60 Minutes - 11/1/2015: Heroin in the Heartland, Smart Guns, The Slave Ship

Episode Date: November 4, 2015

Correspondent Bill Whitaker heads to Columbus, Ohio to examine the heroin epidemic in suburban America. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports on smart guns, firearms that only work when they're fired by their owner. And correspondent Scott Pelley reports on Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and his mission to launch the institution with the remains of a slave ship. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is this? You might think of heroin as primarily an inner city problem, but dealers are making huge profits by expanding to new lucrative markets, suburbs all across the country. I'm sitting here looking at you, and you look young and fresh. You're the girl next door. And you were addicted to heroin. I mean, obviously it's very flattering that you say, like, I don't look like a junkie,

but even Miss America could be a junkie. I mean, anybody can be a junkie. Do I get my own, right? You get your own ring. The ring has a tiny computer chip inside a black stone, which transmits a signal. When it's close to the trigger, it unlocks the gun. Alternatively, if I were to grab it, you know, nothing happens. That's an example of what's known as a smart gun that only its owner can shoot. Every time a mass shooting occurs, the conversation begins again about why you can't buy one. The fort oversaw the trafficking of more than 400,000 slaves.

The amount of money invested in slaves was more than the amount of money invested in railroads, banks, and businesses combined. This was the economic engine of Europe and the United States. Lonnie Bunch came to this capital of the slave trade because he was determined to launch America's new National Museum on the remains of a ship. What do we find down here? A very interesting thing. I'm Steve Croft.

I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Morley Safer. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Podcasts are great because they help us make the most out of our routine. We learn about the fall of the Ottoman Empire while we drive, keep up with news while we take the dog for a walk,

or turn folding laundry into a comedy show. Make the most out of your time with the PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard, a credit card that can get you unlimited free grocery delivery and the most PC Optimum points on everyday purchases. The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Federal and local authorities all over the country say it's the biggest drug epidemic today. Not methamphetamines or cocaine, but heroin. You might think of heroin as primarily an inner-city problem, but dealers connected to Mexican drug cartels are making huge profits by

expanding to new lucrative markets,suburbs all across the country. It's basic economics—the dealers are going where the money is. And they're cultivating a new set of consumers—high school students, college athletes, teachers, and professionals. Heroin is showing up everywhere, in places like Columbus, Ohio. The area has long been viewed as so typically middle American that for years many companies have gone there to test new products. We went to the Columbus suburbs

to see how heroin is taking hold in the heartland. I'm sitting here looking at you, and you look young and fresh. You're the girl next door. And you were addicted to heroin. I mean, obviously it's very flattering that you say, like, I don't look like a junkie, but even Miss America could be a junkie. I mean, anybody can be a junkie. Hannah Morris is in college now.

She says she's been clean for a year, but in high school, she was using heroin. Hannah lives outside Columbus in the upper middle class suburb of Worthington. Her parents are professionals. The median income here is $87,000 a year. Before she got hooked on heroin, Hannah thought it was just another party drug. How did you get to those depths? What was the path you took? I started with weed and it was fun and I got to good weed. Went to, oh my gosh, I went to pills

and it was still fun. You know, Percocet, Xanax, Vicodin, all that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, heroin. I started smoking it at first. So you were what, 15? Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh, that was amazing. You remember it even now? Oh yeah. Let's say I've never done a drug in my life. I would normally be happiness at a six or a seven, at a scale out of 10, you know? And then you take heroin and you're automatically at a 26. And you're like, I want that again. Hannah says the heroin was so addictive that rather quickly she and several other students went from smoking it at parties to shooting it up at high school. Like doing it at school in the bathroom.

A syringe. A syringe. I would have it in my purse, all ready to go. Jenna Morrison has struggled to remain clean for almost three years. She comes from a town that is smaller and more rural than Hannah's. Jenna says her addiction started with legal opiates, pain pills you can get with a prescription. Chemically, they're almost identical to heroin. I got on pain pills pretty bad when I was probably between 15 and 16.

And the heroin came? When I was 18. Was it an easy transition from the pain pills to heroin? Very. Because I didn't realize at the time that heroin is an opiate. I didn't know that that was the same thing as the pills that I was using. Why were you using all those drugs? I'm in a small town.

