During the Golden Age of Piracy (roughly 1650–1730), men under black flags were raiding and plundering ships across the Caribbean. We remember them as violent men, stealing and wreaking havoc on European lives.
Through another lens, though, pirates were something entirely different. The New World they tormented was filled with slaves, and a lot of the ships they attacked were filled with imprisoned Africans. To the Africans on those ships, the pirates weren’t just criminals—they were liberators, and they heralded the arrival of a better life.
