Although the number of captured Africans who actually passed through the “Door of No Return” is in dispute, and the island’s importance may be more symbolic than anything, the site’s power to bring visitors face-to-face with the chilling realities of the slave trade is undisputed.
Totally worth the trip to see even though it’s not convenient to much of anything other than (Jimmy Carter’s home in) Plains. The creepy part comes with the re-creations of Vietnamese prisons, both the infamous tiger cages and the mortar cells, as well as some of the “may neither I nor anybody I love ever have to do something like that to survive”. (One of the most interesting along those lines is a simple collection of homemade toothpicks: P.O.W.s held by the Japanese would occasionally secret sharp toothpick sized sticks and slip it into the food of the cows that they were feeding so that, hopefully, the cow would bleed to death internally. This started because once when a cow died from a disease the Japanese were afraid to butcher it because the meat might be contaminated so they gave it to the prisoners with a “why not?” attitude, and it was the first meat/serious protein the p.o.w.'s had since their confinement; the “toothpicks” were done so that maybe, just maybe, the cow would die of internal bleeding, the Japanese would think it was as diseased, and they’d give them another one.)
Next up: Atrocities committed by the American Government against its citizens
World War II Internment Camps
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments
Sherman’s March
Not just revisionist history or being neo-Confederate (which I’m not)- Sherman was villified and damned at the time in the northern press for his army’s crimes against civilians.
Next up: Atrocities committed by the American Government against its citizens
World War II Internment Camps
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments
Sherman’s March
The Trail of Tears
Wounded Knee Massacre
18th Amendment of the Constitution
The execution of Ethel Rosenberg
Her husband was guilty of (barely competent) espionage and arguably deserved execution, but most objective scholars would agree that Ethel at most deserved jail time, if that.
I figured they were people living in the United States and subject to the authority of the American government. If they were not legally citizens, that’s arguably a good item for the list.
I’m dubious of #6. Prohibition was duly proposed and ratified by the citizenry through their elected state legislatures; it wasn’t imposed on them by the U.S. Government. Also: Very bad policy, and lots of unintended consequences, but calling it an “atrocity” is a bit much.
Atrocities committed by the American Government against its citizens
World War II Internment Camps
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments
Sherman’s March
The Trail of Tears
Wounded Knee Massacre
18th Amendment of the Constitution
The execution of Ethel Rosenberg
American detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Elmira, N.Y. prison camp during Civil War
Lincoln refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession and insisted that the Confederates remained U.S. citizens, after all.