There was nothing to do. And I was hanging out with older people. So that was our way of having fun, partying. This is the worst drug epidemic I've seen in my lifetime. Mike DeWine is the Attorney General of Ohio. He's a former U.S. Senator, Congressman, and a county prosecutor. We met him at a state crime lab outside Columbus. It's in every single county. It's in our cities, but it's also in our wealthier suburbs. It's in our small towns. There is no place in Ohio where you can hide from it. It's that pervasive. There is no place in Ohio where you couldn't have it delivered to you in 15, 20 minutes. I can text and say, hey, do you have this?

We can meet. They would bring it to my house, leave it under the mat. It's pretty easy to get. Full service. To me, it was easier to get than weed or cocaine, definitely easier. Dealers with connections to the Mexican cartels sell heroin everywhere, even in this department store parking lot outside Columbus. He'll be coming out of that car right there. Our cameras captured the purchase of this heroin by an undercover police informant.

What is this? So this is a couple types of heroin that we see. Attorney General Mike DeWine's staffers say the Mexican heroin can be cheap, $10 a hit or less. Some of it is cut with other drugs that make it even more powerful and deadly. And dealers keep inventing new ways to outwit law enforcement. And what do you have here? These are actually tablets. So they are pressed to look like an actual prescription tablet, but they contain heroin. Heroin in pill form? That look like pills, correct.

This is new. Very new. We've only seen a few cases in the lab. And something else Mike DeWine says is new since his days as a county prosecutor, heroin has lost its stigma as a poisonous back alley drug. There's no psychological barrier anymore that stops a young person or an older person from taking heroin. So who is the typical heroin user in Ohio today? Anybody watching today, this show, it could be your family. There's no typical person. It just has permeated every segment of society in Ohio.

Even the well-to-do town of Pickerington, 30 minutes outside of Columbus, Tyler Campbell was a star of the high school football team. He went on to play Division I at the University of Akron. For Tyler, heroin wasn't a party drug. His parents, Wayne and Christy Campbell, say his heroin habit grew from his addiction to opiate painkillers, prescribed legally after he injured his shoulder. What were the pills? It was Vicodin. He had 60 Vicodin for his shoulder surgery. That's a normal prescription? For that procedure. It's easy for kids to sell their excess pills. They're popular recreational drugs in high schools and colleges.

So much in demand that one pill can cost up to $80. Pill addicts like Tyler often switch to heroin because it's a cheaper opiate with a bigger high. Tyler was in and out of rehab four times. The night he came home the last time, he couldn't fight the uncontrollable urge that is heroin addiction. He shot up in his bedroom and died of a heroin overdose. He wasn't the only addict on his college football team. Unfortunately, the quarterback died four months after Tyler in 2011. Same situation. First of all, if you don't talk about it, right? After Tyler died, the Campbells met many families whose children were heroin addicts in the suburbs of Columbus. Like Tyler, most got hooked on pills first. Started with pain pills. Absolutely. TJ and Heidi Rigg's daughter died of a heroin overdose.

Maren was a high school basketball player and captain of her golf team. Lee Heidman and Brian Malone's daughter Alyssa died of an overdose earlier this year. Brenda Stewart has two sons in recovery. Tracy Morrison is Jenna Morrison's mother and has a second daughter who is also a recovering addict. Rob Brant's son was an addict. He battled it through high school. He says his son Robbie got hooked on pain pills prescribed by a dentist after his wisdom teeth were removed. He was in training with the National Guard, hoping to serve in Afghanistan. And when he came home, he met up with an old friend

that he used to buy and sell prescription medications with, and that old friend introduced him to heroin, and we did rehab, we did relapse, we did rehab, and he got clean. But the drug called his name again, and he said yes, and that was the last time, and he passed from an accidental overdose. For many of these parents, the hardest thing to accept was losing their children after they thought they'd finally beaten the addiction. She passed away the day after St. Patrick's Day,

and she posted on St. Patrick's Day a picture of her on her laptop, studying, doing homework, saying, no partying for me, not even a single drink. I'm staying in and I'm working. And the next day she used. And that was the last time she used. I am a nurse. Tracy Morrison, Jenna's mother, trained to be a nurse more than 30 years ago. She says the medical profession must bear some responsibility for the heroin epidemic. She says doctors over-prescribe pain medications. I graduated in the 80s. I was a nursing director when we decided to swing the pendulum from not treating pain to treat everybody's

pain. I was a part of that. And at that time, I had no idea that we were addicting people. Last year, three quarters of a billion pain pills were prescribed by doctors in Ohio. Nearly 65 pills for every man, woman and child in the state. How did you respond when your daughters told you they were using heroin? Well, they first told me they were using the pills. And how I found out they were using heroin was I came home from work one day, made dinner, and I was yelling for my youngest daughter to come for dinner, and she didn't. And I walked into her bedroom, and her boyfriend was shooting her up. You saw this?

