Ile de Goree

Today my thoughts turned to a small island of the coast of Dakar, Senegal called Goree. In a small house on the coast, thousands of men, women and children were bought and sold, ultimately to be shipped to the new world in the most horrible of conditions. Those that tried to escape to the water were generally either shot by the guards or devoured by sharks, and those who stayed faced disease, starvation, death and if they made it alive....slavery.

Historians have tried to discount the idea that Goree was a major hub of slave transport, but that does nothing to diminish the suffering endured there, the monument that remains or the emotions of those who look through the "Gate of No Return".

Recently, I watched an African-American former CIA agent break down in tears while placing a rose at the gate and comment on man's enormous capacity for evil; his daughter standing by expressing what carrying an American passport means to her.

So, on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I renew my committment to judge on "the content of their character" and not "the color of their skin", or their religious affiliation, their upbringing or anything else that is irrelevant to them being a human being and a child of God.