New Media Classroom

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Examining Primary Sources

Overview

The trans-Atlantic slave trade is one of the most horrendous and traumatic events in the history of the western hemisphere. To many descendants of Africans now residing in Europe and the Americas, it is the most significant event in their history. The trans-Atlantic slave trade destroyed peoples and whole cultures; underdeveloped a continent and changed it forever; enriched Europe and created empires; and built the United States. To further understand the people and circumstances that shaped this important event in western history, it is helpful to review some of the original writings, images, and other relevant sources which reveal the experience of the slave trade.

Objectives

Students will identify and analyze primary documents; students will explain procedures enslaved Africans endured when captured into slavery; during the Middle Passage; and on their arrival in America.

Resource(s)

Africans in America website http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html
National Archives and Records Administration website http://www.nara.gov

Activity

Step I:

Click on the Resource Bank Index in the Africans in America website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html). Click on Historical Documents and examine the following resource(s):
- Plan of a ship for transporting slaves
- Broadside announcing the sale of slaves
- Insurrection on board a slave ship
- Slave with iron muzzle
- Living Africans thrown overboard
- Alexander Falconbridge's account of the slave trade (use "click here for text of document")
- Slaves left to die

Step II:

Choose a document or image and respond to the questions found on the relevant analysis worksheet -- choose either Written Document or Photograph Analysis Worksheet from the National Archives and Records Administration website (http://www.nara.gov/education/teaching/analysis/analysis.html)

Step III:

Begin brainstorming how you would put together a series of these primary documents and images into a multimedia presentation about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. What commentary would you need to add in order to accurately convey what happened during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and what it meant?