The Horror of the Middle Passage

They called it trade… But what happened in the Middle Passage was pure terror. The Middle Passage

killed more Africans than both World Wars combined. Let that sink in for a second.

We're talking about twelve to fifteen million people forcibly taken from their homes,

shackled in chains, and packed into the bellies of slave ships like cargo. But the number doesn't

even begin to capture the horror of what actually happened on those ships. Imagine being crammed

into a space so tight you can't even sit up straight. You're lying in your own waste,

in the waste of hundreds of others, breathing air so thick with disease and death you can

barely get oxygen into your lungs. The smell alone killed people. They were stacked