US Yellen visits Atlantic Slave Trading Quarter in Senegal – Door Of No Return

The United States Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen visited Slave trading post in Gorée Island, Senegal (Door Of No Return), while on her official African trip. Yellen was in Senegal in the continuation of the 10-day African leadership and business trip, a global economy dialogue tour that have taken her to Senegal and finally to Zambia and South Africa.

In short remark during the visit at Goree, she said “Gorée and the trans-Atlantic slave trade are not just a part of African history. They are a part of American history as well .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 descendance through ports like this across Africa — were denied the rights and freedoms promised to them under our Constitution.”

She continued, “In both Africa and the United States, even as we have made tremendous strides, we are still living with the brutal consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade,” she said.

“What I take from this place is the importance of redoubling our commitment to fight for our shared values and principles wherever they are threatened — in the United States, in Africa, and around the world,” she said. ”We have more work to do.”

AP reported: “The economic benefits that major slave-trading nations, including the United States, reaped for hundreds of years on the backs of unpaid labor could amount to tens of trillions of dollars, according to research on the commerce. And in the U.S., African slaves and their children contributed to the building of the nation’s most storied institutions, including the White House and Capitol, according to the White House Historical Association.”