Lessons Learned from 25 Years of Resistance and Remembrance
If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress *
These include sites like ICSC founding member Maison des Esclaves on Gorée Island in Senegal, where an estimated 33,000 enslaved Africans were kept before being forced to board slave ships. Visitors to the site can walk through its basement cells and see the shackles used to imprison people bound for the Americas while also learning how this brutal history of oppression connects directly to systemic injustice today. Other Sites of Conscience like the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and the National Centre for Arts and Culture in The Gambia are the custodians of more than 50 World Heritage Sites connected to slavery, including the dark dungeons and holding cells of the Cape Coast Castle, Elmina Castle and Kunta Kinteh Island. In North America, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia is just one of many Sites of Conscience in the United States that has become a living monument to the enslaved people who were forced to work there. “These sites are essential in helping the public come to terms with the enduring legacies of slavery. In addition, they provide undeniable physical evidence of the horrors of slavery. As such, the sites and the stories they hold are critical components of the historical record – and any argument for reparations.”
— Elizabeth Silkes, Executive Director at ICSC
The Descendants’ Reparations Initiative will not only support community- and state-driven pursuit of formal reparations, but ensure that governments and institutions are held accountable for preserving these sites as central to our collective understanding of the past and the global call for reparations.
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