Explore SlaveVoyages with care
How can a database help us investigate a painful history?
Start here · grades 3–5
Begin with people
SlaveVoyages gathers records about the forced movement of enslaved people. These were human beings with names, families, skills, and hopes. The records often describe people through the language of the traders who harmed them. A number can never tell a whole life.
Explore with a teacher or family member
First read the map’s legend and date. Watch a short interval, then pause. A moving voyage marker represents a voyage, not a single person choosing a trip. Ask where the voyage began and ended. Distinguish the ship’s route from the homes people were taken from.
What can—and can’t—we learn?
Look for a pattern, then open a voyage record to check it. Some records are missing or incomplete. Database totals and estimates are not the same thing. The trans-Atlantic view does not show every forced journey within the Americas. Boston’s port and Massachusetts commerce belonged to a wider Atlantic world; slavery was not only a southern story.
Record one careful observation
Say: “In this view, during these years, I notice…” Then name a question the map cannot answer. Do not turn the people represented into points to collect or cargo to manage.
Sources, grown-up reading & teaching notes
These are original reading companions. Follow the sources to check a claim. External pages and recordings keep their own languages.