From Hallie Quinn Brown, Charlene Carruthers, Angela Davis, Pauli Murray, to Bayard Rustin, Barbara Smith, and William Still, learn more about these historic heroes with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Muse to renowned painter Théodore Géricault, learn more about one of the most famous Black models of the 19th-century with the Getty Museum.

Explore with the Strong National Museum of Play how Yla Eason, a Black mother and Harvard-trained businesswoman, built a company that challenged the toy industry’s standards for multicultural representation.

Explore with the Strong National Museum the life of Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, the video game engineer and entrepreneur who changed the way we play.

Active from 1501 until the 1860s, or over 360 years, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade affected the lives of an estimated 12.5 million Africans who were forced from their homes and transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

Between 1710 and 1808, Charleston received an estimated number of 809 slave ships and 152,000 enslaved African captives on voyages that took an average length of 63 days.

Regardless of how they were preserved, each story is essential to connecting to and understanding their journey.

The design of this space is intended to encourage you to remember, reckon with, and reflect upon the past while understanding that it is our duty to our ancestors to reclaim the future.

The Tide Tribute is sacred ground, a tribute to the many enslaved Africans who did not survive the journey across the Atlantic Ocean. 

Millions of enslaved men, women, and children were transported to and from these ports on slave ships. Enslaved Africans were viewed as cargo, tools to be taken and sold to the highest bidder.

To maximize their profits, enslavers would often pack their prisoners as tightly as possible. Beneath the water, these figures represent the thousands of enslaved whose forced journey brought them to the shores of Gadsden’s Wharf.

Designed to mirror the rising and falling of the tide, the tribute pool’s water levels fill and drain at different times of the day. These are the same tides that carried the ships full of captured Africans onto this land as they were brought onto the shore for processing.

Outlined in a one-dimensional display of bricks on the ground, the storage house tells the story of how enslaved Africans who arrived at Gadsden’s Wharf were viewed and treated. To their oppressors, these individuals were livestock, or animals looked upon as an asset.

Historical records show that during a particularly cold winter season in the early 1800s, over 700 enslaved Africans perished in this storage house from the severe weather conditions waiting to be sold.

The statues are facing toward the water; they are facing  back home. 

And finally, to the outside of the first granite wall, is an inscription on the outside. An excerpt from the Maya Angelou poem, “Still I Rise.” “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave. I am the dream and hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.”

Cut into the shape of badges, these frames were created to honor and memorialize the enslaved who worked as skilled laborers.

A popular practice in Charleston during the period of enslavement was for enslaved craftsmen to wear these badges when they were loaned out to other enslavers or individuals who required their skills.