middle passage

American  

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.

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middle passage British  

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

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Etymology

Origin of middle passage

First recorded in 1780–90

Example Sentences

Only about 10 million people survived those brutal journeys, which came to be known as the Middle Passage.

From The Wall Street Journal

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.

From Literature

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

From Literature

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.

From The Wall Street Journal

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.

From Salon