Transatlantic Slave Trade Memorial
A permanent memorial in Addis Ababa dedicated to the more than 12.5 million men, women, and children forcibly taken from Africa — whose deaths were never properly acknowledged or given a proper burial.
--The Memorial
To powerfully convey the suffering, resistance, and memory associated with the Transatlantic slave trade, artists will create slave ship sculptures in materials such as bronze, wood, iron, and stone, representing different facets of history, memory, and resilience. Since most slave ships were constructed from timber, using wood would serve as a direct historical reference. As shown above, this memorial design will depict sculpted enslaved Africans in bronze chains being forced onto an anchored slave ship, symbolizing captivity, forced migration, and brutal conditions. The transatlantic slave trade represents one of the gravest crimes against humanity, forcibly removing millions of Africans from their homelands and subjecting them to unimaginable brutality across the Americas. For over four centuries, more than 12.5 million men, women, and children were forcibly taken from Africa and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas to be enslaved, abused, and permanently separated from their homes, families, and cultures. Many of these enslaved Africans died under brutal conditions, and their deaths were never properly acknowledged or given a proper burial. In addition, many descendants of the enslaved continue to seek spiritual closure, historical acknowledgment, and tangible homecoming.
To meaningfully restore the dignity of enslaved Africans who were stripped of it, soil will be collected from former plantations and sites across the United States, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe, where slaves were forced to labor in bondage. Soil will also be collected from former fortified trading posts and ‘Doors of No Return’ along the coast of Africa, and water from sites connected to the Middle Passage. The soil and the water, which still hold the victims' sweat, tears, and blood, will subsequently be transferred to Africa.
Pinpointing the points of origin of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade has been challenging due to limited records and the widespread dispersal of individuals over time. Recognizing that extensive slave routes often transported captured Africans from inland kingdoms to coastal areas, where they were then loaded onto ships bound for the Americas, it is argued that sites related to historic slave ports and the ‘Doors of No Return’ along the African coast cannot be considered ancestral homes because they were not the original starting points for most of those enslaved.
Given the major challenge of choosing where to transfer the remains of enslaved Africans from the Americas and other regions, and considering that despite the global scale of the transatlantic slave trade, there is a notable lack of a unifying memorial on African soil that physically links the continent with the lands where enslaved Africans worked, suffered, and died, extensive Diaspora consultations reached a consensus that a “Transatlantic Slave Trade Memorial” be established at the African Nations Colonization Memorial site in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the political and diplomatic capital of Africa and host of the African Union (AU).
Soil from locations where slaves were forced to labor will be moved to the “Tomb of the Unknown Slave” within the Transatlantic Slave Trade Memorial, acting as the final resting place for all victims of the transatlantic slave trade.