On Netflix Streaming ;-) Between 1502 and 1866, 11.2 million Africans disembarked from slave ships in the New World during the Middle Passage. Of those 11.2 million people, only 450,000 came to the United States. The rest of the African slaves who survived the journey were taken to the Caribbean, Latin America and South America. Brazil got 4.8 million slaves alone, says historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. When I was growing up, I thought to talk about the slave trade was to talk about the experiences of our ancestors here in the United States. But it turns out that the real African-American experience — judging by numbers alone — unfolded south of our borders. That world, says Gates, is the one he wanted to explore in Black in Latin America, a book and four-part documentary series airing on PBS, which traces the cultural history and the lasting impact of the millions of slaves who arrived in Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico and Peru. The average American — and even the average academic and the average journalist — has no idea of the huge number of black people who landed south of the United States over the course of the slave trade, he tells Fresh Airs Terry Gross.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 22:46:30 +0000
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