Calling an enslaved person ‘African’ marked them as born in Africa before 1808.

Evidence

After she passed, I was watching an episode of Roots. In one scene, Fiddler, the character played by the late Louis Gossett Jr., called Kunta Kinte, played by LeVar Burton, a “crazy African” because of his repeated attempts to run away. It was an epiphany! I knew that the Slave Embargo of 1808 prohibited the import of slaves, which meant that most enslaved men and women in the midto late 1800s were American-born. Like Kunta Kinte, Papa Renty was called the “Black African” because he was perhaps the last of the African-born slaves brought to the US. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 114

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the functional meaning of ‘Black African’ as a generational marker separating African-born from American-born slaves after the 1808 embargo.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to how archives and terminology encode generational depth of enslavement.