The horrific conditions of the Middle Passage meant that of the more than 12.5 million Africans kidnapped and trafficked through the Transatlantic Slave Trade, only 10.7 million survived the journey.

Between 1500 and 1820, eighty percent of those who embarked for the Americas were kidnapped Africans, who far outnumbered European immigrants.

Almost two million Africans died during the Middle Passage—nearly one million more than the number of Americans who have been killed in every war fought since 1775 combined.

Numbers like these can measure the scale of the harm, but they do not capture the horrific and torturous experience of those who died, nor the trauma carried by the 10.7 million Africans who endured the weeks-long journey.

Some enslaved individuals were taken from West Africa’s coast and sold to European slave traders. For most captives, the journey of Transatlantic trafficking started weeks, months, or even years before they reached the shore. Driven by high demand from white enslavers and traders, African kidnappers ventured inland to kidnap people from villages and towns. In the 18th century, about 70% of Africans involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade were free individuals forcibly removed from their homes and communities. They were often made to walk, chained together in a coffle, for dozens or even hundreds of miles until they arrived at the coast.

Along the coast, kidnapped Africans were held in barracoons, slave pens, and dungeons within prison castles, waiting for the ships that would transport them across the Atlantic. They were made to board slave trading ships that remained docked—sometimes for months—until enough human cargo was loaded, making the voyage profitable for the enslavers. While specific death toll records are unavailable, scholars estimate that the mortality rate among those confined in barracoons and on docked ships was comparable to Europe’s fourteenth-century Black Death, which killed at least 40% of the continent’s population.

African captives faced invasive, dehumanizing examinations before boarding enslavers’ ships. Women, men, and children were stripped, inspected, and sometimes molested to assess if they were suitable for hard labor and reproduction.

Traders aggressively touched the breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas of women and young girls, purportedly to evaluate their fertility. Men and boys were also molested around their groin, scrotum, and anus. One white trafficker later testified that the process resembled how he would handle “a horse in this country” if he were about to buy it.

Captives were numbered and loaded onto ships, separated by gender, and packed tightly into the holds under harsh conditions. Men were usually restrained in ‘spoonways,’ naked and forced to lie in urine, feces, blood, and mucus, with little fresh air.

Trafficked Africans were chained and forced to lie for weeks during their journey, unable to stretch or stand except for brief periods on deck. The poor conditions fostered disease and vermin, with some captives suffocating due to insufficient air below deck. In certain ships, the death rate reached as high as 33%.

About 15% of kidnapped Africans—nearly two million people—died during the Middle Passage.

African women and girls endured similarly horrific conditions in the hold and were uniquely terrorized by the crew. Forced to be naked and segregated from the men, they lived in constant fear of rape or assault by white sailors, who often used sexual violence and flogged those who resisted. Cruelty and terrorism were widespread on trafficking vessels run by Europeans. Sailors used brutal punishments for minor offenses to remind others of their authority.

These painful conditions persisted for weeks and sometimes months. A typical journey lasted five or six weeks, while some extended to two or three months. Longer voyages resulted in increased mortality among the captured Africans on board.

When ships arrived at ports across North and South America, the surviving Africans from the Middle Passage faced further examinations and abuse by enslavers before being sold and compelled to perform grueling labor, often leading to their premature death. Approximately 80% of kidnapped Africans transported via the Middle Passage were forced to work on sugar plantations in extremely hazardous conditions, resulting in high mortality rates.

Slavery in the Americas

About 90% of the enslaved men, women, and children who endured the Middle Passage reached the Caribbean or South America. Slavery in the Americas was governed by the Portuguese, Spanish, French, British, and Dutch, each of whom implemented distinct political, legal, and cultural practices. These differences contributed to the diverse development of slavery across the region and influenced the social construction of race and racial hierarchy.

Comparing the severity of slavery across the Americas is pointless, as its brutality was universal. Conditions in South American and Caribbean colonies were especially terrible—most enslaved people there worked on sugar plantations, known for their brutality. Labor was exhausting, involving long hours of gang work starting early at 5 a.m. and continuing until dusk, often under dangerous conditions. Portuguese plantations in Brazil had higher death rates and shorter life spans than those in the U.S.

