



Flyer for the sale of several slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, including “A valuable Negro Woman, accustomed to all kinds of House Work”, a “Very valuable Blacksmith, with Wife and Daughters”, and “14 slave wenches ranging from 16 to 25 years of age, all sound and capable of doing a good days work in the house or field.”

The Transatlantic Slave trade persisted for 366 years and resulted in the forced deportation of 12.5 million Africans to the New World. This photo shows how a slave ship would chain the Africans together and force them to stay hunched on their sides or wedged together for over five weeks during the journey to the New World. 1.8 Million of the slaves that were forced across the Middle Passage would die before reaching their destination, the other 10.6 were thrown into forced labor across the New World.


The Plantation Police, or Home Guard examining Negro Passes on the Levee Road, below New Orleans, Louisiana. The Plantation Police, or Patrol was a institution of the Slave States, it operated as a semi-military organization, raised and supported by the Planters. Their Principal duty was to visit the various plantations and patrol the roads at night, arresting all Negros and others not having the proper passes.

These sets of pictures are depicting the story of the Amistad. In brief the story involves the illegal kidnapping of 53 humans from West Africa. After their kidnapping they were sold into the transatlantic slave trade. Shackled aboard the Portuguese slave vessel, Tecora, they were then transported to Havana, Cuba where they were fraudulently classified as native, Cuban-born slaves. Illegally purchased by the Spaniards, hey were then transferred to the now infamous schooner, La Amistad. They were to be transported to another part of the island, but three days into the journey, a 25-year old rice farmer named Sengbe Pieh, known as “Cinque” by his Spanish captors, led a revolt. After 63 days, La Amistad and her African “cargo” were seized by the United States Naval Cutter USS Washington near Montauk Point in Long Island, New York. The ship was then towed to Connecticut’s New London Harbor. The Africans were held in a New Haven jail on charges of mutiny and murder. But the case acquired a high profile when President John Quincy Adams argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the day, the survivors won their freedom, in 1841 the 35 surviving Africans were returned to Africa.






This Slave Quilt is one of six Slave quilts donated by Tara Payne Okon to the Museum. Tata is the daughter of former Thomasville Mayor Camille L. Payne. Tara said her mother’s grandfather, a land owner and owned a grocery store, said these six slave blankets were used as a payment on grocery bills to her grandfather in the early 1900s. Historical data came from Tara Payne Okon, Aug. 8 2020.
