where are the passenger arrival records of africans kidnapped and brought to america?

Question

when africans were kidnapped and enslaved they were regarded as cargoe and who has the insurance policies of those ships and where are the records of these passenger arrival records of african people?as well as the ports who kept records of the slave ships because they hadto pay taxes?thank youp.o.box 338-compton,ca.90223compton,ca.90223

Answer 1

There are no "passenger lists" as we know them. They were considered chattel and were not enumerated by name. Most were taken from Africa to the Caribbean where they were "processed" (and in later years "sanitized" to make them acceptable to slave importation laws that attempted to prevent further African kidnappings). Because they were chattel, you have no individual-by-individual list of them until you find the auction catalogues and sales registers. Many of them do still exist, but they're difficult to gain access to since they're primarily in Cuba.

Answer 2

If you are doing African American genealogy, you might want to subscribe to one of the mailing lists from rootsweb, and talk to others who have worked their lineage to prior to the Civil War.
It is a real challenge, but if you can identify the family who might have owned the slave, you can sometimes locate records in wills or property deeds.
Another possible source is identifying the most likely port; and contact the state archives reference librarian. There are possibly newspapers or other sources that might indentify those who were heavily involved in that trade.