American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Timelines from 18th century slave narratives to modern fictional accounts in Literature of the Black Diaspora, document the maintenance of identity consciousness as a constant feature. Significantly representative of this feature are fragments of historical implications largely accountable for the behavioural patterning of characters portrayed in the narratives under study. The thrust of this paper is two-fold. The first is to map out the concise historiography of early Africans in the Diaspora, who were not transported through the Middle Passage to North American and British colonies as slaves. The second is an investigative attempt at identifying some predominating motifs embedded in characters portrayed in some major African-American and Caribbean narratives. Achieving this will bring the study into accounting for the independent status of some affected individuals and groups before their summary conversions into slaves; while equally taking into account some major activities that ushered in the conversion; early eighteenth century slave narratives of Quobna Ottoban Cugoano, Olauda Equianoand Ignatius Sancho’s Lettersare examined. Within the same line of scholarly scrutiny in the second segment of the paper, Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Edward Rickardo Braithwaite’s To Sir with Love are two of the principal texts assessed on the premise of 20thCentury abolition realities in the United States that continue to haunt the same race even into the 21st Century.