[FreedomCalls]

Re: "Roots". That piece of fiction (which claimed to be fact) has also done a lot of damage to people's historical understanding of slavery. In "Roots" a raiding party comes ashore and kidnaps Kunta Kinte from a peaceful life. In reality that would never happen. In reality a slave ship would put ashore and negotiate to purchase slave cargo from the local king.

[rellimpank]

--and it is my cynical opinion, after seeing several Civil War battlefields and memorials a year ago, that the politically correct types won't be satisfied until we posit that the war was won by the slaves with their hammers and sickles , rather than blue coated soldiers with musket and cannon---

[XBob]

31 - "Re: "Roots". That piece of fiction (which claimed to be fact) has also done a lot of damage to people's historical understanding of slavery. In "Roots" a raiding party comes ashore and kidnaps Kunta Kinte from a peaceful life. In reality that would never happen. In reality a slave ship would put ashore and negotiate to purchase slave cargo from the local king."

Almost correct, but the slaves would have been purchased from the local, coastal, Muslim slave trader.

[reg45]

In reality a slave ship would put ashore and negotiate to purchase slave cargo from the local king.

True! But that would have implicated black Africans for their part in the slave trade.

[savedbygrace]

You forgot the part about the sharks that still swim the routes of those ships waiting for slaves to be thrown off. (Am I remembering accurately that it was Rep. Major Owen who told us about all that?)