#NNPA BlackPress

The Transatlantic Slave Trade: 500 Years Later the Diaspora Still Suffers

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The Transatlantic Slave Trade is not just Black history—it is American history, and Black Americans lived it.

Published

5 months ago

August 25, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

The Transatlantic Slave Trade is not just Black history—it is American history, and Black Americans lived it. Their ancestors were violently torn from their homes, forced into brutal labor, and stripped of basic humanity. That legacy of injustice echoes loudly in every aspect of our society—because the slave trade wasn’t just cruel, it was foundational. Yet today, that truth itself is under attack. President Donald Trump denounced the Smithsonian Institution as allegedly “out of control” for telling the unvarnished history of slavery—claiming museums focus too much on how bad slavery was and not enough on “brightness” or success, even as his administration reviews exhibits and threatens funding cuts to sanitize the narrative. He dismissed honest reflection as “woke,” arguing it undermines national pride. We are re-running this series, which we originally published in 2019, each day because confronting our painful past is urgent—and because critics who erase suffering do so to keep oppression alive.

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” — Muhammad Ali.

“We need to exert ourselves that much more and break out of the vicious cycle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful: those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own image.” — Nelson Mandela.

The most enduring consequences of the migration for the migrants themselves and for the receiving communities were the development of racism and the corresponding emergence and sustenance of an African American community, with particular cultural manifestations, attitudes, and expressions. The legacy is reflected in music and art, with a significant influence on religion, cuisine, and language, according to Paul E. Lovejoy, a distinguished research professor and Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History at York University in Toronto. “The cultural and religious impact of this African immigration shows that migrations involve more than people; they also involve the culture of those people,” Lovejoy said in a recent post about the creation of the African diaspora.

American culture is not European or African but its own form, created in a political and economic context of inequality and oppression in which diverse ethnic and cultural influences, both European and African – and in some contexts, Native American – can be discerned, Lovejoy said. “Undoubtedly, the transatlantic slave trade was the defining migration that shaped the African Diaspora. It did so through the people it forced to migrate, and especially the women who were to give birth to the children who formed the new African American population,” he said. These women included many who can be identified as Igbo or Ibibio, but almost none who were Yoruba, Fon, or Hausa.

Bantu women, from matrilineal societies, also constituted a considerable portion of the African immigrants, and it appears that females from Sierra Leone and other parts of the Upper Guinea Coast were also well represented, Lovejoy said. “These were the women who gave birth to African American culture and society,” he said. After many rang in 2019 with celebratory parties and gatherings, there were still others who solemnly recalled the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade that started 400 years ago – 500 years, depending upon the region. For Africans throughout the diaspora, their struggle not only traces back 400 or 500 years, but it continued and was underscored as recently as 135 years ago when the infamous Berlin Conference was held.

The conference led to the so-called “Scramble for Africa” by European powers, who successfully split the continent into 53 countries, assuring a division that remains today. “There isn’t a single thing that was more damaging to Africa than the Berlin Conference,” said African Union Ambassador Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao. “Africans weren’t even invited to the conference,” she said. At the conference, which took place over three months in Brazil beginning in February 1884 and attended by 13 European nations and the United States, ground rules were established to split Africa. “Africans still are suffering the consequences,” the ambassador said. Said John W. Ashe, the president of the United Nations General Assembly:

“The Transatlantic slave trade … for 400 years deprived Africa of its lifeblood for centuries and transformed the world forever.” There’s no question that legacies of the slave trade persist today in most of the countries Africans were taken to, said Ayo Sopitan, founder of Pendulum Technologies in Houston, Texas. “I have been thinking about how Africans and the diaspora need to get together – through proxies in the persons of recognized leaders – and have a conversation about the past, the role that African collaborators played, and how we can unite as a people. Then, and only then, will we be able to excel as a people,” Sopitan said.

“I have sat at lectures by Henry Gates and learned about blacks in the Americas. The conclusion is that wherever we are, blacks are usually at the bottom of the totem pole. This does not have to continue,” he said. The transatlantic slave trade was an oceanic trade in African men, women, and children that lasted from the mid-sixteenth century until the 1860s. European traders loaded African captives at dozens of points on the African coast, from Senegambia to Angola and around the Cape to Mozambique.

The great majority of captives were collected from West and Central Africa and from Angola, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization – UNESCO. The trade was initiated by the Portuguese and Spanish, especially after the settlement of sugar plantations in the Americas, UNESCO officials noted in a 2018 web presentation titled “Slavery and Remembrance.”

European planters spread sugar, cultivated by enslaved Africans on plantations in Brazil, and later Barbados, throughout the Caribbean.

