Question:
Describe the Middle Passage as extensively as possible, speaking of diseases,
philosophies of packing, day-to-day maintenance of the ship, etc. Then discuss the psychological ramifications
of this historical moment on the construction of a distinctly African-American
identity.
The term “Middle
Passage” is an emotionally benign and sanitized term that relates to the
transportation of millions upon millions of African captives across the
Atlantic. Termed thusly for the second
leg of the journey for vile, European slave “traders” on their expeditions of
carnage and psychic destruction across the seas, it was the middle portion of
their triangular, transatlantic journey.
For the captive African, it was their passage to the very depths of hell
and evil. In many ways, for the enslaved African, it signified not a middle
passage but the beginning of the end.
An end to freedom, dignity, self-sufficiency and the cultural legacy of
a rich and varied homeland and signified a passage to the “sacrifice of living
Africans on the altar of capitalist accumulation.” (Munford, Black Ordeal, p.
274) The ideological origin of the term
Middle Passage is disrespectful to the Africans that died and those that
amazingly survived. The Malevolent Voyage, as it should be more aptly termed to
reflect the egregious, inhumane nature of that fateful passage not only of time
and distance but also of life, was an indelible marker in the destruction of
African peoples.
Facing towards the
setting sun, emerging from the dungeons of carnage in West Africa, the captive
Africans faced their sea-bound destinies guilty of absolutely no wrongdoing,
save that of being born with beautiful, black skin. Clarence J. Munford brilliantly articulates
the essence of the impact of the Middle Passage on the captive African:
For its victims, the Middle
Passage meant an end finally to the trauma
of initial
capture and the nightmare of coffles, barracoons and the first, flesh-searing
branding, only to embark anew on a journey beyond hope, a voyage of fiendish
torture and death that enabled the sadist among the white seadogs to realize
some of their most fevered yearnings. (Munford, The Black Ordeal of Slavery . .
. , p.273)
The true tales of horror and
destruction of the Middle Passage will never be known. One can only imagine, pieced together from
the recounted tales of emotionally bereft and pathological European seamen,
what the experience was truly like for the captive African. This author’s contemporary mind cannot fathom the conditions under
which Africans had to survive to ensure the perpetuation of generations of
African people throughout the Diaspora.
Ripped from their families and homes, their movements restricted under
heavy chains, subjected to physical abuse, rape and torture, captive Africans
survived aboard those floating coffins amidst the smell of urine, feces, sweat,
blood, vomit, and probably the most paralyzing, the smell of fear.
French, Dutch,
Portuguese, British and Spanish in origin, slave ships traveled to the shores
of Africa to gather their human cargo for transportation to the “New World.”
Traded, sold, and kidnapped into captivity, the enslaved African was branded
with a hot iron and renamed a European name and logged onto the ship’s manifest
like sundry, inanimate provisions for the trip.
Coasting, or the process whereby slave ships lay anchor off the African
coast to collect captives for a most profitable journey, averaged four to eight
months in duration. Able to see their
beloved homeland and unaware of their fate, chained Africans were held beneath
the decks, growing more anxious and more sick with each passing hour--
minute. It was there, within swimming
distance of Africa, that mutiny was most likely to occur. Once out at sea, the hope for salvation, for
freedom, faded like the distant horizon of their beloved motherland.
The ships
themselves ranged in size from fifty to two hundred tons. Commonly, a ship of standard proportions held
anywhere between four hundred and six hundred captives. Generally, crewmen
would be proportioned one man to three tons, with higher ratios occurring when
the fear of mutiny was greater. The more
greedy captains were known as “tight packers,” forcing as many Africans on
board with complete disregard to even the most remote concept of humanity, in
an effort to reach the Americas with sufficient Africans for which they could
make private transactions. The concept
was rooted in the belief that the more Africans that were on board, the more
Africans that would make it to the final destination, thus greater
profits. They would simply pile bodies
on top on one another with no respect for the human beings that they kidnapped
and traded like cattle. “Loose packers”
were the individuals that felt that fewer Africans per square foot meant less
disease, rebellion and death among the captives. It was not out of concern for their
“passengers” that loose packers based their philosophy but simply an effort to
decrease the mortality rate and potential danger to crewmembers and increase
the profits for the surviving Africans that fostered their practices.
The conditions
onboard were the most deplorable and contemptible conditions conceivable. As to the space allotted for captives,
Munford describes the common dimensions, “A ship of common dimensions had a
battery or a between-deck. This was a
space between the spare deck and the first bridge, about 5 feet 8 inches
high. A platform, 6 feet wide, ran the
length of the ship. The space between it
and the upper bridge was two and a half feet.
Captives lay stretched on the bridge platform and between-decks,”
(p.281). That meant that captives lay
chained arm to arm, leg to leg, for the duration of a trip that averaged five
to nine weeks, in a space where they could barely lift their heads. In order to relieve themselves, chained
captives had to crawl over the dead and dying to reach a barrel for
elimination. Dragging with them their
fellow cellmates, for it was certainly a prison of sorts, the effort was most
often futile and resulted in captives eliminating where they lay. Pools of excrement and waste dripped into the
eyes, mouths and open sores of anyone lying beneath or around someone too weak
or physically unable to make that degrading sojourn. Many times, small children lost their lives,
suffocated at the bottoms of the vats of filth.
