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Living History
  
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By Kassia Micek
THE WOODLANDS – A world away from her colorfully decorated classroom, Anita Pilling walks in the footsteps of African slaves to gain a better understanding for her history students.
Passing through the “door of no return,” Pilling said she saw what transatlantic slaves faced before being shipped to the Americans for sale.
“This is a beautiful part of Africa, and then you think of all the horrible things that happened there,” she said.
As one of 10 U.S. teachers (10 more teachers came from England and another 10 were from Ghana), Pilling participated in The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s “The Middle Passage: A Shared History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade” seminar July 31 through Aug. 10 at the Kokrobitey Institute in Kokrobitey, Ghana. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History covered all expenses, estimated at $7,500, Pilling said.
“I feel that our textbooks treat the whole topic very superficially and I wanted to bring my students more,” the John Cooper School history teacher said Thursday after teaching a lesson on slave trade.
The seminar took her to the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.
“I wanted to visit some of these slave forts because I read about them,” said Pilling, adding many tourists now visit the sites. “You would think with all those people, it would be noisy, but it wasn’t. It’s like going into a church. It’s almost like you’re going on to sacred ground. Everyone was silent.”
Pilling began her lecture discussing the demise of the Indians in Central Mexico, which soon led Europeans to seek African slaves.
“This is the beginning of the stock market,” Pilling said of how wealthy individuals would invest in slave voyages.
It would take a crew at least three months to fill a ship stopping at several points along Africa’s coast, a minimum of six weeks to cross the Atlantic and then roughly two months to sell the slaves.
“I learned about the slave-trade before, but Mrs. Pilling had a lot more good information about it,” sophomore Linda D’Arezzo said. “I didn’t know it took them three months to collect the slaves.”
The voyage would take six months to a year before investors saw a return.
“You had to be a pretty wealthy individual to get tied in with this business. But if things went well, you would make a lot more money,” Pilling told her students.
In Ghana, there are more slave castles left than anywhere else, she said.
Many slaves were captured in Africa’s interior and marched to the coast to live in slave castles in “absolutely horrible conditions,” Pilling said, before ships came to buy them.
On board, slaves were chained and forced to lie naked on their side in order for the ship’s crew to fit more slaves on board, Pilling said. Most ships had three levels where slaves were kept.
“You laid in yours and everyone else’s urine, feces and vomit,” she said. “If you were on the bottom deck, the people’s waste from above you would wash down on to you.”
Once a week, small groups of slaves would be taken up to the deck to be washed down, Pilling said. Women were taken to the deck more often, likely to be raped, and many were pregnant when the ship reached land, something slave owners did not want since it cost more to care for a child until he or she reached working age than to purchase a slave already of age, she said
“Under the best conditions, one-third of the ‘cargo’ died,” Pilling said. “Many times, over half of the ‘cargo’ died.”
Her students sat in near silence, only speaking to ask questions.
“Just the way she described it gave me a really good picture of it,” sophomore Vinny Aquino said. “Everyone always said how bad slavery was, but I didn’t really understand until Mrs. Pilling described it.”
To learn more about The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, visit www.gilderlehrman.org.
Passing through the “door of no return,” Pilling said she saw what transatlantic slaves faced before being shipped to the Americans for sale.
“This is a beautiful part of Africa, and then you think of all the horrible things that happened there,” she said.
As one of 10 U.S. teachers (10 more teachers came from England and another 10 were from Ghana), Pilling participated in The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s “The Middle Passage: A Shared History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade” seminar July 31 through Aug. 10 at the Kokrobitey Institute in Kokrobitey, Ghana. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History covered all expenses, estimated at $7,500, Pilling said.
“I feel that our textbooks treat the whole topic very superficially and I wanted to bring my students more,” the John Cooper School history teacher said Thursday after teaching a lesson on slave trade.
The seminar took her to the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.
“I wanted to visit some of these slave forts because I read about them,” said Pilling, adding many tourists now visit the sites. “You would think with all those people, it would be noisy, but it wasn’t. It’s like going into a church. It’s almost like you’re going on to sacred ground. Everyone was silent.”
Pilling began her lecture discussing the demise of the Indians in Central Mexico, which soon led Europeans to seek African slaves.
“This is the beginning of the stock market,” Pilling said of how wealthy individuals would invest in slave voyages.
It would take a crew at least three months to fill a ship stopping at several points along Africa’s coast, a minimum of six weeks to cross the Atlantic and then roughly two months to sell the slaves.
“I learned about the slave-trade before, but Mrs. Pilling had a lot more good information about it,” sophomore Linda D’Arezzo said. “I didn’t know it took them three months to collect the slaves.”
The voyage would take six months to a year before investors saw a return.
“You had to be a pretty wealthy individual to get tied in with this business. But if things went well, you would make a lot more money,” Pilling told her students.
In Ghana, there are more slave castles left than anywhere else, she said.
Many slaves were captured in Africa’s interior and marched to the coast to live in slave castles in “absolutely horrible conditions,” Pilling said, before ships came to buy them.
On board, slaves were chained and forced to lie naked on their side in order for the ship’s crew to fit more slaves on board, Pilling said. Most ships had three levels where slaves were kept.
“You laid in yours and everyone else’s urine, feces and vomit,” she said. “If you were on the bottom deck, the people’s waste from above you would wash down on to you.”
Once a week, small groups of slaves would be taken up to the deck to be washed down, Pilling said. Women were taken to the deck more often, likely to be raped, and many were pregnant when the ship reached land, something slave owners did not want since it cost more to care for a child until he or she reached working age than to purchase a slave already of age, she said
“Under the best conditions, one-third of the ‘cargo’ died,” Pilling said. “Many times, over half of the ‘cargo’ died.”
Her students sat in near silence, only speaking to ask questions.
“Just the way she described it gave me a really good picture of it,” sophomore Vinny Aquino said. “Everyone always said how bad slavery was, but I didn’t really understand until Mrs. Pilling described it.”
To learn more about The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, visit www.gilderlehrman.org.
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