Past Lives

In July of 1860, the last slave ship to reach the United States arrived in Mobile Bay. The Clotilda held 103 captives, Yoruba people from present-day Nigeria. Eighty years later, one of those captives - known by then as Matilda McCrear - died in Alabama. She was the last known survivor of the Middle Passage experienced by more than 12 million Africans.
Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.
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Olaudah Equiano is one of the most fascinating people in human history: enslaved as a child in West Africa, trained as a sailor who traveled from the Equator to the Arctic and everywhere in between, but later in life, one of the most impactful writers of his age. Equiano's autobiography is a firsthand guide to the world of Atlantic slavery and what it did to those whom it touched.
Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

While the horrors of the Middle Passage are familiar to most, it's less well known that countless indigenous people were trafficked into slavery in the Americas. One of them was Moll, who was abducted in the Carolinas, transported to Boston, and lived for years before eventually making her escape.
Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We don't usually think of the Italian Renaissance - the time of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Borgias - as a world of slaves, but there were many enslaved people in Florence, Rome, Venice, and Genoa. One of them was Maddalena, whose life took her from the Black Sea to the household of Cosimo de Medici, one of the richest and most powerful men in Europe.
Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sultan Baybars started his life as a Kipchak Turk on the steppe and ended it as the ruler of the most powerful state in the Islamic world. Slavery - military slavery, the practice of taking boys and training them as soldiers - was his pathway to power, but what did it mean for him and the thousands of others forced into that life?
Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.