G. Ugo Nwokeji, an assistant professor of history at the University
of Connecticut, is attempting to help people of African descent to form a clearer
picture of their collective past. Nwokeji and a fellow researcher are compiling
a database of information about more than eighty thousand Africans who were
rescued from slavery when the ships carrying them were diverted to foreign ports
by the British Navy in the years after the British parliament banned slavery.
Though the people were spared a life of slavery, many of them
ultimately came to the Americas as indentured servants, bound by contract to
a specific term of unfree labor. Others were settled in Sierra Leone.
"Many of the Africans are the ancestors of peoples of African
descent living in the Americas today," says Professor Nwokeji.
This valuable new online genealogy resource is described in some
detail in a recent article in the UConn News, published by the University of
Connecticut. You can read the entire article at: www.news.uconn.edu/rel01013.htm.
The database apparently is not yet publicly available on the Web.
My thanks to Jerry Hale for telling me about the new database.
Dick Eastman Online
