Content area
Full Text
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the 175th anniversary of the first meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
This year also represents the 50th anniversary of independence for many African states, a credit to the visionary leaders of Ghana, Tanzania, Guinea, Cape Verde and Zaire who led decades-long movements to throw off the yoke of colonial slavery.
In West African mythology, "Sankofa" is a bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg in its mouth that symbolizes the future. In the spirit of Sankofa, it is time to reflect on Africa's tragic history and also to look toward ways of abolishing the lingering forms of modern-day slavery that ravage lives throughout much of the African world.
Slave traders transported 12 million Africans across the Atlantic, wresting them from the land of their ancestors. Many of those who survived the voyage were beaten, tortured, separated from all they knew and forced to work in the New World's plantations and mines.