This lecture will lay the foundation and introduction of the Riley Museum's 4-part, 4-year exhibition series, "African Americans in Tallahassee: The Antebellum Period to the Civil Rights Era." Historian, Author, and Lecturer Velma Maia Thomas will recount and celebrate Africa's profound history and culture before the advent of the Transatlantic slave trade, reveal the horrors of the Middle Passage, the significance of slave vessel revolts, and provide the impetuses that fueled a slave economy that spread throughout Europe, the Carribean, and the Americas.