Teach Yourself Jazz - online guidebook

For the beginning player, with sheet music samples

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	CHAPTER FOUR NATURE AND THE PITCHFORK THE STORY OF NEGRO SLAVERY
	Nature being driven out with the pitchfork—a phrase that certainly fits the story of negro slavery. This story belongs in a book on jazz. Most of us readers live in comfortable modern houses with Television sets, warm fires, plenty of food and drink, and soft mattresses to sleep on. We may understand jazz better if the sufferings that went into it are jolted back into our placid view. It's easy to forget. Do you know how many negroes were sold into slavery? How they were caught? How they were shipped? How they were treated in their bondage? How many were there? Since slavery is a wasteful business, so many slaves were 'written off' en route, that it is difficult to find any accurate figures. One historian estimates that, between the 15th and 18th centuries, forty million slaves were deported from Africa. And the traffic went on well into the 19th century: in the half-century between 1806 and I860, 300,000 slaves were imported into the Southern States of America alone. 19