i ve heard that before. i think i just ruined a sale. no, you didn t. no, you didn t. she told me i sucked. you did. [ laughter ] oh, man. just down the street from the market is gadsden s wharf which is getting a historical reclamation. it s not known but this place played a major role in american history and it is a $75 million complex called the international african-american museum. michael moore. no, not that michael moore. this michael moore is the great grandson of robert smalls. a former enslaved african civil war hero with the best escape story ever. oh, just wait. this is the epicenter of the transatlantic slave trade. it is where almost half the enslaved africans arrived.
it was the space where the original capitalization of the united states economy occurred. the former gadsden s wharf. somewhere around 100,000 africans were brought here between 1783 and 1808 and sold directly into slavery. in 2014, an archeological dig found remnants of the wharf where the ships arrived. originally built in 1767, the wharf could hold up to six ships at a time, and those ships held upwards of 600 africans apiece. and then if you just kind of look out, you can see fort sum ter in the distance. fort sumpter is where the civil war began. that likely could have been a slave ship. the ships would come in and land here. this is the largest wharf in the colonies. you can still see boats coming in along the same path that the 800-plus slave ships took in