How to Use Middle Passage in a Sentence

Middle Passage

noun
  • But women were among the captives who survived the Middle Passage.
    — Ed Gaskin, Boston Herald, 8 Mar. 2026
  • Glimpses into the Middle Passage are close-up and stomach-turning.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 10 June 2024
  • And the horrors of the Middle Passage were intensely present.
    — Livia Gershon, JSTOR Daily, 9 June 2026
  • It is estimated that up to 2 million died in the Middle Passage, lost in deep-water graves.
    — Deneen L. Brown, Washington Post, 26 Sep. 2022
  • The distant memory of the Middle Passage remains.
    — James Meyer, Artforum, 1 Jan. 2026
  • The glorious ocean vista, an unmarked grave for the millions who died during the Middle Passage, becomes a memorial.
    — New York Times, 27 Apr. 2022
  • Slave ships were constructed with nets to capture those who might try to jump overboard to their deaths rather than endure the three-to-four-month journey of the Middle Passage.
    — Shantay Robinson, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 June 2023
  • There’s likely no record of those who came before—my ancestors who survived the Middle Passage or who toiled for decades before they were deemed human enough to have their names listed.
    — Tracy Scott Forson, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Jan. 2024
  • There were mutinies and rebellions throughout the Middle Passage and once Africans arrived on America’s shores.
    — Malaika Jabali, Essence, 23 Aug. 2022
  • Museum exhibits describe the transport through the dreaded Middle Passage from Africa across the Atlantic.
    — Washington Post, 29 Apr. 2022
  • African Americans used music from the Middle Passage through slavery, and through other generations.
    — Demetrius Patterson, The Hollywood Reporter, 30 Oct. 2024
  • The Middle Passage, the ripple effects of centuries of subjugation, funerals.
    — Scott Hocker, theweek, 11 Apr. 2024
  • The Middle Passage haunts these supposedly voluntary journeys.
    — Carina Del Valle Schorske, New York Times, 20 Mar. 2024
  • The practice survived the Middle Passage from Africa to America, but often had to be performed clandestinely.
    — Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times, 23 Nov. 2023
  • Yes, and the stream at the back of 124 Bluestone Road is one literal version of water, but this is also clearly the Middle Passage.
    — Literary Hub, 11 June 2026
  • The exhibit addresses the Middle Passage, an especially fraught part of the Atlantic Ocean crossing where many of the captives died.
    — ABC News, 12 Mar. 2026
  • The exhibit addresses the Middle Passage, an especially fraught part of the Atlantic Ocean crossing where many of the captives died.
    — Arkansas Online, 13 Mar. 2026
  • The other part of his inquiry was Black diaspora history — and its inescapable structuring moment, the Middle Passage.
    — Siddhartha Mitter, New York Times, 10 May 2024
  • Locally, they are also seen as a tribute to those lost throughout the slave trade due to the proximity to the harrowing Middle Passage, with the shackle-like metal that connects the children’s arms.
    — Natalie Preddie, Travel + Leisure, 19 Sep. 2024
  • Genetics is also adding to local records' searches to track migrations since a family's Middle Passage arrival in the Americas.
    — Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY, 26 Dec. 2024
  • That was the last place where millions of Africans were held captive before they were forced onto ships that transported them through the Middle Passage and into slavery in America and other countries.
    — Curtis Bunn, NBC News, 31 Jan. 2023
  • It’s clearly conceived as a tribute to victims of the torturous Atlantic Ocean crossing known as the Middle Passage, and specifically to those who arrived, dead or alive, at this very spot.
    — Holland Cotter, New York Times, 23 June 2023
  • Descending from the unborn children of African women thrown off slave ships crossing the Middle Passage, the Wajinru are a utopic underwater society.
    — Wired Staff, Wired, 2 July 2020
  • Another of the exhibition’s galleries features Marshall’s works on the Middle Passage and the mnemonic aftermath of that trauma across the Black diaspora.
    — James Meyer, Artforum, 1 Jan. 2026
  • The emotional arc of the work is reflected in its diatonic, neoclassical beginning, becoming more chromatic, with the Middle Passage represented by a genuine 12-tone row, giving way to the lilting tonal hymn of the final section.
    — Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Nov. 2023
  • This could be taken as the view of someone escaping enslavement by jumping overboard during the Middle Passage, until an unseen narrator praises Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World.
    — Greg Allen, ARTnews.com, 7 June 2026
  • Many pictures feature Black subjects swimming or playing in water, a subtle reclamation of a leisure activity that has historically excluded some Black Americans, and a nod to a dark history of the Middle Passage.
    — Chris Wiley, New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2025
  • Because its primary sections on the oppression and violence that Black people were subjected to during the Middle Passage, slavery, and Jim Crow are below the museum’s street-level entrance—while the culture exhibits are upstairs—the history exhibitions are effectively optional for visitors.
    — Clint Smith, The Atlantic, 19 Jan. 2026
  • Inspired by her book 'The New Red Book,' the exhibit traces Houston’s Black history through place and time, featuring a Black Houston mural and a timeline from Africa and the Middle Passage to Juneteenth and modern cultural milestones.
    — Ana Khan, Houston Chronicle, 29 Jan. 2026
  • In Moreau de Saint-Méry’s telling—which came some 30 years after Makandal’s death—this famous maroon was born in Africa but survived the Middle Passage to end up on the estate of Lenormand de Mézy, in Limbé, in the north of Saint-Domingue, where sugarcane dominated.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Middle Passage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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