Do you ever wonder how slavery really started? Why Black people? Why Africa? Why the effects still follow us today? It didn't begin with shackles. It started with greed, gold, and lies. In the 1400s, Europeans set sail looking for spices and wealth-not people. But when they reached Africa and the Americas, everything changed. They saw land. They saw power. And they wanted to take it. They erased thriving African kingdoms and claimed they were saving "savages." They rewrote religion, science, and law to convince the world that Blackness meant inferiority. They forced Indigenous people into labor-until most died from disease, violence, or starvation. When that system collapsed, they turned to Africa. Africa wasn't weak. It was full of skilled farmers, builders, herders, metalworkers, and leaders. That's exactly why they were targeted-because they could survive, because they could build, because they had what the colonizers didn't. Over 12.5 million Africans were trafficked across the Atlantic. America received fewer than other nations— but created one of the most violent, race-based systems in history. And when slavery was finally "abolished," the oppression didn't end. It simply evolved-into segregation, incarceration, economic injustice, and the racism we're still fighting today. This thread breaks it all down-from the first European ships to the systems we're still living under. Read it. Share it. Remember it. Because the truth is how we take back everything they tried to erase. 田 - @africanhistory_2