The slave trade is a historical phenomenon that refers to the enslavement, transportation, and displacement of African peoples across the Atlantic ocean during the modern period (ca. 15th- 19th centuries). It was ultimately the result of a profitable, yet deeply brutal and exploitative, relationship between European merchants, African traders, and African people that resulted in the buying and selling of human beings for labor, exploitation, sexual commerce, and transatlantic religious conversion and education. The social and economic impacts of the slave trade have yet to be fully addressed in the contemporary framework, and so its spiritual, moral, and ethical implications and ramifications remain a global imperative for reckoning and resolution.

See also: middle passage, slave ship, white supremacy, black bodies, intergenerational trauma