Neutralizing an Icon: Michael Jordan

The Middle Passage, or Atlantic “slave trade’ was the largest forced migration of human beings
ever known ever known. Thousands of ships. Tens of thousands of voyages. Millions of
souls. Multiplied millions of deaths. A continent depopulated and devastated. More than four centuries of unspeakable and unspoken hell. Resistance. Rape. Revolts. The Atlantic bloodied. Migration patterns of sharks altered. A new world. Crystal glasses raised to toast the wondrous profits.

Yet each surviving ship, ignominiously violated womb that she was, gave birth to new life and to new peoples in the new world. Born with memory. Flesh, blood and sinew of all their Ancestors and all future generations. They brought knowledge. They brought strength. They brought skills. They brought beauty. They brought joy.

All Americans have African ancestry if not biological, then certainly cultural. It is but little known that during the colonial period, roughly five times as many Africans as Europeans entered what is now the United States. The Middle Passage is our collective past. Its bounty is our collective present. What we do with it is our collective future.

Permission is granted through authorized representative Hugeaux by Dr. Dinizulu Gene Tinnie for submission of this article for publishing.