I saw it. What did you do? Dropped the plate of food. I dropped it and I was hysterical. Tracy's daughter Jenna is 25 now. She knows she's lucky to be alive. In my addiction, I had been to rehab 17 times and I'd been to jail six or seven times. So every time I went to jail, I got out, went to rehab, came home and relapsed, and then did it all over again. You overdosed as well? Mm-hmm.

How many times? I only overdosed once, and I woke up in an ambulance. Jenna would have died if emergency medical technicians hadn't injected her with naloxone hydrochloride, also called Narcan. It quickly reverses the effects of opiates in the brain. So this is the kit. The heroin problem in Ohio is so big, families and friends of addicts, not just health professionals, are being taught to administer Narcan,

which is now available without a prescription. This is what it looks like. This is the little purple cap actually is the medication. This is a hurricane. Though she's a nurse, Tracy Morrison says at first she had no idea her daughters were addicts. Neither did the other parents. But they feel they missed all the signs and let their children down. You feel guilty every day.

And you lost the battle. So you're always going to say, is there something I could have done differently? Why didn't I notice that when I had missing spoons that it wasn't because they left cereal bowls upstairs. It was actually because she was using them to shoot heroin. But who would have thought our children would ever do heroin? All of these parents say they wanted to talk to us because too many other families are embarrassed, in denial about their kids' heroin use. These parents say the stigma and shame are compounding the epidemic.

No one was talking about that we had heroin in Pickerington. And so for us, we were total shock when it happened. But the struggle was the stigma. Never say, not my child. Because you never know, it could end up being your child. You never want to get that call. You never want to get that call. The call you got.

The call you got. And we got the call. The call you got. The call you got. And we got the call. Today, heroin overdoses take the lives of at least 23 people in Ohio every week. We were told many other heroin deaths go unreported. I'm sure there are some who would be watching this and would say heroin addicts are junkies and they brought this on themselves. So why should we care? Because we don't throw diabetics who sit on the couch eating bonbons and smoke and they weigh 300 pounds in prison. We don't belittle them and there's not a big stigma. We don't do that to people that change smoke and develop lung cancer. It's a chronic, relapsing brain disease.

Period, amen. End of story. And we need to accept it, even if it makes people uncomfortable. And if people don't like that, I'm sorry. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade.

Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Every time there's a massacre at a school, like the recent one in Oregon, it reignites the debate for more gun control. Not only because of the mass shootings, but because of the hundreds of incidents of gun violence every day on our streets and in our homes.

One idea that keeps coming up is smart guns. These are firearms that only work when they're fired by their owner. It seems that gee whiz technology is seeping into every corner of our lives. Why not guns? In the 2012 movie Skyfall, Q gives James Bond a smart gun that only he can activate. It's been coded to your palm print so only you can fire it. Later, when the bad guy gets a hold of it. Good luck with that. Firearms that recognize only their owner aren't just the stuff of movies. Army veteran Tom Lynch is developing a touchpad scanner that recognizes fingerprints like an iPhone. Add it to an existing gun, and it's a smart gun.

So it's recognizing you. It's recognizing me. Okay. Now? Now. It's unlocked. It's still on fire. Let me try it. It should be able to fire.

Let's see if I can... Now pull the trigger. I can't even pull the trigger. That's the point. It's locked. It's locked. Other inventors are working on guns that recognize the squeeze of your grip or unlock wirelessly if the shooter wears a watch or a ring.

These guns would not have prevented many of the mass shootings because the gunmen owned the firearms. But smart gun advocates say they could counter this all too common grim reality. A 14-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his 9-year-old brother. Children shot and killed by other children. A tragic shooting, two friends playing with a gun when it goes off. Smart guns could curtail the number of suicides and cut down on the resale of stolen guns, estimated to be 230,000 every year.

