Their arrival, 400 years ago next month, was recorded by English settler John Rolfe and is believed to be the first of captive Africans to reach the shores of Britain’s North American colonies.
“Those African people who were on that ship were specifically sold in a trading transaction that we now recognize as something that became common during the transatlantic slave trade,” said Rebecca Nelson, assistant curator of projects at Wilberforce House Museum in the British city of Hull. Millions of African men, women and children were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean between the 16th and 19th centuries. Many died in horrific conditions. Those who survived were forced into servitude and worked on plantations.photographers visited museums in Ivory Coast, Nigeria, South Africa and Britain displaying items from the Africa to North America slave trade.