of the enslaved population, including the achievement of unusual success and the tragedy of unwarranted death.  
What we learn from these voices of freedom are the facts of diversity and courage in the face of oppression. No narrative is typical or representative of anything more than personal experience. Are there patterns in the accounts about slavery and freedom? There are, with reference to perseverance and endurance. The challenges facing each person were unique and called for individual strength, social bonds and a good measure of luck. How many people failed to achieve results like those whose narratives have survived is an open question. Disease, death, the arbitrary infliction of unbearable punishment, bad fortune and even fate undermined most of those caught in the nexus of slavery. Their voices were silenced. Hence, one of the common features of the narratives themselves is survival. Somehow, they were recorded or can be pieced together, however incomplete, fraught with inaccuracies and dependent on conjecture.  
The United Nations declared slavery and the slave trade a crime against humanity in the twenty-first century, but it is important to recognize that the ways in which individuals survived such criminal activity in the past forms part of the history of Global Africa. An examination of the stories of those who suffered slavery makes it possible to appreciate the achievements of people from Africa in the development of the modern world.