Every June, African-Americans hold a Middle Passage ceremony to honor ancestors who died aboard slave ships bound for the New World. This video is the first of a series about ritual and cultural uses of the New York waterfront. Coney Island, New York, 2004 runtime: 00:03:07
"The Middle Passage was the brutal and horrific transportation of Africans across the Atlantic to the plantations of the Caribbean and Americas. Africans were captured and imprisoned in forts, or barracoons on the coast before enduring the inhumane conditions of the Middle Passage, or the 'way of death'. Packed like sardines below deck, in filthy conditions, at least one million Africans lost their lives on the crossing. Wherever possible the enslaved resisted. Some violently challenged their oppressors, others preferred death as a way of resisting the treatment forced upon them." – Breaking the Silence
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