"In my mind’s eye, rather as if it were mistily being projected on a screen, I began envisioning descriptions I had read of how collectively millions of our ancestors had been enslaved. Many thousands were individually kidnaped, as my own forebear Kunta had been, but into the millions had come awake screaming in the night, dashing out into the bedlam of raided villages, which were often in flames. The captured able survivors were linked neck-by-neck with thongs into processions called “coffles,” which were sometimes as much as a mile in length. I envisioned the many dying, or left to die when they were too weak to continue the torturous march toward the coast, and those who made it to the beach were greased, shaved, probed in every orifice, often branded with sizzling irons; I envisioned them being lashed and dragged toward the longboats, their spasms of screaming and clawing with their hands into the beach, biting up great choking mouthfuls of the sand in their desperation efforts for one last hold on the Africa that had been their home; I envisioned them shoved, beaten, jerked down into slave ships’ stinking holds and chained onto shelves, often packed so tightly that they had to lie on their sides like spoons in a drawer..."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNovelists from the United StatesAfrican AmericansJournalists from New York (state)
Original Language: English
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Ch. 120.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alex_Haley
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Alex Haley
Alexander Palmer Haley (11 August 1921 – 10 February 1992) was an American writer best known for his work Roots: The Saga of an American Family.
21 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Alex Haley →
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