Author Michael Bracey with Africans within the Americas

Photographer/author Michael J. Bracey shares photos and stories from his new book, Africans within the Americas: An Enlightening Visual Voyage. Scholars estimate that between 15 and 20 million Africans were shipped to the Western Hemisphere as slaves between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Only 6 per cent were taken to North America; the majority was sent to the Caribbean and South America to work the mineral mines, chop cotton, pick tobacco, and above all, cut sugarcane. Until recently, neither Africans nor people of African descent in the Americas knew much about each other. From 1998 through 2008, Michael Bracey set out with his camera to meet and know other people of African descent who may look like him, but speak a different language and live on different terrain. AfriWare Books will have Bracey's book for sale and signing.