'Enslaved' reading list

The documentary series Enslaved examines a range of topics that are connected to Canadian and Atlantic histories. This list of suggested titles provides viewers the opportunity to further explore these topics and learn more through many non-fiction and fictional literary works, news articles, and numerous historical sources." . 

This list is designed to extend the exploration of the topics of the middle passage, the transatlantic slave trade, Black enslavement in colonial Canada, foodways, the settlement of African American freedom seekers in Canada, Black Canadian communities, abolition, emancipation, and migrations.  

Episode 1 - Cultures Left Behind

Hollywood icon and human rights activist Samuel L. Jackson goes on a personal journey to Africa, launching the epic story of the transatlantic slave trade, as told from the ocean floor. 

Digital Resources

• Slave Voyages Database (Slave Voyages.org)

• The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes (YouTube)

• The Slave Route Project (UNESCO)

• Slavery and Remembrance, the Transatlantic Slave Trade (UNESCO)

• The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on The Transatlantic Slave Trade 

• 'This is a grave site': Diving with a Purpose surfaces the history of the transatlantic slave trade (CBC)

Canadian connections

• Black history in Newfoundland

• Newfoundland in the Black imaginary (The Newfoundland and Labrador Independent)

• Artist highlights Newfoundland's slave trade connection in Bonavista exhibition (CBC)

• Black Enslavement in Canada (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Enslavement of Indigenous Peoples in Canada (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Chloe Cooley and the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Enslaved Africans in Upper Canada (Archives of Ontario)

• Brought in Bondage: Enslaved Blacks in the Town of York  (Myseum Toronto)

Books:

• The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal by Afua Cooper, Harper Collins, Toronto, 2006. 

• Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two   Centuries of  Bondage by Marcel Trudel and edited by George Tombs, Vehicule Press, 2013.

• Slavery and Freedom in Niagara by Michael Power and Nancy Butler, Niagara Historical Society, 1993.

• Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France by Brett Rushforth Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2012

News  and Essays

• Read: If Black lives truly matter in Canada, an apology for slavery is only a first step (Spacing)

• Read: New Institute of Canadian Slavery to be set up at NSCAD University  (CBC)

• Read: Apology, Truth, and Reparations: The overdue reckoning with Canada's slave past (Spacing)

• Listen: CBC Radio Ideas 2-part documentary Canada's slavery secret: The whitewashing of 200 years of enslavement

• This Diver Helps Preserve Our Underwater Stories In New CBC Series "Enslaved" (ByBlacks)

• Samuel L. Jackson's Enslaved and the lost history of Canadian slavery (CBC)

Episode 2 - Rationalization

How did the ideology of racism begin? How did Europeans rationalize the practice of chattel slavery?

Slave ports on the coast of West Africa

• Stepping through Ghana's 'Door of No Return' (CNN.com)

•  Slave forts case study (Understanding Slavery)

• Forts and Castles, Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions (Unesco)

• Bunce Island (Unesco)

• Slave Trade and Slave Routes: (British National Archives)

• Slave Trade Routes (Slavery and Remembrance)

• The transatlantic slave trade (Liverpool Museums)

• Wonders of the African World - Episodes - Slave Kingdoms (PBS)

• The Middle Passage - The triangular trade - National 5 History Revision (BBC)

• The Middle Passage (Africans in America, PBS)

• Slave ship in 3D video (SlaveVoyages.org)

• Slavery and remembrance: Middle Passage (SlaveryandRemembrance.org)

• Artifacts of the slave trade (Reuters)

• Gallery of artefacts (Understanding Slavery)

• Artifacts From Slave Shipwreck Arrive at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Smithsonian)

Africa before the Transatlantic Slave Trade 

• Exhibitions & Learning online – Black History(National Archives U.K.)

• 7 Influential African Empires (History.com)

• Lost Kingdoms of Africa (BBC)

Slave Narratives that mention capture from Africa

• Venture Smith, 1729?-1805. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself. 

• Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (1701–1773)

• Olaudah Equiano, b. 1745 (pseud. Gustavus Vassa) The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Vol. I.

• From African Prince to Mississippi Slave: Abdul Rahman Ibrahima

• The Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, an enslaved Muslim in the United States, 1831

• Summary of the Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua, a Native of Zoogoo, in the Interior of Africa

Books

• Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora by Stephanie E. Smallwood, Harvard University Press, 2007

• Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage by Sowande M. Mustakeem, University of Illinois Press, 2016

• The Middle Passage: White Ships by Tom Feelings, Dial Books, 1995 

• Early Civilizations of Africa by Adrienne Shadd, Rubicon Press, 2012

• African Diaspora  by Natasha Henry, Rubicon Press, 2015

Episode 3 - Follow the Money

How did Europe's 17th Century mania for coffee cause an expansion in the transatlantic slave trade?

Companies that benefited from the slave trade:

• The hidden links between slavery and Wall Street (BBC)

• The British companies that made money from slavery – and its abolition (The Telegraph)

• There are British businesses built on slavery. This is how we make amends (The Guardian)

• Lloyd's of London, other companies agree to pay slavery reparations after George Floyd protests (Fortune)

• London's Centuries-Old Insurance Market Investigates Its Slavery Role (Wall Street Journal)

• Dutch Slave Trade (Slavery and Remembrance)

• Slavery in New Netherland (Netherland Institute)

• Black Lives Matter: New hidden slave trade sites in Wales revealed (BBC)

• How Sugar Changed the World (Live Science)

• African burial area in Lagos, Portugal: Archaeologists Find Bound Bodies Of Enslaved Africans (Forbes)

• Bristol and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Bristol Museums)

• Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay (1761-1804) and her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray (1760-1825)

• The history of Dido Belle, a mixed-race woman raised in British aristocracy in the 18th century. (EnglishHeritage.org)

• Who was Edward Colston and why is Bristol divided by his legacy? (BBC)

• Maroon communities in the Americas (SlaveryandRemembrance.org)

Canadian Connections

• The invisible history of the slave trade (Toronto Star)

• King's & Slavery: Academic Research (University of King's College)

• Report - Lord Dalhousie Scholarly Panel on Slavery and Race 

• Torture and Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal (Canadian Mysteries)

• Marie-Joseph Angélique (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Slavery in Saint-Armand (Townships Heritage)

• One teacher wants a town in Quebec to remember the slaves lying buried beneath it (The Globe and Mail)

• Slaves who fled north (UELAC.org)

Enslaved Blacks in paintings:

• Portrait of a Haitian Woman (previously Portrait of a Negro Slave): Article Portrait of a Negro Slave (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• A painting of a woman slave is used by McGill University art historian Charmaine Nelson to tell the history of slavery in Montreal.  

• Jamaican Maroons in Nova Scotia (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

Books

• Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica by Charmaine A. Nelson, Routledge, 2017
   
• Unyielding Spirits: Black Women and Slavery in Early Canada and Jamaica by Maureen Elgersman, Taylor & Francis,, 1999
   
• Sugar and Slaves: Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 by Richard Dunn, UNC Press 1972
   
• The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal  by Afua Cooper, Harper Collins, Toronto, 2006.
   