In time, planters sought to grow other profitable crops, such as tobacco, rice, coffee, cocoa, and cotton, with European indentured laborers as well as African and Indian slave laborers. Nearly 70 percent of all African laborers in the Americas worked on plantations that grew sugar cane and produced sugar, rum, molasses, and other byproducts for export to Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the Atlantic world, according to UNESCO. Before the first Africans arrived in British North America in 1619, more than half a million African captives had already been transported and enslaved in Brazil. By the end of the nineteenth century, that number had risen to more than 4 million. Northern European powers soon followed Portugal and Spain into the transatlantic slave trade.

The majority of African captives were carried by the Portuguese, Brazilians, the British, the French, and the Dutch. British slave traders alone transported 3.5 million Africans to the Americas, UNESCO reported. The transatlantic slave trade was complex and varied considerably over time and place, but it had far-reaching and lasting consequences for much of Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia. The profits gained by Americans and Europeans from the slave trade and slavery made possible the development of economic and political growth in major regions of the Americas and Europe. Europeans used various methods to organize the Atlantic trade.

Spain licensed (by Asiento agreements) other nations to supply its Spanish American and Caribbean colonies with African captives. France, the Netherlands, and England initially used monopoly companies. In time, the demand for African laborers in the Americas was met by more open trade, which allowed other merchants to engage in the trade with Africans. Thus, formidable private trading companies emerged, such as Britain’s Royal African Company (1660–1752) and the Dutch West India Company of the Netherlands (1602–1792), according to UNESCO.

The profits generated from the Atlantic trade economically and politically transformed Liverpool and Bristol in England, Nantes and Bordeaux in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, and Newport, Rhode Island, in the United States. Each port developed links to a wide hinterland for local and international goods in Asia and capital to sustain the trade in African captives. European merchants and ship captains – followed later by those from Brazil and North America – packed their sailing vessels with local goods and commodities from Asia to trade on the African coast.

Enslaved Africans, their often-violent capture and enslavement out of sight of the European general public, were exchanged for iron bars and textiles, luxury goods, cowrie shells, liquor, firearms, and other products that varied region by region over time. Much of the wealth generated by the transatlantic slave trade supported the creation of industries and institutions in modern North America and Europe. To an equal degree, profits from slave trading and slave-generated products funded the creation of fine art, decorative arts, and architecture that continues to inform aesthetics today, UNESCO officials said.

“European countries – Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish – are most complicit in the transatlantic slave trade. This pernicious form of slavery was driven by European capitalistic countries seeking to expand their nation-states and empires,” said Dr. Jonathan Chism, assistant professor of history and a fellow with the Center for Critical Race Studies at the University of Houston Downtown. The pain continues today. “The fact that slavery was underway for a century in South America before its introduction in North America is not widely taught nor commonly understood,” said Felicia Davis of the HBCU Green Fund.

“It is a powerful historical fact missing from our understanding of slavery, its magnitude, and global impact. Knowledge that slavery was underway for a century [before it began in North America] provides deep insight into how enslaved Africans adapted,” Davis said. “Far beyond the horrific seasoning description, clearly generations had been born into slavery long before introduction in North America. It deepens the understanding of how vast majorities could be oppressed in such an extreme manner for such a long period of time,” Davis said. “It is also a testament to the strength and drive among people of African descent to live free.”

Up Next: UN Observes International Remembrance of Slave Trade

Stacy M. Brown

Posts by Stacy M. Brown

Up Next

Hundreds in Oakland Denounce Trump’s Suppression of Voting Rights

Don't Miss

The Transatlantic Slave Trade: 500 Years Later the Diaspora Still Suffers

Stacy M. Brown

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

A Nation in Freefall While the Powerful Feast: Trump Calls Affordability a ‘Con Job’

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — There are seasons in this country when the struggle of ordinary Americans is not merely a condition but a kind of weather that settles over everything.

Published

1 month ago

December 3, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

There are seasons in this country when the struggle of ordinary Americans is not merely a condition but a kind of weather that settles over everything. It enters the grocery aisle, the overdue bill, the rent notice, and the long nights spent calculating how to get through the next week. The latest numbers show that this season has not passed. It has deepened.

Private employers cut 32,000 jobs in November, according to ADP. Because the nation has been hemorrhaging jobs since President Trump took office, the administration has halted publishing the traditional monthly report. The ADP report revealed that small businesses suffered the heaviest losses. Establishments with fewer than 50 workers shed 120,000 positions, including 74,000 from companies with 20 to 49 workers. Larger firms added 90,000 jobs, widening the split between those rising and those falling.

Meanwhile, wealth continues to climb for the few who already possess most of it. Federal Reserve data shows the top 1 percent now holds $52 trillion. The top 10 percent added $5 trillion in the second quarter alone. The bottom half gained only 6 percent over the past year, a number so small it fades beside the towering fortunes above it.

