On Saturday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited a salmon-colored cottage on an island near Senegal, one of the most well-known representations of the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade.
It is a part of a 10-day journey intended to restore economic ties between the US and Africa.
Tens of millions of Africans were transported over the Atlantic from the structure, known as the House of Slaves, never to return.
Gorée and the transatlantic slave trade are not merely a part of African history, according to Yellen. They also contributed to American history.
“We know that the tragedy did not stop with the generation of humans taken from here. Even after slavery was abolished, Black Americans — many of whom can trace their descendants through ports like this across Africa — were denied the rights and freedoms promised to them under our Constitution.”
According to the White House Historical Association, the construction of some of the most illustrious institutions in the US, such as the White House and Capitol, involved African slaves and their offspring.
Yellen acknowledged the consequences of that violent past’s persistence as well as the survival of many of its victims.
“In the United States, what’s remarkable is how many African-American men and women overcame the odds, created better lives for themselves and their descendants and became central to our economy and democracy, building our cities, powering our industries and bending the conscience of the United States and the world toward justice and all of this in the face of systemic social and economic injustice,” she said.
Many celebrities, including former US presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton as well as Nelson Mandela of South Africa, have visited the island before Yellen did.
