The First Passage: Blacks in the Americas 1502-1617The history of African Americans begins in Africa, a continent that was home to people with different languages, traditions, histories, and religions. They called themselves Twi, Yoruba, Zulu, Ashanti, and Kumba, among other names. In the early sixteenth century Europeans turned to Africa for the labor force needed to mine, cultivate, and process the bounty of natural resources in the newly colonized Americas. As many as 12 million Africans from