Joseph Watson Correspondence, Mss. 1872, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections." data-title="April 20, 1827 letter from Joseph Watson to Colonel Philip Hickey regarding the kidnapping African American children from Philadelphia who end up in Louisiana and Mississippi. Joseph Watson Correspondence, Mss. 1872, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections." data-align="center"/>

2019 marks the 400th anniversary of enslaved people landing on the shores of Virginia, thus beginning the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade in North America. To recognize this event, The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) Special Collections Interest Group curated its first-ever collaborative online exhibition, Enslaved People of the Southeast, featuring over 100 items and the collections of 33 partner institutions and three libraries from the HBCU Library Alliance.

Melissa Smith, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts at Special Collections, served as a member of the curatorial group who requested and vetted the materials that included images, poetry, journal entries, correspondence, bills of sale, plantation records, advertisements, emancipation documents, and maps, and wrote corresponding captions.

The exhibition recognized the early years of enslavement, including the horrors of kidnappings, plantation life, and auctions, and it also brought into focus the legacy of slavery and included twentieth century Jim Crow events such as sharecropping, convict leasing, and desegregation.