“Less educated and poorer people tend to make worse mistakes,” John Campbell said to CBS News, while noting that the complexity of the system leaves many families lost before they even begin. Campbell, a Harvard University economist and coauthor of a book examining the country’s broken personal finance structure, pointed to a system built to confuse and punish those who lack time, training, or access.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” Carol Fox told Bloomberg News, while noting that rising borrowing costs, shrinking consumer spending, and trade battles under the current administration have left owners desperate. Fox serves as a court-appointed Subchapter V trustee in Southern Florida and has watched the crisis unfold case by case.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump told those present that affordability “doesn’t mean anything to anybody.” He added that Democrats created a “con job” to mislead the public.

However, more than $30 million in taxpayer funds reportedly have supported his golf travel. Reports show Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel have also made extensive use of private jets through government and political networks. The administration approved a $40 billion bailout of Argentina. The president’s wealthy donors recently gathered for a dinner celebrating his planned $300 million White House ballroom.

During an appearance on CNBC, Mark Zandi, an economist, warned that the country could face serious economic threats. “We have learned that people make many mistakes,” Campbell added. “And particularly, sadly, less educated and poorer people tend to make worse mistakes.”

Stacy M. Brown

Posts by Stacy M. Brown

#NNPA BlackPress

The Numbers Behind the Myth of the Hundred Million Dollar Contract

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Odell Beckham Jr. did not spark controversy on purpose. He sat on The Pivot Podcast and tried to explain the math behind a deal that looks limitless from the outside but shrinks fast once the system takes its cut.

Published

1 month ago

December 3, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Odell Beckham Jr. did not spark controversy on purpose. He sat on The Pivot Podcast and tried to explain the math behind a deal that looks limitless from the outside but shrinks fast once the system takes its cut. He looked into the camera and tried to offer a truth most fans never hear. “You give somebody a five-year $100 million contract, right? What is it really? It is five years for sixty. You are getting taxed. Do the math. That is twelve million a year that you have to spend, use, save, invest, flaunt,” said Beckham. He added that buying a car, buying his mother a house, and covering the costs of life all chip away at what people assume lasts forever.

The reaction was instant. Many heard entitlement. Many heard a millionaire complaining. What they missed was a glimpse into a professional world built on big numbers up front and a quiet erasing of those numbers behind the scenes.

The tax data in Beckham’s world is not speculation. SmartAsset’s research shows that top NFL players often lose close to half their income to federal taxes, state taxes, and local taxes. The analysis explains that athletes in California face a state rate of 13.3 percent and that players are also taxed in every state where they play road games, a structure widely known as the jock tax. For many players, that means filing up to ten separate returns and facing a combined tax burden that reaches or exceeds 50 percent.

A look across the league paints the same picture. The research lists star players in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, all giving up between 43 and 47 percent of their football income before they ever touch a dollar. Star quarterback Phillip Rivers, at one point, was projected to lose half of his playing income to taxes alone.

A second financial breakdown from MGO CPA shows that the problem does not only affect the highest earners. A $1 million salary falls to about $529,000 after federal taxes, state and city taxes, an agent fee, and a contract deduction. According to that analysis, professional athletes typically take home around half of their contract value, and that is before rent, meals, training, travel, and support obligations are counted.

The structure of professional sports contracts adds another layer. A study of major deals across MLB, the NBA, and the NFL notes that long-term agreements lose value over time because the dollar today has more power than the dollar paid in the future. Even the largest deals shrink once adjusted for time. The study explains that contract size alone does not guarantee financial success and that structure and timing play a crucial role in a player’s long-term outcomes.

Beckham has also faced headlines claiming he is “on the brink of bankruptcy despite earning over one hundred million” in his career. Those reports repeated his statement that “after taxes, it is only sixty million” and captured the disbelief from fans who could not understand how money at that level could ever tighten.

Other reactions lacked nuance. One article wrote that no one could relate to any struggle on eight million dollars a year. Another described his approach as “the definition of a new-money move” and argued that it signaled poor financial choices and inflated spending.

But the underlying truth reaches far beyond Beckham. Professional athletes enter sudden wealth without preparation. They carry the weight of family support. They navigate teams, agents, advisors, and expectations from every direction. Their earning window is brief. Their career can end in a moment. Their income is fragmented, taxed, and carved up before the public ever sees the real number.

The math is unflinching. Twenty million dollars becomes something closer to $8 million after federal taxes, state taxes, jock taxes, agent fees, training costs, and family responsibilities. Over five years, that is about $40 million of real, spendable income. It is transformative money, but not infinite. Not guaranteed. Not protected.

Beckham offered a question at the heart of this entire debate. “Can you make that last forever?”

Stacy M. Brown

Posts by Stacy M. Brown

#NNPA BlackPress

FBI Report Warns of Fear, Paralysis, And Political Turmoil Under Director Kash Patel

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Six months into Kash Patel’s tenure as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a newly compiled internal report from a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI agents and analysts delivers a stark warning about what the Bureau has become under his leadership.

