In July, 2013, I read one of the best books of that year for me. The title was "Somebody Knows My Name" by Lawrence Hill. I then posted my review on why I liked the book so much. Well, I just discovered that tonight at 8pm, a mini-series film will begin airing on the BET channel. How can I not watch a film based on such a shattering book. The film, "The Book of Negroes" is a mini-series that shouldn't be missed.
The story is about slavery and the struggle to survive all its consequences. For those of us who remember the social upheaval caused in the United States in 1977, when Alex Haley's book "Roots" was made into a tv mini-series and aired, it opened everyone's eyes to the brutal history of slavery in America.
For those who know little about how Africans were captured, enslaved, shipped then sold in the America's as slave laborers, here's a chance at educating yourselves. For others who know much about the slave trade, this story adds a few more pieces to the painful puzzle that was slavery.
Blacks who chose to fight alongside, as well as covertly help the British during the American Revolution, were given passage to Canada by the British at the end of the war. The heroine of the story, Aminata Diallo, is enlisted to help document some of the names and descriptions of the nearly 3,000 blacks "Black Loyalists" leaving U.S. ports on British vessels for a new home in Canada. Unfortunately, their story and travels won't end their.
There are in fact two documented Book of Negroes held in archives to this day; One is in the United Kingdom Archives in Kew, London, and the other is in the United States National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C.
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