Overview
The challenged posed by distinguished historian Nathan Irvin Huggins in his work Black Odyssey provides valuable guidance to the teaching and learning related to this module. He stated "we must find out how the liberty of some rested on the unfreedom of others (and) within that tyranny... we will find a quality of courage still unsung." It is with this perspective that we shift our language and use "enslaved person" instead of "slave", "enslavers" not "slave owners/masters" and "labor camps" to replace "plantations."
Likewise the Swahili word "Maafa", meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy, has replaced the highly problematic term “Transatlantic Slave Trade” within the academic discourse. The latter is seen as a euphemism for the intense violence, the sustained attempt of dehumanization and the mass murder inflicted on African peoples, the complete appropriation of their lands and the destruction of African societies.
We can find the legacy of Huggins mission in recent scholarship. For example, Isabel Wilkerson's Caste (2020), Howard French's Born into Blackness (2021) and the Gilder Lehrman Center podcast “Slavery and Its Legacies” provide new insights to the way we understand the history of slavery and enslaved people to better understand the world we live in. This module is designed to contribute to this goal.
Suggested Essential Questions
In what ways did enslaved and displaced people display their agency and what did you learn from their action?
To what extent is your understanding of the past, present, and yourself impacted by framing Trans-Atlantic Enslavement as a global, not national, event?
How does our knowledge of Trans-Atlantic Enslavement impact current understanding of identity, race, power, society, and other concepts?
How did U.S. experiences with the enslavement of people compare to other nations’ experiences and what are the legacies of those histories?
Scholar Presentation
To move forward in the United States, we must look back and confront the difficult history that has shaped widespread injustice. Revisiting a significant yet overlooked piece of the past, Hasan Kwame Jeffries emphasizes the need to weave historical context, no matter how painful, into our understanding of modern society -- so we can disrupt the continuum of inequality massively affecting marginalized communities
C3 Inquiries relevant to this module
Note: We suggest adding primary and secondary sources found in this module to the C3 Inquiries below. Doing so will add a dimension of "how to globalize U.S. history?" not found in the original design.