Goree Island Slave House Exposed as a Fake!

That's right, I couldn't believe it myself until I read this article in The Seattle Times, and I still can't believe it. I mean how many of us have looked at our TV sets with extreme sadness and tears running down our faces over the story of Goree Island and its famous Slave House and portal, The Door of No Return? Zillions, that's how many!

Everybody who is anybody travelling through West Africa and particularly Senegal over the past few decades has stopped to pay his/her respects at Goree Island___Presidents and Prime Ministers, The Pope, movie stars and famous personalities___ 200,000 people a year visit this landmark and shrine to one of the saddest episodes in human history, The Transatlantic Slave Trade between Africa and The Americas.

Renowned professor Philip Curtin of John Hopkins University, author of more than 24 books on the African Slave Trade and African History, says "The whole story (about Goree Island) is a phony." No, No, No___this can't be. Not only that, the Senegalese government and Senegal historians and other experts on African History have known about this scam for quite some time!

According to the professor, The Slave House on Goree Island was not a depot for slaves awaiting the brutal and inhuman treatment and transport by slavers and their ships sitting off the coast of Dakar, but that it served in the late 1700's as a mansion house for some white French dude. The transport to slave ships of African slaves actually took place at the mouth of the Senegal and Gambia rivers on the mainland, miles away from Goree Island.

Aint nothin' sacred anymore? Now the Senegalese will have to move the whole attraction to the mainland and drop the theatre about the "Door of No Return"; otherwise, the tourists may not return. How am I going to break this news to the folks back home, another lie about our roots? What does the President of Senegal (whom I like from what I've heard and read about him) and his Minister of Culture and Tourism have to say about this? I'm waitin' Monsieur Presidente?

My thanks to the author of Black Looks blog, where I learned about this story first. You need to check out her August 10th posting on the Locust plague in Africa at the moment, that's scary stuff!