Posts Based on Reading: Post 1

11/24/14                      Reading: Blog Post 1

The book I am reading in order to write a blog post is called The Making of African America by Ira Berlin. The first chapter leads us into the main four migrations of African Americans. The first migration was the forced deportation of Africans from Africa to North America. The second forced migration was twice the size of the first. This was the movement of men and women from the coast of the North American Atlantic to the interior south, where the slave regime as we know it began (not the beginning of all slavery of course!). The third was the Great Migration, the journey from the South to the urban north to become wageworkers. The fourth, and most recent “main” is going on currently. It is the immigration of people of African descent into America from countries ranging from the greater Caribbean, to South America, and Europe. Berlin described the Middle Passage as a “nightmarish”, traumatic journey across the Atlantic Ocean to North American enslavement.“the Middle Passage also represents the will of black people to survive, the determination not to be dehumanized by dehumanizing circumstances (14). 

First, I’ve realized that the world of Africa/African America has been going through an evolution through each of these main migrations. These massive movements separated families, dehumanized even young children, created new neighborhoods with new unfamiliar neighbors, new types of work, new music, etc. In my African American Studies class we’ve been learning more about the Middle Passage, which relates to the first few pages of the book. It was an extremely grotesque journey. Men and women were packed in the ship like cargo, which made it difficult to breath. People were chained to chambers full of urine, feces, and blood. It’s important to keep in mind that some ships didn’t make it, whether that be due to rebellion, mass murder, illness, suicide, storms, etc. It really took a lot of resilience to survive that journey to America. The section of reading was more powerful having this context. The first main migration may have been later, but the very first slaves were taken out of Africa by Europeans around 1400 to the Iberian Peninsula. By the time the Middle Passage came around, slavery was relatively old. The opening of this book spaces out the timeline of the migrating African American people well. This mental organization is important to understanding the history and the present.