The Door of No Return. I did not know the role of this small doorway in history. The picture led me to find out. And now that I know, the picture is even more haunting.
The Obama family just visited Goree Island, a small island off the coast of Senegal. For roughly three hundred years until the mid-1840s, countless men, women and children from Africa were kidnapped from their homes and communities and brought to the island to be sold as slaves.
The “Door of No Return” was the point out of which many, perhaps millions, of African slaves took the final step from their home continent and onto the slave ships that would bring them to the new world, if they even survived the journey.
Michelle Obama describes her experience standing in the doorway, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean: “It is difficult to fully describe the heartbreak and despair I felt standing at the site of such unthinkable cruelty and suffering. It was almost hard for me to breathe as I thought about the terror and grief these men, women and children must have felt as they took their last steps through that doorway, knowing they would never again see their families or their country.”
Note: Many African scholars dispute the claims of Goree Island’s museum, but there is no denying that such atrocities did in fact occur. It really doesn’t matter where. The symbolism is clear. <b>
http://www.essence.com/2013/06/28/michelle-obama-writes-emotional-essay-about-goree-island
