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Slaves were captured by middlemen, who sold the slaves to the Europeans. The middlemen would organize kidnappings and raids, but also worked with local leaders to trade for slaves. In the case of the Kongo Empire, they traded POWs, judicial prisoners, and existing slaves with Europeans as a way to maintain economic stability. In the extreme early days of the slave trade, Europeans would go deeper into Africa and simply kidnap people to bring back to the slave ship.

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In some cases, slaves were kept in holding facilities, a torturous experience in itself: slaves were given sea water to ease dehydration, they were separated from their families, and they were malnourished. An example of these storage facilites is Goreé Island in Senegal. After a stay of a certain amount of time, they were led out a door, often called the “door of no return" and boarded onto a slave ship.

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Middle Passage: Ships carried slaves in confined spaces underneath the ship chained and given meager rations of food. Many died before even reaching the Americas. Once they reached the Americas, they were sold into various plantations to cultivate cash crops and goods such as sugar and tobacco.

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Enslaved people toiled in sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations, producing goods for European and American markets. The labor behind these luxuries was invisible to consumers, who enjoyed them without knowing—or caring—about the suffering behind them. The profits enriched empires, while the workers remained nameless, unpaid, and erased from history.