• Zong! by M. Nourbese Phillip, Wesleyan University Press, 2011 
   
• British Capitalism and British Slavery by Eric Williams,Diasporic Africa Press. 2013
   
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade by Duchess Harris and Marcia Amidon Lusted, ABDO, 2019

Episode 4 - New World Cultures

How much of global culture – from reggae to mathematical fractals — originate in Africa

The Clotilda:

• Clotilda, 'last American slave ship,' discovered in Alabama (National Geographic)

• Clotilda wreck: 'Last US slave ship' found in Alabama (BBC)

Slave Foodways:

• How Slavery and African Food Traditions Shaped American Cooking (National Geographic)

• Foodways of Enslaved Laborers on French West Indian Plantations (HBO)

• The Man Who Relives Slave History Through Food (HBO) 

• A Black Food Historian Explores His Bittersweet Connection To Robert E. Lee (NPR) 

• A Chef Tells the Story of the Slave Trade Through Dinner (Published 2019) (NYTimes)

• A New Year's tradition, born from slavery (Washington Post)

• Why Haitian Montrealers make 'freedom' soup on New Year's Day  (CBC)

The banjo:

• The Banjo's Roots, Reconsidered (NPR) 

• History of the Banjo (Bluegrass Banjo) 

• 'Enslaved' explores the banjo's African roots (CBC)

• The Slave Experience: Education, Arts, & Culture (PBS)

• African Diaspora Culture: African Diaspora Culture (SlaveryandRemembrance.org)

Denmark in the slave trade:

• Slavery and Slave Trade (The Story of Denmark)

• Danish decision to abolish transatlantic slave trade in 1792 (Virgin Islands History)

Port Royal, Jamaica: 

• The Underwater City of Port Royal (UNESCO) 

• Jamaica's Port Royal: The wickedest city on Earth? (BBC) 

• Story of cities #9: Kingston, Jamaica – a city born of 'wickedness' and disaster (The Guardian) 

Canadian Connections

Painting in the episode - George Heriot's Minuets of the Canadians 

• M19871 | Minuets of the Canadians | Print | George Heriot | McCord Museum 

• SPEAKER SERIES: CHARMAINE NELSON

African Nova Scotia Culinary History

• The Underexplored Roots of Black Cooking in Nova Scotia (Saveur)

• Halifax woman preserving African Nova Scotian culture through food (CBC)

• Black farmers and the food sovereignty and food security movement:: Afri-Can FoodBasket 

Books

• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, Amistad Press, 2018
   
• The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty, Amistad Press, 2017 

Episode 5: Resistance

How enslaved Africans resisted and sought freedom in Africa, in the U.S., and on the high seas.

Freedom ships and the little-known history of resistance (CBC)

Freedom boats: The Niagara |The Schooner Home

• The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Article on  Harriet Tubman (Canadian Encyclopedia)

Slave mutinies on ships 

• Slave Ship Mutinies (Slavery and Remembrance)

• Denmark Gets First Public Statue of a Black Woman, a 'Rebel Queen' (Published 2018) (NYTimes)

• Yaa Asantewaa and the fight for the Golden Stool (BBC)

• The Amistad Case (Archives.gov)

Slave rebellions

• The Slave Rebellion Website  

• A New Way to Understand Slave Insurrection (Time) 

• The Five Greatest Slave Rebellions in the United States | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (PBS)

• 7 Famous Slave Revolts (History.com)

• Slave revolts 1736-1832 - The captives' experience and slave resistance - National 5 History Revision (BBC)

The Underground Railroad

• The Underground Railroad (PBS)

• Underground Railroad: The William Still Story (PBS) 

• Underground Railroad: Canada, A People's History (CBC) 

•  Underground Railroad (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• 5 Canadian stations of the Underground Railroad (CBC) 

Black Heritage Sites across Canada 

Black and general heritage sites connected to the Underground Railroad: 

• Salem Chapel, BME Church
• St. Catharines Museum
• Voices of Freedom Park, NOTL
• Amherstburg Freedom Museum
• Sister freedom monuments in Windsor and Detroit
• Buxton National Historic Site and Museum
• Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society Heritage Room
• John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad Museum
• Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site
• Norval Johnson Heritage Centre
• Grey Roots Museum and Archives
• Oro African Church
• Sheffield Park Black History and Cultural Museum
• Montgomery's Inn 
• Oakville Museum

