One of the most underexamined and misunderstood topics in the history of the United States is its experience of chattel slavery. It is often easier to turn a blind eye to the facts of the “peculiar institution” than it is to wrestle with the breadth, scope, impact and incongruencies of slavery and its many impacts on American society, culture and economics.

Consider the numbers. Over the course of 400 years, scholars estimate that 12 million Africans were taken from the African continent by Europeans and sold in North America, South America and the Caribbean. An estimated 500,000 arrived on the shores of what would become the United States of America. Forty percent of these Africans were sold in Charleston, S.C., earning the city the designation of the “Ellis Island for African Americans.” By 1860, their population swelled to four million.

These people, whose bodies held value and whose labor was extracted from them daily, were an integral part of the U.S. economy. Their uncompensated labor drove the success of “King Cotton,” which represented 60% of the U.S. gross domestic product in 1860. The value of enslaved humans was the single largest asset in the U.S. economy in 1860, surpassing the combined value of all businesses and railroads. By one estimate, the value of all the labor extracted from Black people during the centuries of slavery in the U.S. totals over $14 trillion.

There is so much more, however, that can’t be accounted for with dollars and cents. The exhibition recently unveiled at Broward County’s African American Research Library and Cultural Center, “To Be Sold: Enslaved Labor and Slave Trading in the Antebellum South,” brings the human impact of chattel slavery into vivid resolution. Based on advertisements by William Payne and Sons, the largest slave traders in Charleston, African American painter John W. Jones created over 40 different portraits depicting these often-anonymous laborers performing the work for which they were being valued. The expertise of these enslaved laborers drove nearly every aspect of the economy—from tilling the fields to making bricks, barrels and cabinets, from butchering to making pastries and chocolates.

Jones’s paintings compel the viewer to confront the humanity of these laborers. These enslaved laborers were experts and innovators, highly valued for their exceptional skills. The value of their labor was stolen, however, not only from them but from their descendants. What might the economic landscape of the U.S. look like if not for slavery? What if these enslaved laborers had been free people, earning and accumulating wealth that could then be passed on to their children? Moreover, how did they survive psychologically, knowing that they had little control over their own fate or the fates of their loved ones?

Understanding enslavement helps to demystify our current society. More importantly, we can appreciate and honor those who survived its horrors.

Dr. Tameka Bradley Hobbs is regional manager of the African American Research Library and Cultural Center.