This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American ...

“My maternal family comes from the Georgia Lowcountry — Savannah and a few of the surrounding Gullah islands. The family story that has been passed down to me is that some of our ancestors came in on ...

In July 1860, just a few days after Americans celebrated the country’s independence, a schooner slipped into Alabama’s Mobile Bay, carrying 110 captives. Their first exposure to the land of the free ...

For more than 200 years, the São José Paquete d’Africa lay hidden off Cape Town’s shore. Its excavation in 2014 uncovered a tragic story of enslavement and commerce from the time of the trans-Atlantic ...