This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, part of ...

A little-known element is shedding light on the transatlantic slave trade. Researchers have assembled a map of strontium, a naturally occurring element, across sub-Saharan Africa. These data can be ...

Bronwen Everill received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Huntington Library for this research. Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone on the west African coast, was named for the freed slaves ...