Centuries before Europeans reached the Americas, powerful empires flourished in West Africa. Ghana, Mali, and Songhai grew wealthy by controlling trade routes across the Sahara Desert, exchanging gold, salt, and other goods with distant lands. Mali's ruler Mansa Musa became famous for his extraordinary wealth, and the city of Timbuktu blossomed into a center of learning, attracting scholars from across Africa and beyond.

This proud history changed tragically when Europeans began the Transatlantic Slave Trade, forcibly transporting millions of Africans across the ocean. In 1619, the first recorded Africans arrived in English North America at Old Point Comfort, Virginia. Enslaved people endured brutal voyages and were forced to labor without pay, stripped of their freedom. Despite this cruelty, enslaved Africans carried their skills, traditions, languages, and knowledge with them, and these contributions permanently shaped American culture, agriculture, music, and cuisine, even amid tremendous suffering and injustice.