The slave ship served to reshape the imagination of all involved. “Everyone who stepped on a slave ship became racialized, white and black.”11 The crew would participate in the dehumanizing of the slaves. “Those who resisted in any way were beaten or whipped without mercy. . . . The rape of black women was woven into the very fabric of the social order of the slave ship . . . as sailors shared fully in the brutal rape and torture of women and children.”12 The slave ship’s arrival into port meant the transfer from one place of torture to a new place of torture. The auction bell that would greet
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