NNP

During the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, millions of black men, women and children were captured in their ancestral homelands, often deep in the interior of sub-Saharan Africa, forcibly marched to West-African coastal embarkation points, chained inside the hold of a cargo ship, transported thousands of miles away to a foreign land where they did not even know the language, and then, frequently separated from their families, were sold like cattle and kept enslaved for the remainder of their lives. What follows is a brief account of this period, using historical and commemorative medals to illustrate this sordid epoch.