The Middle Passage This nineteenth-century print illustrates conditions common during the eighteenth century aboard African slave trade ships on the Middle Passage between West Africa and the New World. Here enslaved Africans have been brought onto the upper deck to be fed. A barricade separated enslaved men and women, preventing the men from protecting the women. On the right, a crewman beats a shackled enslaved man while another African appears to dance, perhaps to avoid a beating. On the left, crewmen abuse enslaved women. Prudery kept the artist from realistically portraying the rapes crewmen routinely inflicted on the African women.

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres, France/Bridgeman Images.