It is 400 years since slaves were brought to what is now the United States - and to Wall Street.
A tour group photographs a sign marking the location of New York City's slave market
"This is not black history," says Damaris Obi who leads the tour."This is not New York City or American history. This is world history."Stacey Toussaint, the boss of Inside Out Tours, which runs the NYC Slavery and Underground Railroad tour, says people are often surprised by how important slavery was to New York City.
Enslaved people were brought to work on the cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations. The crops they grew were sent to Europe or to the northern colonies, to be turned into finished products. Those finished goods were used to fund trips to Africa to obtain more slaves who were then trafficked back to America.To raise the money to start many future plantation owners turned to capital markets in London - selling debt that was used to purchase boats, goods and eventually people.
By the mid 19th Century, exports of raw cotton accounted for more than half of US oversees shipments. What wasn't sold abroad was sent to mills in northern states including Massachusetts and Rhode Island to be turned into fabric.
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