Category: The Middle Passage

“It is almost twenty years later. I have finished this long ‘psychological and spiritual journey back in order to move forward’ with the completion of the last painting of the Middle Passage – story that has changed me forever. My struggle to tell this African story, to create this artwork as well as live creatively… Continue reading Final

And as time went on, as painful as it was to force myself each time back into the agonizing past, it was equally as painful to come back through history, hoping for relief, only to see some of the same things in the present, in America, the richest country in the world… THE MIDDLE PASSAGE… Continue reading Progress

“Who could tell this story with any kind of balance?” Enthusiastically, I started reading everything I could find on slavery and especially the Middle Passage. I searched out and wrote down all of the factual incidents in sequential order, reading some personal accounts by former slave-ship captains, slave traders, and various European historians. I expected… Continue reading Storyteller

Our ancestors, hundreds of them locked in the belly of each of these ships, chained together like animals throughout the long voyage from Africa toward unknown destinations, millions dying from the awful conditions in the bowels of the filthy slave galleys. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE © TOM FEELINGS

“As he continued to speak, muted images flashed across my mind. Pale white ships plunging forward into mountainous rising white foaming waves of cold water, surrounding and engulfing everything.” THE MIDDLE PASSAGE © TOM FEELINGS

“One night while speaking with a Ghanaian friend, he asked quite unexpectedly, …what happened to all of you when you were taken away from here? I knew instantly that he meant ” what happened to all our people who were forcefully taken from Africa, enslaved, and scattered throughout the ‘New World’?” He was referring to… Continue reading What

‘Despite the miserable conditions, inadequate space and food, deadly diseases, and the violence from crew members, millions of African captives survived, demonstrating their strength and implacable will..’ ‘In humankind’s shameful history of forced migrations, the journey of the Africans from their bountiful homeland to the slave markets of the New World is one of the… Continue reading Survival

‘There were successful uprisings in which the Africans gained control of the ships and were able to steer them back to their homeland. A memorable mutiny was led by Joseph Cinque in 1839. Cinque and the other rebels killed the captain and took over the slaver Amistad. They were eventually captured and tried for murder… Continue reading Amistad

‘It was not atypical to see a massive school of sharks darting in and out of the wake of the ships filled with human cargo plying the Atlantic. For miles they followed the battered and moldy vessels, waiting to attack the disease-ravaged black bodies that were periodically tossed into the ocean… If the Atlantic were… Continue reading Middle Passage 3