"The gavel came down, the auction ended, and the winners carted their new purchases home. The bidders had walked the market, seen the wares, placed their offers and the highest bid won. It was a fair market price, struck 150 years ago outside Savannah, Ga., in a model of modern capitalism. At one of the last slave auctions in America, this was how 429 men, women and children were dispatched, through a timeless dance of supply and demand. Efficient. Mathematical. Unjust. The price may have been fair, but the market wasn’t."

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