The Forks of the Road, located near Natchez, Mississippi, was a significant hub of the United States domestic slave trade in the 19th century. It operated between the 1760s and 1860s, transporting enslaved individuals from the northeastern colonies to the southeastern colonies and then to the lower Mississippi Valley. The location was reportedly America's second-largest southwest enslavement marketplace, with traders forcing enslaved people of African descent people from the old upper South to these regions to meet the insatiable demand for "slaves."

Isaac Franklin, a Tennessee-born "slave trader," and John Armfield were significant figures in the Forks of the Road's history. They formed the partnership Franklin and Armfield in 1828, with Franklin and his nephew managing the receiving and selling headquarters at the Forks of the Road. Armfield used professional agents to comb Virginia and Maryland, buying enslaved individuals and holding them in the Duke Street "slave pen" for conveyance by ship to Franklin in New Orleans.

The Fork of the Road was a bustling depot for trading in human flesh, with compounds set up for housing, feeding, and displaying people for sale. The location was not an auction house but a showroom and inspection room where buyers could purchase individuals from those available that day. The last sales at the Forks occurred in early 1863, just months before the U.S. Army occupied Natchez, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation and ending slavery there.

Despite the banishment of "negro traders" from the city in 1833, traders continued to purchase or lease land at the intersection of Liberty Road and St. Catherine Street, where the Forks of the Road was located. Traders flooded Natchez with human cargo, and Natchez residents and physicians warned that the slave jails were a nuisance and a threat to health. Nevertheless, the Forks of the Road remained a significant marketplace, serving as a nexus for the largest forced labour migration in American history. Between 1800 and 1860, more than 750,000 enslaved African Americans were moved from the upper to the lower South, reflecting a shift in the agricultural economy of each region and the legal closing of the international slave trade after 1808.