After 25 years the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project has gone from a dream to reality! The project formally honors, remembers and brings closure to the millions of Africans who died during the Middle Passage to North, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe during the Atlantic slave trade. It repairs the circle of living and ancestors that has been broken for more than five hundred years. Personally, I believe each of us is related to at least one of those millions whose bones are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Implemented over the next eight years, the Project will encourage installation of a marker at 42 US ports where Africans disembarked after surviving the horrible voyage. It will mark a place where people can visit to acknowledge ancestors and their contributions. With each port installation a memorial service will be held. The International Day of Remembrance of the African Slave Trade and Its Abolition (August 23) declared by UNESCO will be observed by us annually.

Every society in the Western Hemisphere has been affected by the African-Atlantic slave trade. People of Africa and the Diaspora still bear the brunt of great injustices originating with this ordeal. This project encircles the Atlantic Ocean as a sacred burial ground.