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"Despite years of Black History Februarys, many know little to nothing about the vast role played by Arab and Muslim slavers in the African slave trade. The practice began centuries before Europeans slavers bought and transported slaves out of Africa and continued well after European slavery ended. "During February, students K-12 are, of course, taught about slavery. But as with Hill, what many teachers seem *not* to emphasize is that slavery is as ancient as humankind and that it was practiced nearly everywhere. Economist Thomas Sowell writes: 'More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.' This includes the huge role played by Arab-Muslim slavers. "Ghanaian professor and minister John Azumah helped set the record straight in 'The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa.' In an interview about his book, Azumah said the following: 'While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic slave trade. While the mortality rate of the slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of the slaves dying in transit in the Tran-Saharan and East African slave market was a staggering 80 to 90%. While many children were born to the slaves in the Americas, the millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the United States today. Very few descendants of the slaves who ended up in the Middle East survived.'"