::THE SLICE REPORT WITH MONA AUSTIN

(The Sluce): A realistic reminder tied to the Transatlantic Slave Trade will soon be leaving the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Museum officials say a 33-pound piece of timber from the slave ship São José-Paquete de Africa will be returned to South Africa later this year. The São José-Paquete de Africa was an 18th-century Portuguese slave ship that sank in 1794 near Cape Town, South Africa while transporting more than 400 enslaved Africans from Mozambique. Historians believe half of them drowned and the rest were enslaved after making it to land. Because the ship sank close to shore, historians and marine archaeologists were able to locate the wreck centuries later. The discovery is historically significant because it is one of the only confirmed slave shipwrecks where enslaved Africans were still aboard when the ship went down. The fragile wooden beam has been one of the centerpiece artifacts in the museum’s “Slavery and Freedom” exhibit since ...