Angola’s slavery museum confronts the darkest horrors of the trade — and honors those who fought back

By Griffin Shea, CNN

(CNN) — On the outskirts of Luanda, in a centuries-old white house on a hill, a small museum documents one of the greatest horrors of human history. Luanda, the Angolan capital, was the epicenter of the Atlantic slave trade. Now its National Museum of Slavery is working to become a place where the descendants of slaves can return — not only to learn about the history, but to dig into archives that might help trace their ancestry.

The Museu Nacional da Escravatura (National Museum of Slavery) sits on the site of the one-time estate of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, a Portuguese man who enslaved so many people that he’s said to have won a commendation for it.

From the 1400s through 1867, an estimated 12.5 million people were enslaved across Africa and transported across the Atlantic. Researchers believe that nearly half — about 45% — came from the region around modern Angola.

At least 1.6 million were forcibly shipped from Luanda, taken mainly to Brazil. But the first slaves to arrive in Britain’s American colonies in 1619 also came from Angola. Registers reproduced on the walls of the museum show enslaved people dispatched not only to what would become Southern states, but also to places like New York and Rhode Island.

A handful of slavery museums ring the African coast, from Senegal to Ghana, down to South Africa and up to Tanzania. Like most of the others, the Luanda museum was once a prison for enslaved Africans, perched on a cliff overlooking the sea — a point of no return designed around imposing geography to prevent any chance of escape.

Tools of oppression

Today, the oceanfront side of the museum is as stark as it would have been centuries ago. The other side is no longer a colonial estate, but a large paved parking lot for tour buses, with a craft market and a helipad for VIP visitors.

But what’s particularly jarring about the Luanda museum is that part of it is housed in what was once a Catholic chapel on de Carvalho’s former estate. Relics of that time are on display, notably the wooden crucifix and a baptismal font. The font was a tool for the Portuguese colonizers to strip away the identities of enslaved Angolans, by forcibly baptizing them before placing them on ships to cross the Atlantic.

“They were baptized here, in the chapel,” said Marlene Ananias Rodrigues Pedro, head of the Department of Scientific Research at the museum. “It was during baptism that enslaved people had their names changed. Their actual names were taken away and they were given names of Portuguese origin.”

“Most of them took ‘Angola’ as their surname to designate the origin of the enslaved people,” she said. “The Portuguese didn’t want them to keep their identity, to keep their personal name.”

Before being forced onto the ships, the Portuguese tried to twist biblical passages to justify slavery and convince Angolans to accept it, she added.

The brutal methods of forcing people into slavery are on display in a room next to the chapel: guns, manacles, chains. Drawings from the period show slavers beating Angolans on the palms with paddles spiked with nails. Other images show wealthy White women feeding Black children scraps under the table like dogs, with metal collars around their necks. Adult Angolans, possibly their parents, serve the Whites their meal from silver platters.

If the beatings and the religion weren’t enough, alcohol was another tool to try to force Angolans into submission. Two metal stills sit on the balcony overlooking the ocean.

“It was also the colonizer’s idea to make the enslaved people drink,” said Pedro. Keeping them drunk, the thinking went, made them easier to control and to pack shoulder to shoulder into the cargo holds of ships.

Fierce resistance

Distinctively, this museum does more than show Angolans as victims. The displays also document the long and fierce resistance to both slavery and colonialism. Weapons used by Angolans line one room, showing how they used poison arrows, and traded local products for guns to fight back.

”They fought. And hard. Independence in Africa was not handed over on a silver platter. There was resistance,” said Pedro.

That spirit of resistance endured for centuries, through the slave trade and into the colonial era, with the Angolan War of Independence against the Portuguese lasting from 1961 to 1974. The country finally won its independence in November 1975.

That’s part of the story that Pedro and the museum’s director José António Fazenda hope that visitors will take away. And they’re working with researchers in the United States and Brazil to make Angola’s archival records accessible to anyone who wants to find them.

In a modest building at the foot of the hill where the museum sits, Fazenda and Pedro are working with the government to create a digitalized version of the Luanda archives.

“We want to create a functional library in this room,” said Fazenda. “We are currently working with a group of professionals to prepare a campaign to collect materials for this library. This is our dream. We want people who are here and want to learn more to have a place where they can.”

Uncovering the past

Although the African names of enslaved people were never recorded, the documentation does state where they were taken and which ships they were on. With enough work, there could be clues about where they were captured. Hidden between the lines is a richer story about how Angolans fought back.

Currently, these records are housed in the National Archives in the center of Luanda, accessible only with special permission, in conditions that are less than ideal.

The last time Pedro was there, “she left with red eyes and a cold, due to the freezing conditions,” said Fazenda.

“The university and minister’s finance team does not have enough money to pay for and do everything that needs to be done. The department needs a budget that exceeds what the museum has,” he said.

That’s why they’re working with American and Brazilian researchers to pool talents and resources, and are hoping to raise funds from private donors to support their work.

“We want to preserve this collection for future generations,” said Pedro.

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