Today, I had the opportunity to visit the National Monument to African Burial grounds in the city. The exhibit is highly educational and not just a cemetery as one would assume from the title. Inside the museum, there are replicas of material mostly belonging to the cultures of the many represented African nations in the slave trade; along with a few life-size wax figures of the slaves themselves.
In today’s visit, I managed to learn information I had previously been unaware of. For example, a majority of modern-day Lower Manhattan was the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam during the late 1680s and the first location of African slave arrival. During the early stages of the system, a portion of slaves managed to successfully petition for their freedom and even go on to own land, while peacefully coexisting with the amenable European colonizers of the 17th century. Unfortunately, in the years to come, control of the colonial territory shifted into the hands of British forces who were nowhere near as agreeable as their Dutch predecessors had been. Following their arrival, oppression of existing slaves increased and free blacks lost all land they had previously owned.
Brown’s article mentions British ship Captain Hugh Crowe and his direct involvement in the slave trade. Captain Crowe is described as being cruel and inhumane; both of which were characteristics he considered the slave trade and general treatment of Africans as not being. He looked at the conditions of the slave trade as fitting into the norms of military rule and considered the graphic violence along with the public display of black corpses as being justified for even the Royal Navy to partake in.