GOREE ISLAND, Senegal, 9 July 2003 — On a spot where hundreds of thousands of shackled Africans were shipped into slavery, President George W. Bush yesterday denounced racial servitude as one of the greatest sins of history.
At an infamous slave house on the western tip of Africa, Bush said the torment of those whose liberty was “stolen and sold” had, by a twist of history, set America on its own ongoing journey to freedom.
In a speech addressed to the people of Africa, and a domestic audience back home, Bush attempted to link the horrors of the past with modern day scourges of civil war, poverty and terrorism.
“At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises,” Bush said.
“One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history,” Bush said on Goree Island off the coast of the Senegalese capital Dakar on the first leg of his five-nation African tour.
The camp features a door facing the Atlantic Ocean known as the “Door of No Return” where young men, women and children were herded onto ships for a perilous journey to the plantations of the New World.
Bush did not apologize for slavery but noted Americans throughout history “clearly saw this sin and called it by name.”
Despite painful shared history, Bush said the United States and African nations must work together to eradicate disease and war, and to encourage greater business ties.
“We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in the direction of justice,” said Bush, who left for South Africa later in the day.
Joining Bush on his tour were Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, the two African-American pioneers who frame his foreign policy.
“A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions,” Bush said, on the first step of a tour which also takes him to South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana and Uganda. “By a plan known only to providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America,” Bush said.
“The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free,” he said.
“My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over.”
The speech will be seen in the United States as a dialogue with politically powerful African-Americans seen as reluctant to support the modern Republican party, ahead of Bush’s reelection fight next year.
It was also intended to lay the moral foundation for the president’s Africa visit, on which he will tout his $15-billion anti-AIDS plan and ambitious development initiatives.
And in a note of irony, Bush was yesterday still dealing with an indirect remnant of the moral stain of slavery — deliberating whether to send peacekeeping troops to Liberia, a west African state founded by freed American slaves.
“Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for peace,” Bush told his audience.
“Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will wage an unrelenting campaign of justice ... in the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tide against AIDS in Africa.”
The ochre-colored House of Slaves was just one of many slave depots dotted across the island, occupied successively by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and the French. Slavery had existed in Africa since ancient times, with slaves captured in battle often sold to Arab traders. But it was only with arrival of the Europeans that it became a fully-fledged industry.
Goree owed its importance to the fact that it lies on the continent’s westernmost tip, thus making it convenient both for ships heading across the Atlantic and for European vessels on their way to or from Africa.