What good is a gun no one but the owner can fire? Shots fired at the city of an officer down. And they would help on-duty cops. There was a struggle and Clark grabbed Officer Smith's gun and shot him two times. And yet, with at least a half dozen smart guns in advanced development, and some ready for manufacturing, no major U.S. gun company is making them, and no gun dealer is willing to sell them.

Why? Well, consider what happened to one Maryland gun dealer who tried. I like the way Sterling Arsenal actually painted this thing. Last year, Andy Raymond, co-owner of Engage Armament, announced that he'd sell the Armitix IP1, a smart pistol made in Germany. Who did you think would be interested in that kind of a gun? Typically what I like to call fence-sitters, so people who aren't normally into guns and don't normally want one, you know, I'm too afraid or whatever. Did you anticipate the reaction that you got? No.

Within minutes of his announcement, angry emails and phone calls started coming. We got about 2,000 phone calls and maybe about the same emails. All against? Yeah, that was just in one day. I mean, it was insane. I mean, one person threatened to burn down the shop. Another person threatened that I would be raped. That was classic. You would be raped?

Yeah. Did you get any death threats? Yeah, the crazies did come out of the woodwork. That's him that night, shaved head and whiskey bottle at his side. He stayed in his store to guard it and posted this video on Facebook. So anyway, obviously I received numerous death threats today. I really appreciate that. That's classy.

That's a great thing for gun rights when you threaten to shoot somebody. He thinks the campaign against him was viral, not organized by the gun lobby. Though in his rant, he wondered why gun lovers and the National Rifle Association would oppose the sale of any gun. How can the NRA or people want to prohibit a gun when we're supposed to be pro-gun? We're supposed to say that any gun is good in the right person's hands. How can they say that a gun should be prohibited? How hypocritical is that? If you believe in the Second Amendment, the Second Amendment is absolute,

that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, then you should be able to buy whatever you want. What Andy didn't realize is that there's a long beleaguered history to these devices. Fifteen years ago, gunmakers Smith and Wesson promised the Clinton White House to develop smart guns as part of a deal to fend off liability litigation. Under the agreement, Smith and Wesson will develop smart guns that can be fired only by the adults who own them. The gun lobby organized a boycott against Smith & Wesson, seeing smart guns and other concessions in the deal as part of the gun control agenda. Factories closed, employees were laid off,

and after that, no big U.S. gunmaker ever went near a smart gun. There's a lot of skepticism and a lot of resistance to them. Steve Sinetti, president of the Gun Lobby and Trade Group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, represents over 12,000 gun makers, dealers, and businesses. Does your organization see the smart gun as gun control? People that own guns are not the ones saying, I'm the one that want this, please develop it.

It's coming from the gun control side. It's coming from people who, frankly, really want to put as many obstacles to a gun going off as they can. Why are dealers who want to sell it, why are they being intimidated not to? Why not let the market decide? People don't want it. Don't buy it. Well, I agree. We think the market should be able to decide that. Well, we have never fought the idea that dealers can put them on the shelves. It's totally up to the marketplace and the dealers.

So where is that fight coming from? And that's the point. People don't understand the passion that firearms owners have for the firearms that they own. The passion has been fueled by the NRA, which says on its legislative website, smart guns could open the door to a ban on all other guns. Why do they say that? Well, it's actually happened. In 2002, New Jersey's governor signed a law that became known as the mandate. There is a statute in the state of New Jersey that would say that once a gun like this is offered for sale anywhere, that's the only kind of gun that could be sold. If these guns are sold in Wyoming or California, this triggers this law that everybody in New

Jersey has to have that. Loretta Weinberg, the New Jersey state senator who authored the law, didn't foresee its consequences. We passed that bill to help spur this technology. It appears it totally backfired because it spurred this passionate objection to the gun. Because of the intervention of the NRA and the Second Amendment folks. They say the reason they intervened is because of the mandate. Right. It isn't the law that stopped the development. It is the people who threatened folks who actually wanted to sell such a gun.

