Slavery and Freedom
Wreckage from a slave ship
“All men are created equal”
Slave cabin
You’ll step off the elevator into a dim, low-slung path that tells the story of the Middle Passage, when captive Africans were first brought to the New World.
A short detour leads to wreckage from a slave ship that broke apart off Cape Town, South Africa, in 1794, drowning 212 people. Among the recovered debris are 88-pound ballast bars, which compensated for the relatively light weight of human bodies compared with other types of cargo.
Quotations plucked from letters and documents of people who lived at the time make the slave trade come alive in a way that historians could not, curator Mary Elliot said. Two are juxtaposed on adjoining glass. First, an English merchant declares, “Negroes … are a perishable Commodity.” Next to it, a formerly enslaved author reminds “nominal Christians” of the Golden Rule.
From the Middle Passage you turn abruptly into an open concourse facing a 70-foot wall with words from the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”
This wall is six feet thick to hold back underground water and leans away from the gallery at a 4-degree angle. If it were straight, it would appear to be tilting toward visitors.
Against the wall is a 19th-century slave cabin from Edisto Island, S.C., that was occupied until 1980. It was originally unfinished and unheated, and it had only one door so overseers could observe and control who came and went, curator Nancy Bercaw said.
“One of the first things people did upon gaining freedom was open up a back door,” she said. When you wind back to the cabin after the Civil War and Emancipation exhibits, you see light through its precisely cut rear door.
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