth about the slaveship. Some people want this history forgotten because it exposes how wealth was built. But [music] your ancestors survived oceans, chains, disease, and [music] violence. They protect its own names, prayers, language, and family through [music] terror.
Every black child alive today stands [singing] on the survival of those people. [music] >> That survival is proof >> that the system did not erase your bloodline. >> Ships cross [music] the ocean. >> Your ancestors survive the cross. >> Never let the world [music] erase that truth. >> Carry these names with you. [music] >> Teach your children >> what the middle passage was. Do [music] not let anybody turn this history into silence. >> Your ancestors survive. >> One of the coolest [music] systems ever created. >> Stand tall when you [singing] remember them. >> The water still remembers. >> And now you do [music] too.
From 1500 to the 1860s, 12 million Africans were forced on the ships. Almost two million died in the water before they ever touched land. [music] This is the crossing they called the middle passage. >> Stop. Put everything down. What I am about [music and singing] to tell you is the truth. It is yours and no one can take it back. The water [music] remembers what they tried to drown. >> They built the ship to break you >> and you did [music] not break. >> 2 million stayed in the sea >> and still you are here. >> You are alive >> because they refuse to die. >> Yeah.
Uh it started on the coast of [music] West Africa. Porch like yina in Ghana the bite of bonina the bite of bafra [music] from around 1500 to 1866 12 and a half million [music] people were captured and sold the Portuguese began it then the British [music] the French the Dutch the Spanish the royal African company of England bring [music] the people with hot I ain't even children on a ship called the bros they packed over 400 human [music] beings below deck people with chains side by side lying and Stay on waist, no room [music] to sit up. The crossing took 6 weeks to 3 months across the Atlantic. [music] There was no clean water, no air, no light. Sickness in every corner. Dysentery, [music] smallox, and starvation killed them in the dark. About 1.8 [music] to 2 million people died to see on that journey. The crew through the dead and still breathing over the side. Sharks [music] follow the ships across the entire ocean. >> This was not an accident. [music] This was the business. This was the plan.
Stop. Put everything down. What I am about to tell you is the truth. [music] It is yours and no one can take it back. The water [music] remembers what they tried to drown. >> They built a ship to break you >> and you did not break. >> 2 [music] million stayed in the sea. >> Still you are here. [singing] >> You are alive >> because they refuse [music] to die.
Yeah. In [music] 1781 on a British ship called a song. The crew were 32 [music] living people into the ocean. They did it to claim insurance money. All the people they murdered the court in [singing] England in 1783. [music] Argued about money not about the killing. But your ancestors did not all [music] go quietly.
In 1839 on a ship am pie called Joseph sing [music] K led a revolt and won his freedom in the United States Supreme Court in 1841. >> There were over [music] 400 recorded uprisings on slave ships. Some chose the water over the chains and that was their last act of freedom.
Every [music] single person who survived that ocean is the reason you exist. Your family did not begin in [singing] slavery. [music] Your family survived long enough to reach it. The mothers, the fathers, the children who live through that water carry life forward to you. Their names were never written down. >> Their blood [music] isn't you right now. >> That is why you breathe. That is why you stay. >> That is why >> you are here today. >> What they tried to erase in the ocean. It's sitting in your chest [music and singing] >> still being. >> You are the evidence >> that they could not finish what they started. He did not take all of us. He [music] could not take you. You are the proof that survive.
Now you know what cross that ocean to [music] make you. Do not let anyone tell you it never happened. [music] >> Say it to your children. Teach it out loud. >> 12 and a half men left. >> 2 million never landed. You came from the ones >> who held on through the water. Carry them with you. [music] >> Never let this be erased. [music] >> [music]