How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

Louis Nelson, an architectural historian and vice provost at the University of Virginia who has spent time working at Gorée, would later tell me, “In our assessment of that building, we found one chamber that was likely the holding cell for human beings would have held maybe fifteen or twenty people at a max,” though the story often told on the island was that some of them held hundreds. Nelson had been part of an international team of researchers who conducted research on the island and studied the House of Slaves and its history in partnership with local curators. “There also were pens, so there were dedicated buildings on Gorée for the containment of large numbers of people. And then lastly, those people are going to be marched in coffles down to the docks. So that Door of No Return that you stood in, that Barack Obama stood in, and that the pope stood in”—he paused briefly—“that door probably never really led to ships.” His voice dropped an octave. More likely, he said, “that was the place where waste was thrown into the sea.”