WASHINGTON (AP) – The Smithsonian says its National Museum of African American History and Culture will display objects from a slave ship that sank off the coast of Cape Town in 1794.
The Smithsonian was to make the announcement Monday. The objects were retrieved this year from the wreck site of a Portuguese slave ship that sank on its way to Brazil while carrying more than 400 enslaved Africans from Mozambique.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, the head of the African American history museum, said in a statement that the ship represents one of the earliest attempts to bring East Africans into the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is currently under construction in Washington and scheduled to be completed in the fall.