Rep. Ilhan Omar posted a powerful pair of images on social media showing her hand-in-hand with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, walking through the “Door of Return” in Ghana this week. Omar wrote a caption that read: “They said ‘send her back’ but Speaker Pelosi didn’t just make arrangements to send me back, she went back with me.”
The photo shows Pelosi and Omar walking through a set of massive wood doors at Cape Coast Castle, the gateway that millions of Africans passed through to walk onto the ships that would take them around the world to lives of slavery in America and other countries. The photo was posted by Omar on her Instagram, which has already garnered over 140,000 likes.
This year marks the 400-year anniversary of the arrival of the first African slave ships in the U.S.
Omar was part of a congressional trip to Africa that included members of the Black Caucus to commemorate the “Year of Return” — a call by Ghana’s president to African Americans to make the trek to Africa to “unite with their brothers and sisters in the diaspora.”
It sent a defiant message to President Trump and his tweets that Omar and three other progressive congresswomen known as “the Squad” should “go back” to their countries. Last month, supporters at a Trump rally chanted “send her back!” when the president took aim at Omar.
The post also signaled friendship with the speaker, with whom the progressives have had their differences. Earlier this summer, another member of the squad, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, accused Pelosi of “singling out newly elected women of color” in the Democratic caucus over their differences with moderates. Since those comments and a private meeting between Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi, the speaker has dismissed any tension within the caucus as family infighting.
Leave a Reply