Rhode Island § 16-110-2 - African American History Education in Elementary and Secondary School

§ 16-110-2. Definitions.

For the purpose of this chapter, the following words shall have the following meanings:

(1) “African Diaspora” means the term commonly used to describe the mass dispersion of peoples from Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trades, from the 1500s to the 1800s.

(2) “African Heritage” means any one people with racial, ethnic, and cultural ties to the African Diaspora.

(3) “African Heritage People” means the people that can be seen in our many state residents of African, white, bi-racial, Latino, Cape Verdean, Caribbean, and Native backgrounds.

(4) “Transatlantic Slave Trade” means the forced transportation by European slave traders of various enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. Current estimates are that about twelve million (12,000,000) to twelve million eight hundred thousand (12,800,000) Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of four hundred (400) years.