Telling a similar story of the Middle Passage is the work of the late Houston artist Floyd Newsum Jr called MAAFA, which comes from the Kiswahili word that means “great disaster” or “tragedy” to describe the atrocities that happened to African people during the Transatlantic slave trade and its ongoing effects on their descendants.

Newsum’s MAAFA was one of seven works acquired from the National Juneteenth Museum’s first art exhibition, Declarations of Freedom, which was co-curated by Dr. Lauren Cross, Executive Strategist and Curatorial Consultant and Christopher Blay, Director of Public Programs, and anchored by the museum’s First Freedom Vibes festival in 2025.