How to Use Middle Passage in a Sentence

Middle Passage

noun
  • These are the bones of enslaved Africans lost in the Middle Passage.
    Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The Middle Passage transforms them to this unified thing.
    Harmony Holiday, Los Angeles Times, 19 Mar. 2024
  • It is estimated that up to 2 million died in the Middle Passage, lost in deep-water graves.
    Deneen L. Brown, Washington Post, 26 Sep. 2022
  • Slave ships were constructed with nets to capture those who might try to jump overboard to their deaths rather than endure the three-to-four-month journey of the Middle Passage.
    Shantay Robinson, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 June 2023
  • Elliott took the group through an exhibit on the Middle Passage, showing a wall with the names of ships that brought millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
    Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY, 21 Sep. 2021
  • The glorious ocean vista, an unmarked grave for the millions who died during the Middle Passage, becomes a memorial.
    New York Times, 27 Apr. 2022
  • Museum exhibits describe the transport through the dreaded Middle Passage from Africa across the Atlantic.
    Washington Post, 29 Apr. 2022
  • These stories survived the Middle Passage through the oral tradition of enslaved Africans here in America.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Jan. 2023
  • After all, it’s estimated that at least 2 million enslaved Africans died crossing the Atlantic in what’s called the Middle Passage.
    al, 5 Apr. 2022
  • There’s likely no record of those who came before—my ancestors who survived the Middle Passage or who toiled for decades before they were deemed human enough to have their names listed.
    Tracy Scott Forson, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Jan. 2024
  • There were mutinies and rebellions throughout the Middle Passage and once Africans arrived on America’s shores.
    Malaika Jabali, Essence, 23 Aug. 2022
  • The practice survived the Middle Passage from Africa to America, but often had to be performed clandestinely.
    Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times, 23 Nov. 2023
  • It’s clearly conceived as a tribute to victims of the torturous Atlantic Ocean crossing known as the Middle Passage, and specifically to those who arrived, dead or alive, at this very spot.
    Holland Cotter, New York Times, 23 June 2023
  • That was the last place where millions of Africans were held captive before they were forced onto ships that transported them through the Middle Passage and into slavery in America and other countries.
    Curtis Bunn, NBC News, 31 Jan. 2023
  • We are descended from people who survived the Middle Passage, arrived in chains, made this country so rich that slave patrol forces were built to keep enslaved and later free Black people inside racial boundaries.
    Time, 22 Apr. 2021
  • Descending from the unborn children of African women thrown off slave ships crossing the Middle Passage, the Wajinru are a utopic underwater society.
    Wired Staff, Wired, 2 July 2020
  • The other part of his inquiry was Black diaspora history — and its inescapable structuring moment, the Middle Passage.
    Siddhartha Mitter, New York Times, 10 May 2024
  • Whether making the enslaved dance through the Middle Passage, charm on the auction block, or minstrel to brighten the doldrums of white workers, Blackness is construed as irrevocably joyful, carefree, lascivious, and impervious.
    Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2022
  • The emotional arc of the work is reflected in its diatonic, neoclassical beginning, becoming more chromatic, with the Middle Passage represented by a genuine 12-tone row, giving way to the lilting tonal hymn of the final section.
    Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Nov. 2023
  • The Middle Passage haunts these supposedly voluntary journeys.
    Carina Del Valle Schorske, New York Times, 20 Mar. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Middle Passage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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