Black ivory

For the African, slavery meant torture, whippings, sexual humiliation and appalling hardship. A few, a tiny minority, fought or ran for their liberty. The remained rarely had long to wait for their won freedom – an early and often agonizing death. For the slavers themselves, the trade brought its own peculiar kind of death. By dealing in human suffering by wading thigh deep in death, their humanity diminished and swiftly died. They lived, but only as corrupt and brutalized shells of men. The only people who prospered were the slave merchants. They never saw blood on their own hands. They have had to smell the charnel taint of a loaded slaving ship. They simply grew fat on the enormous profits of the trade in ‘Black Ivory’.