What is the origin of African Americans?

Question:

What is the origin of African Americans?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/mapofa...

has a good map. Other Africans would trade for or capture them, then drive them to the coast, where they were sold like cattle. The slave ports are some indication of origin, because few slavers would take their captives on really long treks.

The US didn't even record slaves' names in the censuses; just age, sex and race as in "Black" or "Mulatto". It wasn't until 1870 and emancipation that their names were recorded.

Some owners named some slaves in some wills, so a rare handful of AA's can trace their ancestry back that way. Most AA's are doomed to have dead ends in their African lines the middle 1800's.

An awful lot of slave owners' wills use the term "treat with special kindness" when bestowing a slave in an heir. I suspect it was a code term for "He/She is your half brother/sister".