This framed poster is printed on thick, durable, matte paper. The matte black frame is made from wood from renewable forests.
 
 • Alder, semi-hardwood frame • Black .75” thick frame • Acrylite front protector
 • Lightweight • Hanging hardware included
 
 In 1530, Juan de la Barrera, a slave merchant, began transporting slaves directly from Africa to North America (slaves previously passed through Europe first). His venture proved very profitable, and his lead was quickly followed by other slave traders. Needless to say, the enslavement of Blacks in America, enabled by government for the next 335 years, became by far the most crippling factor imposed on these Americans in the new world full of tremendous opportunity. 
 
 The dehumanizing process of capturing, shackling, inspecting, cargoing, shipping, and selling slaves, would have surely been a permanently traumatic experience for millions of Africans tightly stuffed into the belly of ships for a two-month 
 voyage across the ocean.
 
 The loss of identity associated with losing one’s language, name, family, religion, culture, and community would surely rob people of their dignity and sense of self-worth.
 
 To be chained and herded like cattle while being led to an auction where you’re inspected from head to toe, and subjected to the fierce scrutiny and criticism of other human-beings, who are obviously determining your value to a prospective owner, was a process fit for animals, not humans. Then to be displayed on the auction block, as the subject of this socio-commercial event while on-lookers bid and joke and generally make business and entertainment at the expense of human dignity, represents the worse of the detrimental ways humans can treat one another.