Published

1 month ago

December 2, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Six months into Kash Patel’s tenure as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a newly compiled internal report from a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI agents and analysts delivers a stark warning about what the Bureau has become under his leadership. The 115-page document, submitted to Congress this month, is built entirely on verified reporting from inside field offices across the country and paints a picture of an agency gripped by fear, divided by ideology, and drifting without direction.

The report’s authors write that they launched their inquiry after receiving troubling accounts from inside the Bureau only four months into Patel’s tenure. They describe their goal as a pulse check on whether the ninth FBI director was reforming the Bureau or destabilizing it. Their conclusion: the preliminary findings were discouraging.

Reports Describe Widespread Internal Distrust and Open Hostility Toward President Trump

Sources across the country told investigators that a large number of FBI employees openly express hostility toward President Donald Trump. One source reported seeing an “increasing number of FBI Special Agents who dislike the President,” adding that these employees were exhibiting what they called “TDS” and had lost “their ability to think critically about an issue and distinguish fact from fiction.” Another source described employees making off-color comments about the administration during office conversations.

The sentiment reportedly extends beyond domestic lines. Law enforcement and intelligence partners in allied countries have privately expressed fear that the Trump administration could damage long-term international cooperation according to a sub-source who reported those concerns directly to investigators.

Pardon Backlash and Fear of Retaliation

The President’s January 20 pardons of individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6 attack ignited what the report calls demoralization inside the Bureau. One FBI employee said they were “demoralized” that individuals “rightfully convicted” were pardoned and feared that some of those individuals or their supporters might target them or their family for carrying out their duties. Another source described widespread anger that lists of personnel who worked on January 6 investigations had been provided to the Justice Department for review, noting that agents “were just following orders” and now worry those lists could leak publicly.

Morale In Decline

Morale among FBI employees appears to be sinking fast. There were a few scattered positive notes, but the weight of the reporting describes morale as low, bad, or terrible. Agents with more than a decade of service told investigators they feel marginalized or ignored. Some are counting the days until they can retire. One even uses a countdown app on their phone.

Culture Of Fear

Layered over that unhappiness is something far more corrosive. A culture of fear. Sources say Patel, though personable, created mistrust from the start because of harsh remarks he made about the FBI before taking office. Agents took those comments personally. They now work in an atmosphere where employees keep their heads down and speak carefully. Managers wait for directions because they are afraid a wrong move could cost them their jobs. One source said agents dread coming to work because nobody knows who will be reassigned or fired next.

Leadership Concerns

The report also paints a picture of leaders unprepared for the jobs they hold. Multiple sources said Patel is in over his head and lacks the breadth of experience required to understand the Bureau’s complex programs. Some said Deputy Director Dan Bongino should never have been appointed because the role requires deep institutional knowledge of FBI operations. A sub-source recounted Bongino telling employees during a field office visit that “the truth is for chumps.” Employees who heard it were stunned and offended.

Social Media and Communication Breakdowns

Communication inside the Bureau has become another source of frustration. Sources said Patel and Bongino spend too much time posting on social media and not enough time communicating with employees in clear and official ways. Several told investigators they learn more about FBI operations from tweets than from internal channels.

ICE Assignments Raise Alarm

Nothing has sparked more frustration inside the FBI than the orders requiring agents to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reporting shows widespread resentment and fear over these assignments. Agents say they have little training in immigration law and were ordered into operations without proper planning. Some said they were put in tactically unsafe positions. They also warned that being pulled away from counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations threatens national security. One sub-source asked, “If we’re not working CT and CI, then who is?”

DEI Program Removal

Even the future of diversity programs became a point of division. Some agents praised Patel’s removal of DEI initiatives. Others said the old system left them afraid to speak honestly because they worried about being labeled racist. The reporting shows a deep and unresolved conflict over whether DEI strengthened the organization or weakened it.

Notable Incidents

The document also details several incidents that have become part of FBI lore. Patel ordered all employees to remove pronouns and personal messages from their email signatures yet used the number nine in his own. Agents laughed at what they saw as hypocrisy. In another episode, FBI employees who discussed Patel’s request for an FBI-issued firearm were ordered to take polygraph examinations, which one respected source described as punitive. And in Utah, Patel refused to exit a plane without a medium-sized FBI raid jacket. A team scrambled to find one and finally secured a female agent’s jacket. Patel still refused to step out until patches were added. SWAT members removed patches from their own uniforms to satisfy the demand.

A Bureau at a Crossroad

The Alliance warns that the Bureau stands at a difficult crossroads. They write that the FBI faces some of the most daunting challenges in its history. But even in despair, a few voices say something different. One veteran source said “It is early, but most can see the mission is now the priority. Case work and threats are the focus again. Reform is headed in the right direction.”