middle passage

Or Middle Passage

noun

History/Historical.

1. the part of the Atlantic Ocean between the west coast of Africa and the West Indies: the longest part of the journey formerly made by slave ships.

middle passage

noun

1. history the journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the W coast of Africa to the Caribbean: the longest part of the journey of the slave ships sailing to the Caribbean or the Americas

Word History and Origins

Origin of middle passage¹

First recorded in 1780–90

Example Sentences

The Middle Passage refers to the forced voyage of people from Africa to the Americas, where they would be made to work in horrendous conditions and held in bondage for the rest of their lives.

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It will never be accurately known how many people were kidnapped via the Middle Passage and sold into slavery.

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Over the course of several hundred years the desert equivalent of the notorious Middle Passage of the Atlantic trade witnessed an exodus both vast and lethal—some 1,600 slaves in a single caravan, we are told, died of thirst in 1849 somewhere between Lake Chad and Murzuq.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

To summon the strength to endure these diabolical conditions, I invoked images of my ancestors chained together in the leaky hulls of vermin-infested slave ships, saying to myself that if they could survive the transatlantic Middle Passage, then I could survive New York state’s carceral middle passage.

Read more on Slate

Nearly 10 years removed from its 2016 opening, she said she still feels the overwhelming sense of "appreciation" for her ancestors' strength and resilience when walking through the museum's "Door of No Return," meant to evoke the final stopping point on the West African coast before enslaved Africans began their forced journey across the Atlantic during the Middle Passage.

Read more on Salon