Andy Raymond came to realize that even if he had sold the Armitix gun in Maryland, it might have triggered the mandate banning the sale of regular handguns in New Jersey. The people of New Jersey, my apologies. You got nothing to worry about from me. I did apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to this day. Did you actually sell any of the Armitix guns? No. After his case came to her attention,

the New Jersey senator offered to rescind the mandate if the gun lobby publicly removed its opposition to smart guns. She's yet to hear back. They seem to oppose almost everything. Anytime we suggest anything, we've gotten very little cooperation back. If the law were completely repealed, do you think that the gun lobby would then let this go forward? No. Why are you trying to take my firearm, which I store safely and properly, and I've never had problems with it, and add something to it that's going to make it more

prone to failure? What about this argument that we have seatbelts, we have airbags, they're mandatory. Why not make a safe gun mandatory? Firearms are safe. The firearms manufacturers include appropriate locking devices for their guns along with them when they're shipped. They may be low-tech, but they work. He says adding high-tech to guns may make them less safe. For example, the batteries that operate the smart guns. We've all had battery-operated devices where the battery dies. So the people who are working on this tell us that the batteries will have a 10-year life.

What about the 11th year? Well, you change the battery. If you remember, if... No, you're going to get a warning. Okay, if the gun is stored inside a cabinet or a box or a safe or something like that, you might not see the warning. Other concerns. Will fingerprints work in snow and rain?

Will they work if you're sweating because an intruder entered your home? Could guns using wireless technology be hacked or jammed and disabled remotely by the government? We have to be careful not to fall into the technology trap. It doesn't solve every problem. It's great. We're not Luddites. We're not here saying that technology is a bad thing. Technology obviously improves our life in many ways.

But I think you have to look at firearms in a slightly different way. Their mechanisms are the way they are over centuries of development. They're at the state now that the consumers want them. And in the United States, there's lots of tradition involved with firearms. People like guns of the Old West. They like them the way Davy Crockett used them. They like them the way they were used years ago. That was the case a decade and a half ago as Jonathan Mossberg found out. He had left his family's gun-making business, Mossberg & Sons,

and invented a smart gun that works in conjunction with a ring. Do I get my own, right? You get your own ring. The ring has a tiny computer chip inside a black stone, which transmits a signal. When it's close to the trigger, it unlocks the gun. Alternatively, if I were to grab it, you know, nothing happens. Mossberg's gun was ready to sell 13 years ago, but... People weren't really, there was some market, but not enough.

So we decided not to sell it. And has something changed? Yes. We all started living with these evil things. And so we became comfortable trusting it. They guide us to our destinations, they make sure we're okay for meetings, and they're extremely reliable. He thinks that today's young parents,

comfortable with technology, are a ripe market. And Silicon Valley agrees. This is going to happen outside the gun industry. Why they aren't doing research and investing in this baffles me. Ron Conway, one of the early investors in Facebook and Google, is now looking for, he says, the Mark Zuckerberg of guns. He has funded at least 15 smart gun inventors, including those involved in the two guns we tested. Are you thinking that if the gun manufacturers don't come along, that they're going to be like Kodak?

Absolutely. This is what you're saying. Yes, Kodak and Polaroid all wrapped in one. You cannot stop innovation. And this is an area where innovation is taking over. Are you not worried about the politics of this whole issue? I think for technology and innovation, we have to ignore politics. Can you? Of course you can. But when it comes to guns, it's all about politics. Just ask Andy Raymond. I got caught up in the middle of something that was way beyond me,

way beyond my capabilities, and got caught between two sides that, I mean, it was just, I will never, ever, ever touch anything else like that ever, ever again. As of today, you cannot find a smart gun to buy in the United States. Senator Loretta Weinberg told us that she plans to ask the New Jersey state legislature to repeal the mandate, but replace it with a demand that dealers display at least one smart gun in their stores. Question is, will dealers be too gun-shy? If this gun does take off, would you sell it? Absolutely not.

Ever? I would rather be shot by a smart gun than sell one. Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice ice caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side or B-side or bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. 200 years ago, a ship named for St. Joseph sank in a terrible storm. Half the passengers survived, but the sea closed over more than 200 men, women, and children who were locked below the deck. You would think a disaster like that would be legendary, but the St. Joseph was a slave ship, and the screams bursting from the hold were the cries of cargo. Today, the silence of those lost voices

is unbearable to Lonnie Bunch. He's the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, now under construction in Washington. Bunch found that to tell history, the Smithsonian would have to make history. And so began a quest for the remains of a shipwreck in a land so unchanged that an 18th century slave would recognize it today as the last shore he called home. Mozambique Island defies the erosion of time. The Portuguese colonists who claimed it 500 years ago would still find the cut of the cloth that borrows the wind as familiar as the cut of the stone that framed their city.