Black heritage plaques

• Online Plaque Guide

Freedom Seekers Settle in Canada

• Freedom seekers in New Brunswick: The unlikely life of an escaped slave in Saint John (CBC)

• The William Still Story, Canadian Freedom Markers: Stories of Freedom | Underground Railroad 

• The Souls of Black Folk: Hamilton's Stewart Memorial Community 

• African Canadian Newspapers (the Provincial Freeman and the Voice of the Fugitive)

• On the Road North Online Exhibit

• Freedom City: Uncovering Toronto's Black History

Song: I'm On My Way to Canada

• "I'm on my way to Canada" Song Recording 

• "I'm on my way to Canada": Canada and Musical Protests against Slavery 

• Away to Canada by Joshua McCarter Simpson

Books

• The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! by Adrienne Shadd et al, Dundurn Press, 2002
   
• I've Got a Home in Glory Land by Karolyn Smardz Frost, Dundurn Press, 2007
   
• Steal Away Home by Karolyn Smardz Frost, HarperCollins, 2017
   
• Shadrach Minkins by Gary Lee Collison, Harvard University Press, 1997
   
• The Ward Uncoverd by John Lorinc et al, Coach House Press, 2018
   
• Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada by Natasha Henry, Dundurn Press, 2010
   
• Finding Freedom: the Untold Story of Joshua Glover by Ruby West Jackson and Walter T. McDonald, Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2020
   
• The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself

• A North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by Themselves, with an Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada by Benjamin Drew

• William Troy: Hair-breadth Escapes from Slavery to Freedom

• A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, (Coloured Man:) Giving an Account of His Birth--The Period He Was Held in Slavery--His Release--and Removal to Canada, etc. Together With an Account of the Underground Railroad

• Daddy Hall: A Biography in 80 Linocuts by Tony Miller, Porcupine's Quill, 2017

• Broken Shackles: Old man Henson from Slavery to Freedom by Peter Meyler, Dundurn Press, 2001

Episode 6: Abolition

The final episode in this series on the transatlantic slave trade explores the politics that brought the enslavement of Africans in the West to an end.

Abolitionists in Europe 

• Exhibitions & Learning online | Black presence | Rights (National Archives U.K.)
• Abolitionism in the Atlantic World: The Organization and Interaction of Anti-Slavery Movements in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (European History Online)
• Anti-slavery in the US (Library of Congress)

Canadian Connections

• The Bicentenary of the Abolition of the British Slave Trade - A Canadian Perspective (Canadian Race Relations Foundation)

• Forging Freedom: In Honour of the Bicentenary of the British Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Erudit.org)

• From Slavery to Freedom, Heritage Matters special issue (Heritage Trust)

• The invisible history of the slave trade (The Star)

• Chloe Cooley and the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Slavery Abolition Act, 1833 (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

Emancipation Day

• Have you ever heard of Emancipation Day? (CBC Kids)

• In push for Emancipation Day declaration in Canada, Black community leaders say it's an opportunity to examine what freedom and liberation mean today (The Toronto Star)

• M-36 Emancipation Day 43rd Parliament, 1st Session - Members of Parliament (Our Commons)

Anti-slavery movement in Canada

• Anti-Slavery Movement in Canada - Library and Archives Canada

• The North American Convention of Colored Freemen in Toronto, Canada, 1851 at St. Lawrence Hall: Proceedings for the North American Convention

• Article Toronto Feature: St Lawrence Hall (Canadian Encyclopedia)

• 38 Canadians listed in the Slavery Compensation Database 

Black Canadian anti-slavery newspapers

• The Voice of the Fugitive: INK - ODW Newspaper Collection

• The Provincial Freeman: INK - ODW Newspaper Collection

Books

• Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, HarperCollins, 2007.

• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, HarperCollins, 2018.

Natasha Henry is the president of the Ontario Black History Society and is a PhD Candidate at York University, studying the lives of Black people who were enslaved in colonial Ontario.