Having pardoned his son, Hunter, President Joe Biden arrived in Angola, his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, at the start of a four-day trip to showcase a U.S.-backed railway project, possibly to counter China’s commitment to Africa. In 2015, Barack Obama was the first president to visit that part of Africa.
Angola was not Biden’s first stop, however. He visited the island nation of Cape Verde and had a brief meeting with the country’s prime minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva.
Cape Verde was once part of Portugal’s colonial possessions in Africa, along with other territories like Angola and — most importantly — Mozambique. Angola was a key point of departure for the millions of captive Africans during the Atlantic slave trade, and Biden’s itinerary includes a visit to the National Slavery Museum in Luanda as well as travel to the port city of Lobito for a look at the proposed rail project.
At some point, it would benefit Biden and Wanda Tucker to share their impressions of the country. Tucker, 61, traveled to Angola in 2019, believing her ancestors were among the first captives brought by the English slave traders to the colonies 400 years ago. In the journal she kept, she wrote, “I closed my eyes to feel the motion of the boat and imagined, for several months, Anthony and Isabella in the bottom of the ship, feeling the movement of the ocean swaying back and forth. How frightening was that?”
Tucker was trying to envision the voyage of an enslaved relative, whose descendant could have been the child of William Tucker, the first named African born in what became the U.S. The notes in her journal are reminiscent of the experiences of Alex Haley as he sought to trace his roots back to Africa.