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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen paid a solemn visit Saturday to the salmon-colored house on an island off Senegal that is one of the most recognized symbols of the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade that trapped tens of millions of Africans in bondage for generations.
Yellen, in Senegal as part of a 10-day trip aimed at rebuilding economic relationships between the U.S. and Africa, stood in the Gorée Island building known as the House of Slaves and peered out of the “Door of No Return,” from which enslaved people were shipped across the Atlantic.
“Gorée and the trans-Atlantic slave trade are not just a part of African history. They are a part of American history as well,” Yellen said in brief remarks during her visit.
“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.
