Many Slave Traders Were Mixed Race

Prof. Henry Louis Gates took a closer look at how exactly the trans-Atlantic slave trade operated and discovered something shocking. A large number of slave traders were identified by the now politically incorrect term “mulatto,” he writes at The Root, “the offspring of European traders and the daughters of African rulers.” With connections to both ends of the slave economy, this group carved out a profitable, yet little-known, place for itself in the slave trade and in history.