5. Long Wharf

Portal to Slavery – Gateway to Freedom

In the 18th century, when people, goods and information traveled by water, Cambridge was a regional center for the slave trade. Ships from Africa and the West Indies brought kidnapped Africans and sold them along this waterfront until the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808. Soon, southern states began cultivating cotton, increasing their need for enslaved labor. About the same time, wheat prices plummeted causing a surge in the sales of enslaved people from the Eastern Shore. Thousands of them were eventually shipped from this wharf to plantations in the Deep South, never to see their homes or families again.