Objective:
Students will role-play life in Africa prior to and at the time of the slave trade.
Students will be asked to discuss the information presented in “Umoja Be Proud”. A selected group of students will be asked to arrange themselves around the classroom. Students will be asked to act out the following scenarios:
-
A) You are a prosperous African. All is well with you and your family. Walk as you would into a governmental meeting to discuss village concerns.
-
B) You are a member of the Yuroba, a proud and powerful people. Walk as you would into a trading center where your African brothers and sisters have come to trade corn, manioc, yams and bananas.
-
C) You are a great king or queen of Africa. Walk out to meet your loyal subjects.
-
D) You are an African child playing outdoors with your friends. You are being kidnapped by white men carrying smoking sticks. Try to get away!
After role-playing the above scenarios, I would ask the children to share what they felt in each role. I would ask them to try to relate to the pride and sense of control one has in scenes A-C, and to compare those feelings with the feelings of despair and desperation one feels in scene D.
The next activity would require the children to make posters warning Africans about the selling of Africans to white slave traders, and of the kidnapping of Africans by white men. Students would be asked to be as emphatic as possible, and to produce a visual presentation for the sake of their countrymen who may speak one of the many West African dialects.
During the next class session, I would begin a discussion about slavery. Students would be given the following handout to read.
Slavery:
From Brazil to southern United States, there was a need for people to harvest sugar, tobacco, coffee, cotton and rice crops. These countries were looking for cheap labor. Because they had traded with Africans, they knew that they were used to working in hot weather and would be readily identifiable as slaves. Slave ships were built to transport Africans to the Americas. Slave ships were specially built to hold large shipments of slaves. During the month long passage from Africa to their new home, there was no standing room for slaves. During their daily exercise period, they were made to jump around on deck and had sea water thrown on them. Below deck, where slaves were kept most of the time, there was crawling space only. Because of the horrible conditions of this “Middle Passage”, one out of every six or eight slaves forced onto the slave ship in Africa, died before reaching America.
During the early years of the slave trade, the Portuguese, Dutch and the Spanish were the greatest transporters of slaves. The English became the greatest slave carriers in the latter years of the slave trade. Between the years 1451-1870, over 9,560,000 Africans had been kidnapped or sold into slavery. On the average, there were about 23,000 Africans kidnapped per year. Much of the slave trade was triangular, between the Americas, Africa and the West Indies. This trading involved rum, slaves and sugar.
African slaves were brought to British North America, Spain, British Caribbean, French Caribbean, Dutch Caribbean, Danish Caribbean, Brazil, and the Old World, this also includes Europe. This is one of the reasons there are people of color all over the world.
The first slaves in the United States were seen in 1619. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863. This document was signed by President Lincoln to end slavery in the United States. In a land that prided itself on being the land of the free, slavery was embraced for over two hundred years. This information was drawn from the book,
Historical And Cultural Atlas Of African Americans
.