The excrement pails were emptied once a day, if at all, and occasionally
the decks would be washed down with seawater and vinegar.
The age of the
captives ranged from preteen to early twenties, with only the most healthy and
the strongest Africans being “selected” to make the journey. It seems rather peculiar that any human being
could be deemed strong and/or healthy after being subjected to the atrocities
of the enslavement process. If one were
reasonably healthy upon boarding the ship, the voyage most certainly ensured
that they would not be healthy at the end of the trip. Unconscionable conditions existed not only to
eat away at the bodies of the captives but also to consume their very
souls. The list of ailments attributed
to enslaved Africans reads like a medical school journal of fatal, if not
surreal, diseases; flux, dysentery, scurvy, typhoid fever, small pox, yellow
fever, tuberculosis, leprosy et al. were common occurrences aboard the slave ships. Yaws, a venereal disease that would cause its
victims to itch themselves into a state of insanity and opthamalia, a condition
that caused temporary blindness, were just a few or the exotic maladies to
which African captives were exposed.
Plagued with parasites and rodents, housed in quarters with insufficient
ventilation, and unlikely to receive any medical attention, each and every
captive aboard the slave ships was exposed to unthinkable infection. The medical “treatment” for captives oft
times amounted to nothing more than being throw overboard, inconsequential
fodder for predatory sharks.
Mortality rates
going as high as an estimated twenty five percent, crewmen learned that
physical activity lead to a greater chance of African survival. Weather permitting, slaves were led on deck
to “dance” in small groups. Forced to
move to the beat of a drum, the captives had the chance to stretch their limb
and feel sunshine on their skin.
Africans were not allowed the dignity of choosing a watery grave over
the indignation of enslavement and certain precautions were made to ensure that
no one jumped overboard. Nets on the
sides of the boats were in place to ensure that voluntary drowning was not an
option. Mothers, however, would
occasionally manage to fling their newborns African babies beyond the nets and
send their children to death, their bodies far from the reaches of their
pale-faced captors, their souls forever free.
Nutrition, or more
aptly the lack thereof, contributed greatly to the horrific conditions of the
African captives. More than lack of
food, lack of water was responsible for deaths of innumerous enslaved
Africans. Subsisting on a diet not fit
for even the most vile of beasts, captive Africans suffered from dehydration
and starvation. Many times, in an act of
defiance, captured Africans would refuse to eat the slop given them as a
suicidal act. The crewmen would threaten
the Africans with burning, hot coals about their lips and force them to swallow
it as an example to others that might consider death by starvation. A mixture of horse beans and flour was not
much incentive to eat in addition to the fact that it might be crawling with
maggots and vermin. Provisions were made
for each African to have one barrel of fresh water per voyage. If inclement weather or extenuating
circumstances led to a miscalculation of supplies, crewmembers apportioned
whatever water was drinkable for themselves, leaving the captive Africans to
die or throwing them overboard so as not to have to hear their incessant moans.
During the Middle Passage, the strongest may not have been the ones to survive
the voyage; it might simply have been a matter of the ones closest to the food
being able to survive.
Exactly how many
Africans died during the Middle Passage will never be known. Estimates including those that survived,
those lost at sea, and those that were slaughtered and died before ever
reaching the slave ships range from fifteen to one hundred million. There was
little, if any, incentive to keep accurate records of accurate counts of the
ships’ human cargo, allotting for extra profit from private sales between
captains and eager buyers. Perhaps an even more elusive figure is the amount of
money made from the trade of African lives for currency. It can be considered trade only under the
superficial guise of trading a human being for money. On those vessels where the “cargo” was
ensured, a captain could conceivably claim that all of the Africans contracted
a fatal disease and that he had to throw them overboard, thus receiving the
money owed on the policy on their heads and the money received from their
“illegal” sale. Piracy accounted for
much of the loss of captives within striking distance of the final destination. Sea-faring thieves could come along after the
most arduous portion of the journey and commandeer the captive Africans for
their own ill-gotten gains.
Mutiny aboard the
slave ships was not uncommon. Armed with
nothing more than the sheer will to live and the determination of survival,
captive Africans often organized rebellions without the benefit of a common
language among them and no hope for escape other than death. Even the stories of the mutinies that have
survived the passage of time are flavored by the storytellers themselves, white
crewmen who were able to cease and desist the efforts of the enraged and
willful Africans. Buried at sea are the
stories of the Africans who overcame their captors only to slaughter them and
remain unable to navigate their way back home.
Plentiful are the stories of Africans who allegedly sold their brethren
off to the European slave traders, but rare is the story of how Africans
patrolled the coast of Africa in small boats, liberating captives on ships
docked at port. Sea captains had good
reason to not report accounts of uprisings because it would jeopardize their
future expeditions, and future income.