Lonnie Bunch came to this capital of the slave trade because he was determined to launch America's new national museum on the remains of a ship. I thought it wouldn't be hard, so I called museums around the world and said, OK, look, you must have some things, you must know where I can get some material. And everybody said, nope. And they said to me, well, Lonnie, almost every slave ship was at the end of its life, so it's probably at the ocean floor. And then I got scared. Then I thought, well, I'm not going to be able to find this. Well, Lonnie, almost every slave ship was at the end of its life, so it was probably at the ocean floor. And then I got scared. Then I thought, well, I'm not going to be able to find this.

Mozambique Island rises from the Indian Ocean, south of the equator. It was one of the points in what was called the Triangular Trade. Goods from Europe to Africa, slaves to the New World, and cotton, gold, and tobacco back to the old. In the 1400s, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade in slaves, and they became the largest, followed by the English, French, Spanish, and Dutch. On Mozambique Island, the Portuguese built a fortress that they called Saint Sebastian for the Christian martyr who was captured, chained, and murdered in Rome in the year 288. The irony of that name was the only thing here the Portuguese failed to grasp. You know, when you look at the enormous effort that went into

building this fort, they were protecting something that was hugely valuable to them. They recognized that the key to their future as nations with economic prosperity was the slave trade. The fort oversaw the trafficking of more than 400,000 slaves. Bunch was certain there had to be evidence of a ship, and he soon discovered he wasn't the only one looking. Give me a hand. He found a group of researchers calling themselves the Slave Wrecks Project, and they were following a promising lead. What do we find down here?

A very interesting thing. Desio Mwanga is a Mozambican archaeologist, helping the Slave Wrecks project locate the beginning of the story. This is a tunnel that was used to put slaves inside the island or put them out of the island as well. Under the old Portuguese town, tunnels connected holding pins to the sea. The devout Portuguese preferred to keep slaves in transit out of sight. How were these slaves captured? Some individuals, African individuals, specialize in capturing slaves. So they would go and raid villages far, far from here. And they walked, chained, all the way from there to here. And of course, lots of them died on the way.

So these were Africans capturing Africans? Yes. It was not only a business for the Portuguese, the Europeans in this case, but also for some of the local chiefs as well. Those local chiefs came to this auction house to sell captives to European clients. A male in the late 18th century, early 19th century, would go anywhere from $600 to $1,500, which is probably about $9,000 to $15,000 today. This was incredibly lucrative. In the years before the Civil War, the amount of money invested in slaves was more than the amount of money invested in railroads, banks, and businesses combined. This was the economic engine of Europe and the United States.

By the time you got here... The enslaved marched from the auction house down this ramp and onto the ships. What you probably had was almost an assembly line. You'd bring people, you'd sell people, then you would move them onto the boats and off to the New World. What does black America need to hear, in your estimation, from the echoes off these steps? I think all Americans need to recognize that as tragic and horrible as slavery was, as big an economic shadow as it cast, the one thing it didn't do was strip people of their humanity. And I wish that all of us were as strong as the people that walked down those steps and got on those boats. We're wading out into the tidal flats.

If Lonnie Bunch was to find his slave ship, he would need Steve Lubkeman, co-founder of the Slave Wrecks Project. He's an anthropologist from George Washington University who believes that slavery is the greatest story in maritime archaeology. Think about the way in which computers nowadays affect all of our lives. It's not just, it doesn't affect just the computing industry. Everything is interlinked and depends on this. And the slave trade in its time was truly the equivalent. It reached into and influenced and created the modern world.

Even so, it's not likely much has survived centuries under the sea. We're not talking about a hull that you're going to find down there and masts and all of that that you would imagine in your mind's eye. We don't find intact ships. We find parts of ships. You have to go underneath the water, add some difficulty to this, find the pieces, try to put them back together, and put together the story that you can. The story Lubcommon was searching for wasn't discovered underneath the water. His ship was lost in the dry official records of Cape Town, South Africa, which reach back to the 1600s.

The Slave Wrecks Project had been diving into these binders for months when they discovered the St. Joseph, known in Portuguese as the São José. The São José arrived at Mozambique Island in 1794. The cargo manifest records 1,500 iron bars for ballast and more than 400 slaves bound for Brazil. This is a cargo sketch from a different but typical ship. Paul Gardulo is a historian of slavery and curator of the Smithsonian Museum. Bodies and souls laid side by side with no room to move, no sanitation. Many people on these voyages died.

