Gorée Island, Senegal, And Its Terrible Reputation
This is a highly symbolic site in the story of the African slave trade
The island of Gorée has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978. It has this status not for any intrinsic beauty it may have or the quality of its buildings, or even because of its association with a famous person from history, but to remind the world of one of the worst crimes ever committed by one section of mankind against another.
Gorée is a small island no more than 900 metres in length and 350 metres across. It lies about a mile off the coast of Senegal at Dakar, the capital, and is served by a ferry that takes about 30 minutes to make the crossing.
It was believed for many years that this was the main departure point for African slaves on their way to the West Indies and North America, and that some 20 million people spent time on the island in transit to the colonies during the height of the slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries.
However, this claim has been disputed in recent years, and it is now generally accepted that Gorée was only one of many such points of departure in West Africa. Only a few thousand slaves may have been imprisoned in the “House of Slaves”, and some researchers dispute whether any were held here at all. However, this is…