One of the only
first-hand accounts of the Middle Passage from the vantage point of the captive
African is illustrated in the book, The
Interesting Narrative of Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African: an Authoritative Text/Written by Himself. Written in the vernacular of the
enslaver, Equiano speaks of his experiences of capture as a child of eleven
years old. He recounts the belief upon
being brought upon the ship that he was going to be put in one of the large
pots and eaten by the savagely brutal white men. He laments about the sensation
of “death spirits” on the ship, and his desire for death as an escape to the
abysmal conditions that surrounded him.
Tales of the captives’ experience written in the native tongues of
Africa may not exist, and if they do, they have remained hidden or have been
destroyed.
The ramifications
and psychological inheritance of the Middle Passage have never fully been
examined. S.E. Anderson suggests that
the individuals that survived the Middle Passage possessed a different genetic
makeup than those that remained on the shores of Africa. For example, excessive sodium loss was common
during transportation across the ocean.
He goes on to suggest that sodium-conserving descendents of Africans who
were enslaved may be more susceptible to “salt-sensitive” hypertension than
other people have a tendency to be (Anderson, Black Holocaust for Beginners, p.
101). Certainly, extensive physiological studies need to be conducted to
ascertain the genetic damage to the immune systems of the African captives and
their descendants and the role it plays on the health of African
Americans. Psychologically, the origins
of distrust, self-hatred, and competitiveness all had some foundation in the
experience of the Middle Passage. The forced competition for something as
simple as fresh air among people that shared the same bonds but different
ethnicities may very well be the origin of turf wars and gang allegiances that
exist today.
If one can
speculate as to the origins of the breakdown of the Black male/female
relationship in contemporary society, the genesis may very well lie in the
bowels of the slave ships. The ratio of
men to women averaged two to one. Women and children frequently went unchained
but were always housed separately from the male captives. Forced gender
segregation, unhealthy ratios, and a barbarous, competitive climate certainly
created a communication rift the likes of which may not have been transcended
to this very day. Certainly, it is in
the interpretation of the instances of rape of the women aboard the ship that a
misogynist slant lay.
As Vincent Harding
recounts in his work entitled, There is a
River, “many Black women resisted the most personal of white invasions and
instead, turned the situation to the purposes of their people’s fight for
freedom (p. 12). This sort of sentiment
makes light of the psychological and emotional devastation of the act of rape
and places the responsibility of resistance within the loins of captive African
women. Harding speaks of the women who chose the struggle for black freedom
over a privileged [emphasis added]
bondage among white men, as if to say that repeated rape and defilement was in
some way a meritorious benefit of those that did not slay their violators. From such a statement, the assumption must
certainly be made that the weak women submitted to such tortures to make things
easy on themselves and because they were not committed to the act of
revolution. That is an absolutely absurd
and insane presupposition that reduces women to a sexual object rather than
human being and forms the foundation for the gold-digger stereotype commonly
associated with Black women.
Nowhere in his
work does Harding mention the male victims of rape onboard the ship neither
does he accuse the men of the being the benefactors of sex in exchange for
comfort nor does he imply that they were responsible for mounting
insurrections. If the captive African
male slaves believed as Harding does, that sex and rape are synonymous, that
mindset essentially set the stage for the objectification of Black women and
the concept of sex in exchange for goods and services that plagues the African-American
community. Perhaps, the African male
captive simply died inside, seeing his sister, mother and wife, repeatedly
abused, unable to protect her from such abuses.
Profoundly ashamed of the fact that he could not defend her, he turned
his back on her, creating a chasm between Black men and women that has yet to
be healed. Whatever the scenario, the blood that runs through the collective
veins of Black people on this side of the Atlantic is the blood of those
indefatigable spirits, those courageous women that somehow managed to survive
repeated rape and degradation to live to see another day. In essence, our existence is owed to the
African women that did not stage rebellion and die at the bottom of the sea,
but to those that internalized the pain and found a way to survive.
The end of the
journey meant a new life of hell. It was
on reaching the New World that the captive Africans assumed their new title,
that of slave. John Hope Franklin
discloses:
Perhaps
not more than half the slaves shipped from Africa ever became effective workers
in the New World. Many of those that had
not died of disease or committed suicide by jumping overboard were permanently
disabled by the ravages of some dread disease or by maiming which often
resulted from the struggle against the chains (Franklin, From Slavery to
Freedom, p. 57).
The death and disfiguration toll of the
Middle Passage is astronomical when multiplied by the hundreds of years that
the transatlantic transportation of kidnapped Africans occurred. There was no turning back, there was no going
home.
The Middle Passage
was not an historical moment but rather an historical era of the most
devastating dimensions. It was the
birthplace of disease, dysfunction, and destruction for Africans around the
globe. The Black Holocaust was nothing
less than centuries of oppression and genocide perpetuated by Europeans on
innocent, African victims that endured to live on in body and in spirit. The Middle Passage is not over. Dispersed Africans will forever be tethered and
bound to the vessels of ruination, drowning in the sea of abandon, until the
proper homage is paid to those that perished and those that dared to live
on.
Scottie Lowe 2003