How long was that journey? A journey like the one that Sao Jose took could take up to four or more months. This is slavery on a global industrial scale. From about 1500 through the 19th century, through the late 1800, we're talking about at least 12 million people who were taken from their homelands across the sea. Many, many hundreds of thousands more untold people were lost during that trade. Off Cape Town, South Africa, the captain of the Sao Jose was caught between a violent storm and a nautical chart spiked with warnings.

Whittle Rock, Bellows Rock, Rocky Bank. The Sao Jose crashed. 212 slaves were killed. And because money had been lost, there was an investigation. They wanted to have independent verification. Interviews with survivors have survived. This is the crew's account, and right here we have the captain's account. And he signed his name here 220 years ago.

Incredible. He said he decided to save the slaves and the people. The people are the crew. The slaves are just cargo. The 200-year-old investigation pinpointed the site, and in 2010, divers responding to a metal detector discovered bars of iron. One of those divers is Jakob Boschoff, an archaeologist with South Africa's Izeko Museum and Lubcoman's partner in founding the Slave Wrecks Project. Boschoff says these are the iron bars we mentioned a moment ago on the São José Manifest, the ballast for the ship.

So you actually were excavating the sand on the sea bottom. This stuff was under the sand. Under the sand. So you're in how much water? About five meters of water. About 15, 20 feet of water. That's correct. On the sea bottom. That's correct. This stuff was under the sand. Under the sand. So you're in how much water? About five meters of water. About 15, 20 feet of water. That's correct. And then these are two feet under the sand below that. That's right. Turns out, shallow water only makes the work harder. Surf tosses the divers, and sand, vacuumed away, settles back within hours. But after more than 300 dives, this is what they've recovered so far. These are nails that pinned sheets of copper over the hull for protection.

As you can see, what looks like a lump of concrete is marine growth on a wooden pulley block, similar to this one used to hoist sails and cargo. This x-ray shows the two white spaces where rope was threaded around the wheel. The divers discovered wood that a lab would later trace back to Mozambique and this may be the most revealing artifact of all. Masked by two centuries under the sea, x-rays show a shackle similar to this used to bind slaves. So there's a long bar running through and shackles had often were on a long bar, the leg shackles especially. So a long iron bar with a round metal ring. Yeah, that sort of thing, yes. And in this particular case, leg shackles. Leg shackles. That's right.

Have you found everything that's down there now? No, not at all. Not even close. We've got a lot more to do. We've only scratched the surface at this stage. How can you be sure that the wreck you found off Cape Town is in fact the Saint-Jose? There are certain types of artifacts that are found on this wreck that put us within a particular time bracket. Ceramics, for example. But then there are other things that I think are very important. We have an account that gives enormous specificity in terms of geographic location, and it tells us the bay in which it was located. Finally, we find a document in Lisbon that says

the San Jose's manifest when it left Lisbon. And the first item on that said 1,500 bars of iron ballast. You put all of those different lines of evidence together, it's almost statistically impossible that it could be anything else. you put all of those different lines of evidence together, it's almost statistically impossible that it could be anything else. They are the first artifacts known to be preserved from a ship on a voyage of slavery, and they will anchor the slavery exhibit next fall when Lonnie Bunch opens the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in Washington.

The story of slavery is everybody's story. It is a story about how we're all shaped by it, regardless of race, regardless of how long we've been in this country. We hope that we can be a factor to both educate America around this subject, but maybe more importantly, help Americans finally wrestle with this, talk about it, debate it, because only through that conversation can we ever find the reconciliation healing that I think we all want. Lonnie Bunch has some surprising ideas about how to approach a painful past. Go to 60minutesovertime.com. Now an update on a story we called The Storm After the Storm.

Last March, Sharon Alfonsi reported that following Superstorm Sandy, engineering reports on damaged houses were altered to reduce insurance payouts. The insurance program was backed by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And the flood program's head pledged to make the storm victims whole. So are we going to make it right? I am, as you know, I'm doing everything I can in the midst of negotiations to try to make that right.

Immediately after our story aired, FEMA agreed to settle 101 cases for $11 million. But now, seven months later, not one of those families has received a check. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.