03/25/2026
Today we observe the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade - commemorating one of history's greatest human rights violations and acknowledging its enduring impact.
The transatlantic slave trade forcibly displaced millions of Africans, permanently severing many from their identities, languages, cultural connections, and family bonds. As ships crossed oceans, names were deliberately obscured and replaced with labels of property.
Much of this heritage was lost forever. An immeasurable cultural wound that cannot be undone. What official records remain mostly document people as commodities, not as human beings with full lives and stories.
Saying their names is an act of remembrance and reclamation. It transforms abstract history into personal legacy. It acknowledges that behind every number in a ledger was a person with dreams, talents, and relationships that enslavers attempted to erase.
Genealogical research becomes an act of resistance against this erasure.
Though much is forever lost, we still search for fragments in plantation records, church documents, newspapers, and Freedmen's Bureau archives that help reconstruct at least shadows of their stories.
Today, we honor them by speaking what names we know, researching their journeys, and continuing their legacy of dignity and humanity in the face of unimaginable cruelty.
How will you honor them today?
The photographs in this carousel come from the Library of Congress Collection "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938" and feature:
-Attendants at Old Slave Day, Southern Pines, North Carolina (1937)
-Minerva and Edgar Bendy, ages 90 and 83, from Woodville, Texas (1937)
-Allen Sims of Alabama (1936-1938)
-Bill and Ellen Thomas from Hondo, Texas (1937)
