Question

“From the viewpoint of African and European traders, the men, women, and children who were captured, forcibly marched to the coast, and transported across the Atlantic in the crowded bellies of slave ships were primarily objects of exchange. Their humanity—their need for food, water, and rest, or their vulnerability to illness, their despair, or their yearning to run away or rebel—presented an inconvenience and a threat to profits. Of course, the slave dealers recognized, as well, their prisoners’ humanity, for it was the New World demand for slaves’ human labor power that drove the entire enterprise….

Enslaved Africans held onto their humanity not only in their endurance and resistance during the Middle Passage. When they disembarked in the Americas, they brought with them the elements that had made them members of various communities in Africa…. In spite of the violence and alienation of slavery in the New World, and in spite of the necessity of adapting to Africans of other backgrounds and the European-descended master class, enslaved Africans did not quickly abandon the ways of their homelands.”

Lisa A. Lindsay, U.S. historian, Captives as Commodities: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 2008

3. Which of the following developments would best support Lindsay’s argument in the second paragraph?

Group of answer choices

The persistence of African religious practices and language patterns into the present day

Most African slaves in the Americas practiced a form of Christianity

American-born slaves soon outnumbered those born in Africa, and they began to blend different African and European cultural elements

African slaves in British North America quickly adopted the English language

Answer 1

The persistence of African religious practices and language patterns into the present day.

This directly supports Lindsay’s claim that enslaved Africans retained elements of their homeland cultures (religion, language, customs) despite captivity and pressure to adapt.