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“We’d like a list of what we lost
Think of those who landed in the Atlantic
The sharkiest of waters
Bonnetheads and thrashers
Spinners and blacktips
We are made of so much water
Bodies of water
Bodies walking upright on the mud at the bottom
The mud they must call nighttime
Oh there was some survival
Life
After life on the Atlantic—this present grief
So old we see through it
So thick we can touch it
And Jesus said of his wound Go on, touch it
I don’t have the reach
I’m not qualified
I can’t swim or walk or handle a hoe
I can’t kill a man
Or write it down
A list of what we lost
The history of the wound
The history of the wound
That somebody bought them
That somebody brought them
To the shore of Virginia and then
Inland
Into the land of cliché
I’d rather know their faces
Their names
My love yes you
Whether you pray or not
If I knew your name
I’d ask you to help me
Imagine even a single tooth
I’d ask you to write that down
But there’s not enough ink

I’d like to write a list of what we lost.

Think of those who landed in the Atlantic,

Think of life after life on the Atlantic�
Sweet Jesus. A grief so thick I could touch it.

And Jesus said of his wound, Go on, touch it.
But I don’t have the reach. I’m not qualified.

And you? How’s your reach? Are you qualified?
Don’t you know the history of the wound?

Here is the history of the wound:
Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them.

Though I know who caught them, sold them, bought them,
I’d rather focus on their faces, their names.”
― Jericho Brown, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“The slave ship at sea reduced African captives to an existence so physically atomized as to silence all but the most elemental bodily articulation, so socially impoverished as to threaten annihilation of the self, the complete disintegration of personhood. Here their commodification built toward a crescendo that threatened never to arrive, but to leave the African captives suspended in an agony whose language no one knew.”
― Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“Mobile's AfricaTown:
Published timelines of African-American history invariably mention that the last slave ship to bring Africans to North America was the *Clotilde* � what they never explain is how this happened 50 years after the United States banned the importation of slaves.
The explanation is both trivial and tragic. Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipbuilder, made a wager over a few whiskies that he could elude federal agents�
…While descendents of the Clotilde captives still hold reunions in the area, there is little physical evidence of this community’s origins, except for the bust of Cudjoe Lewis�
…Lewis (who was originally called ‘Kazoolaâ€�) died in 1945, possibly the last surviving slave-ship captive in America.”
― Gary Bridgman, Lonely Planet Louisiana & the Deep South

“On average, 20 percent of the Africans carried into the Atlantic in the seventeenth century died at sea, and 40 percent of cargoes experienced mortality levels above that benchmark.”
― Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“Mortality on the Atlantic produced a crisis of enormous proportions, as Africans labored under the cumulative weight of these deaths that remained unresolved. . . . Entrapped, Africans confronted a dual crisis: the trauma of death, and the inability to respond appropriately to death. This indirect violence, arguably, was the most abject experience of the captivesâ€� Atlantic crossing.”
― Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“The individual stories of saltwater slavery form the antithesis of historical narrative, for they feature not an evolving plot of change over time, but rather a tale of endless repetition that allows no temporal progression. Every protagonist was a pioneer, blazing a trail on the same ground traveled by predecessors in saltwater slavery, but without the benefit of historical memory. It is a narrative in which time seems to stand still.”
― Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“I should have known from the Middle Passage to never trust a white man who says, "Take a seat." It could be your last.”
― Mateo Askaripour, Black Buck