Joseph Opala - Bunce Island Research and Advocacy

Bunce Island Research and Advocacy

Opala began his research in the 1970s with an investigation of Bunce Island, the British slave castle in Sierra Leone. He hired workers to cut back the dense vegetation that covers the ruins, documented the various structures, and conducted oral history research in the fishing villages on the neighboring islands. He was the first scholar to identify the functions of all the buildings in the castle, including the men's slave yard, the women and children's yard, the gunpowder magazine, and even the flagpole bases.

He has also done historical research on Bunce Island, first in Sierra Leone's libraries and archives, then later in the US and UK, an activity that became a lifelong pursuit. Opala was the first scholar to recognize that Bunce Island has stronger links to North America than any other West African slave trading base. He showed that Bunce Island dispatched slave ships to Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia on a regular basis in the mid- and late 1700s, and that passing slave ships bound for those ports also stopped at Bunce Island to purchase slaves. Opala calls Bunce Island "the most important historic site in Africa for the United States".

Opala has devoted decades to promoting popular awareness of Bunce Island's importance for African Americans. He took Colin Powell to Bunce Island in 1992. After visiting the castle, Powell was emotionally moved. He later described the experience in his autobiography, My American Journey. He said: "I am an American...But today, I am something more..I am an African too...I feel my roots here in this continent."