Best Middle Passage Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“We’d like a list of what we lost Think of those who landed in the Atlantic The sharkiest of waters Bonnetheads and thrashers Spinners and blacktips We are made of so much water Bodies of water Bodies walking upright on the mud at the bottom The mud they must call nighttime Oh there was some survival Life After life on the Atlantic—this present grief So old we see through it So thick we can touch it And Jesus said of his wound Go on, touch it I don’t have the reach I’m not qualified I can’t swim or walk or handle a hoe I can’t kill a man Or write it down A list of what we lost The history of the wound The history of the wound That somebody bought them That somebody brought them To the shore of Virginia and then Inland Into the land of cliché I’d rather know their faces Their names My love yes you Whether you pray or not If I knew your name I’d ask you to help me Imagine even a single tooth I’d ask you to write that down But there’s not enough ink I’d like to write a list of what we lost. Think of those who landed in the Atlantic, Think of life after life on the Atlantic— Sweet Jesus. A grief so thick I could touch it. And Jesus said of his wound, Go on, touch it. But I don’t have the reach. I’m not qualified. And you? How’s your reach? Are you qualified? Don’t you know the history of the wound? Here is the history of the wound: Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them. Though I know who caught them, sold them, bought them, I’d rather focus on their faces, their names.”

Poetry Poem Slavery African Americans Blacks Slaves Slave Ships Middle Passage

Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

Source: Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“Mobile's AfricaTown: Published timelines of African-American history invariably mention that the last slave ship to bring Africans to North America was the *Clotilde* … what they never explain is how this happened 50 years after the United States banned the importation of slaves. The explanation is both trivial and tragic. Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipbuilder, made a wager over a few whiskies that he could elude federal agents… …While descendents of the Clotilde captives still hold reunions in the area, there is little physical evidence of this community’s origins, except for the bust of Cudjoe Lewis… …Lewis (who was originally called ‘Kazoola’) died in 1945, possibly the last surviving slave-ship captive in America.”

Mobile Alabama Slave Trade Middle Passage Slave Ship Africatown Cudjoe Lewis

Book:Lonely Planet Louisiana & the Deep South

Source: Lonely Planet Louisiana & the Deep South

“The slave ship at sea reduced African captives to an existence so physically atomized as to silence all but the most elemental bodily articulation, so socially impoverished as to threaten annihilation of the self, the complete disintegration of personhood. Here their commodification built toward a crescendo that threatened never to arrive, but to leave the African captives suspended in an agony whose language no one knew.”

Trauma Dehumanization Commodification Middle Passage

Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Source: Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“On average, 20 percent of the Africans carried into the Atlantic in the seventeenth century died at sea, and 40 percent of cargoes experienced mortality levels above that benchmark.”

Slavery Mortality Middle Passage

Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Source: Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“Mortality on the Atlantic produced a crisis of enormous proportions, as Africans labored under the cumulative weight of these deaths that remained unresolved. . . . Entrapped, Africans confronted a dual crisis: the trauma of death, and the inability to respond appropriately to death. This indirect violence, arguably, was the most abject experience of the captives’ Atlantic crossing.”

Death Slavery Trauma Middle Passage Response To Death

Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Source: Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“The individual stories of saltwater slavery form the antithesis of historical narrative, for they feature not an evolving plot of change over time, but rather a tale of endless repetition that allows no temporal progression. Every protagonist was a pioneer, blazing a trail on the same ground traveled by predecessors in saltwater slavery, but without the benefit of historical memory. It is a narrative in which time seems to stand still.”

History Slavery Narrative Middle Passage African Diapsora Saltwater Slavery

Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Source: Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“I should have known from the Middle Passage to never trust a white man who says, "Take a seat." It could be your last.”

Race Racism African Americans Blacks Race Relations Whites Middle Passage

Book:Black Buck

Source: Black Buck

“I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime."”

Source: The Culture of Make Believe

“I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full.”

Inspirational Funny Dark Middle Wind Boat Passages Steady Sail Sailing Nautical Boats And Sailing Sailing And Wind Sailing And Love Smooth Sailing Middle Passage

Author:Arthur Ashe

“One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe-the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and good intentions, things will work out. We assume a reciprocity with the universe. If we do our part, the universe will comply. Many ancient stories, including the Book of Job, painfully reveal the fact that there is no such contract, and everyone who goes through the Middle Passage is made aware of it.”

Source: The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“The only requisite to entry into the Middle Passage is to have discovered that one does not know who one is, that there are no rescuers, no Mommy or Daddy, and that one's fellow travelers will do well to survive themselves.”

Knows Wells Doe Middle Fellows Passages Traveler Daddy Entry Fellow Travelers Middle Passage

Author:James Hollis

“We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.”

“It was not Christianity which freed the slave: Christianity accepted slavery; Christian ministers defended it; Christian merchants trafficked in human flesh and blood, and drew their profits from the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage. Christian slaveholders treated their slaves as they did the cattle in their fields: they worked them, scourged them, mated them , parted them, and sold them at will. Abolition came with the decline in religious belief, and largely through the efforts of those who were denounced as heretics.”