Island of Stolen Souls.

• Author: MARCUS, NAOMI
• Position: Brief Article

AFRICAN-AMERICANS ARE RETURNING TO AFRICA TO CONFRONT SLAVERY'S UGLY PAST

Standing in the Slave House on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, where millions of African slaves saw their homeland for the last time before being shipped to America, Karen Finney wept.

"It broke us all down, just the brutality of it," Finney recalls. "I have been there twice and each time it ripped into my heart."

Finney, 32, is one of thousands of African-Americans who are traveling to Africa in an attempt to go back to a home they've never seen. With its stark, stone slave quarters, and the haunting "Door of No Return" facing the ocean where the imprisoned Africans were herded onto slave ships, Goree Island has become the central pilgrimage site for a growing trend of roots tourism to Africa. Inescapably, the travellers end up having an emotional confrontation with the ghosts of slavery.

"You have to see it, and then make peace with it," says Finney, who works as a political aide to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. "Africa is part of who I am. I don't know if my family came from East or West Africa, but I had to touch that part of where I came from. I have Irish friends who have gone back to Ireland, and Jewish friends who have traveled to Israel. They know where they came from."

The trend toward finding where you came from in Africa is still small by world travel standards. About 25 million people visited the continent of Africa in 1998, while Orlando, Florida, alone attracted 36 million that same year. But travel to Africa is steadily increasing. Commerce Department figures show that half a million Americans visited Africa this year, double the number of 10 years ago, though the majority of tourists go to explore wild game parks rather than their own heritage.

But Goree (guh-RAY) Island, along with several sites in Ghana and Zambia, has become a popular destination for roots tours. Kate Doty, director of Africa tours for San Francisco-based Global Expeditions, says her agency's bookings have increased dramatically in the last year. She says her groups are often mixed, both African-Americans and whites.

Easy access to information--more than 2,500 Web sites are devoted to African travel and genealogy--has contributed to the surge in travel there.

Goree Island was the dramatic backdrop chosen by President Clinton when he apologized for slavery during his tour to Africa in 1998.

A SYMBOL OF THE SLAVE TRADE

One reason Goree Island has become the symbol of...