This is how White slave traders transported Africans across the Atlantic. They packed men, women and children into the holds of ships, chained them together and stacked them in suffocating spaces like worthless cargo. Human beings were crammed together for weeks or months, surrounded by filth, disease, starvation and death. Many were shackled so tightly they could barely move. Others were thrown overboard when they died or became too sick to be considered profitable. At least 2 million Africans died during the Middle Passage alone. Think about that. Millions of people never reached the other side of the Atlantic. Their lives were stolen before they even arrived at the plantations where survivors would be forced to work. And all of this was done for profit. African men, women and children were reduced to commodities in one of history's largest forced migrations, their suffering turned into wealth for slave traders, merchants and plantation owners. Slavery was not just exploitation. It was the systematic dehumanization of an entire people for economic gain. Slavery is one of humanity's greatest crimes. Never let anyone romanticize it, minimize it or erase what was done to African people.