The experiences of enslaved men and women across the Americas were shaped by factors specific to each European power and its colonies. In the North American colonies and later the U.S., white populations were the majority in most areas, except in South Carolina and Mississippi. Conversely, in South America and the Caribbean, nonwhite populations often made up over 80%.

When the Haitian revolution began in August 1791, white Europeans constituted only 7% of the population, with free people of color roughly equal in number to Europeans. In South America, Iberian dominance was challenged by a rising enslaved population, which frequently demanded freedom in exchange for fighting Indigenous opponents resistant to European colonization. In these colonies, the danger of rebellion by the minority white population played a vital role in shaping society.

In contrast, the vast white population in North America meant that rebellions by enslaved individuals, although more frequent than many assume today, posed a less significant threat to white dominance. Consequently, even though fear of rebellions heavily influenced the legal and cultural frameworks of North America, British colonists seldom had to grant legal or political concessions to enslaved people.

Regional and demographic differences also shaped the development of race and racial hierarchy in North America. For instance, in the first century of Portuguese colonization in Brazil, the shortage of Portuguese or white women led to frequent interracial relationships between white men and women of African descent, despite anti-miscegenation laws in Brazil. By 1822, over 70% of Brazil’s population was composed of blacks, mulattoes, slaves, freedmen, and free people of color.

Today, Brazil is home to the largest population of people of African descent outside Africa.

In most South American and Caribbean colonies, sizable populations of free people of color emerged, leading to the development of intricate systems of racial and caste classification. Conversely, North America had a different racial hierarchy, where free people of color represented a tiny fraction of the population. The region was divided by a rigid color line separating Black and white groups.

Finally, the legal codes governing the lives of enslaved people—such as regulations on manumission, the legal status of enslaved individuals as humans or property, marriage and family rights, and racial classification—varied across regions and colonies. These laws reveal the complex racial hierarchies that existed in the area.

Throughout the region, laws explicitly prohibited free Black individuals from holding political office, practicing prestigious professions (such as public notary, lawyer, surgeon, pharmacist, or smelter), or enjoying equal social status with whites. However, in 1795, the Spanish Crown introduced a policy allowing people of color with mixed ancestry to “apply and pay for a decree” that legally changed their status to white. These laws sparked intense and serious debates over the civil rights of individuals of mixed heritage in some countries. The 1812 constitution of the Spanish Empire further extended opportunities for mixed-race citizens, including desegregating universities, long before similar advancements in the U.S.

In French colonies, the “Code Noir,” enacted by Louis XIV in 1685, significantly influenced the societal landscape. It prescribed the death penalty for enslaved individuals who attacked their enslavers. Conversely, it also recognized free people of color as having the same rights as any “persons born free.” The code forbade the sale of enslaved parents separately from their children and regarded the child of a free woman and an enslaved man of color as free. Additionally, it imposed a fine on enslavers who fathered a child with an enslaved woman unless they married and freed both the woman and her child.

Significantly, under the Code Noir, the population of free people of color grew significantly. By 1860, Louisiana, which was under French control for many decades, had 18,647 free Black residents—nearly 3,000 more than the total in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi combined.

The British and their descendants in North America shaped laws around race, making it the key factor in the regulation of slavery and the lives of both enslaved and free Black Americans. A clear “black-white binary” highlighted and reinforced how race was central to all aspects of American society.

Consequently, although the specific experience of slavery varied by region and era, in the U.S., it evolved into a strict, racialized caste system that permanently linked slavery to race.

The enslavement system in North America was legitimized by a complex set of laws enforced through violence and terror, aiming to justify and codify the lifelong, hereditary, and perpetual slavery of Black people across generations.

Since the first kidnapped Africans arrived in what would become the English colonies and later the United States, slavery was central to the economy of every major city on the Eastern Seaboard. Understanding the history of these regions requires recognizing how enslavement contributed to their economies, laws, and political and cultural institutions, as well as the many ways this legacy continues to influence these communities today.

Equal Justice Initiative, “The Transatlantic Slave Trade” (2022).