The Slave Embargo of 1808 ended legal slave importation to the US

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

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: was being called ‘Black African’ a marker of African-born status among enslaved populations, and how did the 1808 embargo shift the demographic timeline Lanier reasons from?
• XREF: Connects to the author’s stated work on slavery and property law; also to Roots (Alex Haley) as a foundational text on genealogy.