Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction. When the past shadows the present: the legacy in Africa of slavery and the slave trade / Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin Klein -- The struggle for political emancipation of slave descendants in contemporary Borgu, northern Benin / Eric Komlavi Hahonou -- On remembering slavery in northern Igbo proverbial discourse / Damian U. Opata -- To cut the rope from one's neck? manumission documents of slave descendants from central Malian Fulbe society / Lotte Pelckmans -- Memories of slavery in a former slave-trading community: the Aro of the Bight of Biafra / G. Ugo Nwokeji -- Tabula and Pa Jacob, two twentieth-century slave narratives from Cameroon / Zacharie Saha -- Songs of sorrow, songs of triumph: memories of the slave trade among the Bulsa of Ghana / Emmanuel Saboro -- Evoking the past through material culture: the Mami Tchamba shrine / Alessandra Brivio -- Slave ancestry and religious discrimination in The Gambia / Alice Bellagamba and Martin Klein -- Memories of slavery and the slave trade from Futa Toro, northern Senegal / Makhroufi Ousmane Traoré.