Black Americans plunge into slavery's legacy in Nigeria

Black Americans plunge into slavery's legacy in Nigeria

By Glenn McKenzie

GBEREFU ISLAND, Nigeria (AP): The sand trail passed a well
where slaves once paused to drink, and ended at a statue of two
people linked by chains around their necks. Under a palm tree
next to a wooden sign saying "Point of No Return," Loretta Butler
broke down and cried.

Butler, a state health administrator from Roosevelt, New York,
wondered aloud if her forebears had been among the hundreds of
thousands of African men, women and children force-marched along
this lonely stretch of Nigerian beach onto slave ships bound for
the New World.

"I feel overwhelmed to see the place where some of my
ancestors may have come from," she said, wiping her eyes.

Butler and 21 other black Americans -- 12 of them mayors from
small cities and towns, mostly in the South -- are touring
Nigeria this week to grapple hands-on with the legacy of slavery.

Their journey included a walk in the footsteps of African
slaves on the half-mile sandy path across Gberefu Island to the
beach.

From here, as many as 10,000 slaves annually between 1518 and
1880 were loaded onto boats and shipped to the Americas,
according to Nigerian historians.

Each year, thousands of black Americans make pilgrimages to
Ghana and Senegal, where crumbling slave dungeons have been
turned into healthy tourist industries.

Butler's group, however, was among the first organized
American tours in recent memory to Nigeria, where up to one-third
of all slaves bound for the Americas may have gone through
Gberefu Island and the nearby port of Badagary.

Butler's tears were partly out of frustration that most
slaves' individual histories have been lost, she said. About all
she knows is that her ancestors came from Africa.

The question of slavery's modern-day legacy was equally
troubling for her: Why do so many blacks in the United States and
Africa still live in poverty?

"Poverty is obviously a result of slavery. We are still
fighting that," she said. "We will return with this message."

For many of the visitors, the voyage was a chance to make a
personal connection with Africa.

Walking to the Point of No Return, "I could feel my ancestors
telling me it is OK," Butler said. "I am home."

Others in the group who have visited Africa before, like
Michelle Kourouma, executive director of the National Conference
of Black Mayors, said she hoped to spread understanding of how
slavery dehumanized blacks and whites alike.

"When you're inhumane to another person you undermine your own
humanity," said Kourouma, of Atlanta, who can trace her lineage
back to her great-great-grandfather, a slave who escaped from
Virginia to Canada.

The choice of turbulent Nigeria as a destination gave the
Americans a glimpse of urban African life at its most difficult
and raw.

In Lagos, Nigeria's main city, Mayor Christopher J. Campbell
of Eastover, North Carolina, was shocked to see vast traffic
jams, piles of burning garbage and people crowded into
shantytowns stretching for miles.

"There are some places we have seen that are civilized and
some others that are more primitive. It is quite disturbing to
see," Campbell said.

"There are a lot of people going without electricity and
sanitation. And there is too much garbage, it is hard to promote
tourism with a dirty city."

Some expressed surprise that cases of trafficking child slaves
in Nigeria and neighboring countries continue to be reported. The
United Nations estimates at least 200,000 children are traded
yearly in West and Central Africa.

The mayors' visit, which ends Thursday, is part of Black
Heritage Festival, an effort by Lagos authorities to promote
black American tourism.

Opening the festival Sunday, state Gov. Bola Tinubu said he
hoped the tourists would overlook the trash because "we are
trying to raise money to clean it up."

Many people in Badagary, the fishing port and former colonial
city not far from the old slave port, were hoping the American
visitors would bring investment to the city.

Others wanted only to share stories of slavery.

"We all suffered from slavery. It tore our families apart, it
made some of us traitors who sold others and made others of us
into heroes," said Paul d'Almeida, a Benin-born teacher of
French. His great-great-grandfather was a slave who escaped from
Brazil and returned to Benin.

At sunset, the Americans and Nigerians did what their slave
ancestors could not. Lighting candles, they wound their way back
down the trail, away from the Point of No Return.