For almost a century, Charleston played a major role in the transatlantic slave trade. Between 1710 and 1808, some 40 percent of the 400,0000 enslaved people who arrived in North America landed there, making it the busiest slave-trading port on the continent. Since 1938, the Old Slave Mart Museum in downtown Charleston has offered visitors a direct account of this painful legacy. In 2023, the opening of a new 150,000-square-foot museum takes a more expansive view, one that not only looks back but also engages with the present and the future. 

International African American Museum

Twenty-three years after it was first proposed, the International African American Museum (IAAM) finally debuted on the southeastern side of the Charleston peninsula. Through 12 permanent exhibitions, a genealogy center and a transfixing memorial garden, visitors learn the story of those who arrived in bondage and how, through “trauma and triumph,” their descendants have influenced the history and culture of the city and the world.

The IAAM stands on a site of profound significance: Gadsden’s Wharf, the largest point of entry for enslaved Africans in mainland North America. Treated not as passengers but as property, upward of 100,000 slaves disembarked and were held here, sometimes for months, until their sale as domestic slaves or field laborers on plantations. Many perished, never leaving the port.