Description 1. “August 1619” by Clint Smith Over the course of 350 years, 36,000 slave ships ...

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Description 1. “August 1619” by Clint Smith Over the course of 350 years, 36,000 slave ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean. I walk over to the globe & move my finger back & forth between the fragile continents. I try to keep count how many times I drag my hand across the bristled hemispheres, but grow weary of chasing a history that swallowed me. For every hundred people who were captured & enslaved, forty died before they ever reached the New World. I pull my index finger from Angola to Brazil & feel the bodies jumping from the ship. I drag my thumb from Ghana to Jamaica & feel the weight of dysentery make an anvil of my touch. I slide my ring finger from Senegal to South Carolina & feel the ocean separate a million families. The soft hum of history spins on its tilted axis. A cavalcade of ghost ships wash their hands of all they carried. Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and the author of the poetry collection “Counting Descent,” as well as a forthcoming nonfiction book, “How the Word Is Passed.” Photo illustration by Jon Key. Diagram: Getty Images. Discussion Question - How does Smith’s poem humanize the individuals who were on that first ship? What thoughts does the poem evoke for you? 2. 1619 Project Reading Read: “Four hundred years after enslaved Africans were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story of slavery.”Links to an external site. (From The 1619 Project) Discussion: How has the narrative of slavery been shaped in American history? What has been left out? Critically reflect over your own educational journey, how has it shaped your understanding of slavery? 3. Lost Slave Ships How do the discoveries of these sunken slave ships reshape our understanding of the Middle Passage? Using specific details from the podcast, discuss how these findings contribute to historical memory and justice. What impact do they have on descendants, communities, and the broader historical narrative? 4. Slave Resistance In Crossing the Lake of Fire, the author challenges the notion that enslaved Africans were passive victims of the Middle Passage. Drawing from the reading, what specific forms of resistance do they describe? Why do you think these acts of defiance are often excluded from mainstream narratives about slavery? 5. Slave Ships What stands out to you about the design of the ship 6. Slave vs Enslaved Which term do you find more appropriate—slave or enslaved person? Why? What are the implications of choosing one term over the other? How do you think language shapes our understanding of history (feel free to share an example)? 7. Zong Massacre How does the Zong massacre illustrate the legal and economic structures that upheld slavery? What does it reveal about the ways enslaved people were dehumanized?