EVER SO often, we are publicly reminded of the damage done to us by the imposition of other people’s memory on our history. In efforts to shift responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Africans, or at least claim Africans were equal partners, the sordid beginnings with the Portugese capture and enslavement of West Africans from coastal villages from around 1440 is increasingly neglected. Despite the King of Kongo’s written protest to the King of Portugal, the kidnapping became more frequent and more systematic, particularly after Europe’s conquest of the Americas.