If New England’s merchant vessels had been equipped with black boxes to record the nature of their trade, we would be in a far better position today to determine the causes of the crash we are experiencing as a nation, as well as the origins of persistent racial injustice in this region.


Atlantic Black Box is a grassroots historical recovery project that empowers communities throughout New England to research, reveal, and begin reckoning with the region’s complicity in the slave trade and the global economy of enslavement while recentering the stories of its racially marginalized groups. As a collaborative research platform and a learning community, ABB serves as a hub and a clearinghouse to all those who wish to support this work.