Commemorating Memories of Places

Introduction

 Commemorating place memory plays a significant role since it brings back the feelings of individual and shared identity attached to the places in question. Most built places, such as slave houses, museums, libraries, status, street naming, and buildings are geared towards bringing back memories to people who have shared history.

Reflecting on this week reading reminded me of Transatlantic Slave Trade and the slave houses I visited in the Gambia and Senegal. Specifically, in the Gambia’s these aspect of history is part of the education system, in order words it is part of the heritage of the country so as kids learn about slavery and slave trade of their ancestor as early as in primary school. I remembered visiting slaves’ houses in the Gambia during my primary six. This visit taught me lasting memories on how slave trade was carryout throughout Africa. In addition, I learnt how our ancestor where treated and shipped to the new world as they called like a pieces of goods or commodities.  These past memories will never fade away in our society based on my personal experience visiting and studying about them. As argued by Cresswell (2004), the “ability of place to make the past come to life in the present and thus contribute to the production and reproduction of social memory” ( p.87).

      Janjanbureh slave house, Georgetown (The Gambia).         

Goree Island slave house (Senegal)

The pictures above shows the slave houses that served as shipping point for many slaves that were exported to the Americas. These buildings were built in mouth of the Atlantic Ocean in The Gambia and Senegal. These houses served as a place for storing slaves before they are ship to their final destination. Therefore, these places functioned as memories for African as is part of our ancestry and is part of our culture and history. In line with geographic discourse, Slave houses represent part of cultural geography of Africa because it give us the identity of our ancestor.

Most importantly, these places will aid our generation to know the dark past of their ancestral history. I believe most government of African countries invested in these slave houses to keep them alive to serve as commemorating slave trade. As Cresswell (2004) stated “some memories are allowed to fade – are not given any kind of support” (p.85). I quite agree with the author proposition since some memories disappear if they are not supported. Without doubt, I am certain that many African governments maintain these slave houses and include in their school curriculum in the teaching of slavery and slave trade to prevent fade memories. In a related manner, this has help many people especially African American to traced back the root of their ancestry. For example, people like Alex Haley believe to be connected to Kunta Kinte original from Juffure known as Juffure Island in the Gambia. Juffure Island, houses one of the slave houses and served as shipping point from the Gambia during the slave trade.

Consequently, place names are an important part of our geographical and cultural environment. They identify geographical entities of different kinds and represent irreplaceable cultural values that are of vital significance to people's sense of well-being and feeling. Therefore commemorating places and names are of major social importance to our society. 

    The underground dungeon for the resistant slaves

Where the Slaves were held till their transport

     The exit to the ships and the sea (Door of no return)

Slaves with their Masters and Guards

  

The above pictures are unit houses within the slave houses where slave are held before they are transported through the sea to Europe then to America. These houses are very tiny and hundreds of slaves have been kept in one place. Before shiping most of them, many  died and some who are very strong slave and worried become weak to resist been taken away. According to a historian narrator in during my visit to Goree Island in Senegal, some of the slave houses in Gambia are meant for resisting slave so that they are kept in dungeon as a form of punishment and to weaken them.  Cresswell (2004) suggested that “these places have the power to force hidden and painful memories to the forefront throught their material existence” (Cresswell 2004, p. 89). In a similar manner, these slave houses serves as a historical landscapes in many African countries are part of African geographical landscape that produce and reproduction of knowledge of the past history and these memories will ever stay with the continent.  Remarkably, these houses does not only produce knowledge but it also serve a tourism development for countries and heritage culture which is part of our socity. It serve as a knoweldege center for thousands of visitors world wide every year. Visitors learn the heritage culture, and the history of slavery that was done from the global scale and its effects.

Thus, this week reading also reminded me of the historical geography seminar I did during my first semester. The reading on Place, Memory, and Conflict, the important of place naming associated with the civil right movement that brought massive memorial infrastructures in the US South. After the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., memory works was untaken across the many US towns and cities. These monumental works has change the landscape of the US south. The construction of museums, monuments, parks, streets naming, and libraries associated with the civil rights movement and the king. This landscape produce memories of the past in the US history. According to Dwyer (2000), public history deepens engagement of social history since it represents a shift in “landscapes for the legacy of American public history” from the “commemoration elite individuals and their homes and toward the remembrance of more mundane, socially representative lives and landscapes” (Dwyer, 2000, p.661). The result of all this ongoing “memory work” is a rich, complicated landscape comprising of traditional expressions of public memory (e.g., monuments and museums, murals and historic plaques) as well as more routine elements such as street signs and community centers (Dwyer 2000, P. 661). Dwyer (2000) also argues that the purpose of producing this memorial landscape, the public portrayal of American history has been change. I believed the question is how these memories are been produces, what it represent, how do we use them to create knowledge of past in order to commemorate the past history. In addition, Cresswell (2004) argues that “place have many memories and the question of which memories are promoted and which conclude to be memories at all is a political question”  ( p. 89).

Therefore, the argument Dwyer is putting that, there are significant contradictions and exclusions in the memorial landscape’s treatment of the civil rights era. Because of “these exclusion and inclusion some question have to put in the creation of memorial landscapes” (Dwyer 2000, p.662).  Dwyer further argues that memories landscapes associated with civil right movement are major heritage attractions, and the tourism industry is responsible in part for their development and promotion. In addition the “growing consensus as to what the movement stood for and who the heroes were certain elements that are important to look into” (Dwyer 2000, p.662). Dwyer further posited that the manner in which

“the role women play in the civil rights movement was overwhelming most of whom are working class activist, however, attention given over to the “Great Man” paradigm of history that focuses more on leaders than on organizers or participants and valorizes the national at the expense of the local” (Dwyer 2000, p. 663).

Therefore the above assertions are in contrast with Cresswell (2004) argument that “people with different interests have to make their case for preservation and what to be included or excluded, thus a new kind of place is born out of a contested process of interpretation” (p..90). In conclusion, “the connection between place and memory and the contested nature have to be the object of component of geographical research” (Cresswell 2004, p.91)

References

For more information on slave trade in Gambia and Senegal read Barry, B. (1998) book

And more on slave houses visit this link

Barry, B. (1998). Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade. Cambridge University Press.

Cresswell, Tim. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Pp. 85-93.

Owen Dwyer, “Interpreting the Civil Rights Movement: Place, Memory, and Conflict.”  The Professional Geographer 52 (4) (2000): 660-671.