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How Many Africans Were Really Taken To The U.S During

The Slave Trade?

January 6, 2014

By Henry Louis Gates Jr (Https://Www.Fas.Harvard.Edu/~Amciv/Faculty/Gates.Shtml).,

TheRoot.Com
Perhaps you, like me, were raised essentially to think of the slave experience primarily in terms of our black ancestors here in the United States. In
other words, slavery was primarily about us, right, from Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker and Richard Allen, all the way to
Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Think of this as an instance of what we might think of as African-American exceptionalism.
(In other words, if it’s in “the black Experience,” it’s got to be about black Americans.) Well, think again. 
(https://www.abhmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/images.jpg)

The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-
Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (. . .)Between 1525
and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded
Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. 
(https://www.abhmuseum.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/imgres.jpg)

And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to
North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage.  In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the
African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans
alone! Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after
touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who
arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade.

Incredibly, most of the 42 million members of the African-American community descend from this tiny group of
less than half a million Africans. (. . .)

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