African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame

“The first history of the Atlantic slave trade culled from the memories of those Africans left behind . . . it will forever alter our understanding of the Middle Passage.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!

The story of the Atlantic slave trade has largely been filtered through the eyes and records of white Europeans, but in this watershed book, Anne C. Bailey focuses on memories of the trade from the African perspective. African chiefs and other elders in an area of southeastern Ghana once famously called “the Old Slave Coast” share stories that reveal that Africans were both traders and victims of the trade. Though Africans were not equal partners with Europeans, their involvement had devastating consequences on their history and sense of identity.

Like victims of trauma, many African societies now experience a fragmented view of their past that partially explains the blanket of silence and shame around the slave trade. Capturing astonishing oral histories that were handed down through generations of storytellers—like an 1856 incident involving the kidnapping of famous drummers and traders by Europeans and Americans—Bailey breaks the deafening silence around slavery and explores the delicate and fragmented nature of historical memory in this rare, unprecedented book.

“In a path-breaking work, Anne C. Bailey utilizes the power of oral traditions to reconstruct the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The book powerfully illuminates the importance of the concrete cultural survival of African traditions within the Atlantic slave trade and slavery.” —Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine Segal Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights