Through the "Door of No Return"

Teaching about slavery in the United States has always been a great passion of mine. Not because I think it is fun, but rather because of its importance. In the past I have tried to compare the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Holocaust which occurred in Nazi Germany during the 1930's and 1940's. I believe now that it was an unwise comparison. After visiting the castles in Elmina and Cape Coast on the western shore of Ghana, I wish to practice the proverbial notion of Sankofa. The symbol for Sankofa is the bird looking back. It means that one can go back and straighten out what wasn't done correctly. I am invoking that privilege now to go back and not compare the two horrible events I mentioned above. I will let each person make any comparisons that he or she chooses to make. As for me here are some facts, my observations and some thoughts I have.

The Portuguese arrived in what today is Elmina around 1471. Despite some debate, they were the first Europeans to arrive to this coastal city along the West African coast to arrive at the site which has had the following names in its history including Elmina: Anomansa, Amankwaa-Kurom, and Edina. The town dates her history back to the 1300's. I obtained this information from our guide at Elmina Castle. Before I continue, I must praise this guide for his passion as well as his depth of knowledge. I was so moved by our visit that I forgot to write down his name. the Portuguese had entered the so called age of discovery after capturing the town of Ceuta in 1415. This led them to continue to look southward to hopefully eclipse the Italian role of middleman in the European trade with the far east. This was done under the leadership of Prince Henry the Navigator, the brother of the Portuguese king. It is reported that the first Africans to be brought to Europe via the Atlantic was in 1441 (51 years before Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492). In their quest to sail south the Portuguese sailors wished to prove that they had made land on the shores of Africa so they brought 10 - 12 people back and taught them to be interpreters or servants in the home. In 1471 when the Portuguese arrived in what was then Edina, they traded with the locals and noticed an abundance of gold. Hence the Portuguese named the area Elmina (which means the mine). By 1482 they had made a deal with the local chief - Nana Kwamena Kweiyga Ansah - for a piece of land and On January 19th arrived with 12 full ships and 600 men to build what stands today - the Castle at Elmina. Undoubtedly the ships left the coast of Portugal before the deal was made. The chief was uneasy to make the deal with the "foreigners" and the locals didn't like it, and after a few local attacks by the locals, the chief settled the differences. the chief finally had granted the request of the Portuguese in the hopes of obtaining peace. Thus eleven years after arriving at Elmina (the plot of land where the castle sits is on a big rock believed to be sacred) the Portuguese had built a castle which they named Sao Jorge (St. George). At first the Portuguese indeed did continue to trade for gold. And slowly from 1441 to the early 1500's more and more Africans were brought to Portugal and Spain to serve as servants.

As time passed by and Columbus and other Spanish "explorers" began to establish colonies in the Western Hemisphere, and it seemed clear that using the native Americans as slaves would not work, the Europeans turned to Africa. Bartholomew las Casas ( a Dominican Friar) serving in New Spain ( current day Mexico and surroundings) suggested that using Africans as laborers in the gold and silver mines and on the sugar plantations would be useful because of the strength and knowledge of the West Africans. this is about the time the Portuguese switched their interest to include the "evil trade" - the sale of humans. So from the early 1500's to 1637 the Portuguese dealt in slaves. The Dutch stole the castle from the Portuguese after two unsuccessful attempts (1597 and 1625) in 1637. They practiced the horrible business until the slave trade was abolished in 1807, and then sold the castle to the British in 1872 which used the castle along with its own (just 20 kilometers to the east) in Cape Castle as a staging point for Colonialism and Imperialism of what then became the Gold Coast (present day Ghana) . At both locations the slave trade flourished for the Europeans while simultaneously bringing misery to thousands as part of a greater system known as the Asiento (the transatlantic slave trade) which certainly brought misery and death to millions. The British relinquished the castle to the newly liberated nation of Ghana upon its independence from the British in 1957. There is a lot to say about Imperialism, but for now I will stick to the discussion on slavery.

Although we toured both Elmina and the Cape Coast Castle, I will mainly refer to my visit to Elmina. It was our first of two tours and the guide was excellent. The first observation about both places is that they were not nearly as large as I thought they were. Elmina occupies in area that covers only 2.32 acres. The first and obvious observation is that the slaves were kept at the lower levels while the Europeans stayed on top. They are referred to as dungeons, but in the Elmina case the dungeons were simply poorly ventilated cargo rooms built for the storage of goods. The proximity of the weapons magazine meant that much of the air that served as ventilation for the captives was tainted by the smell of ammunition, which only added to the stench that I will refer to later. The three areas of torture and misery were the men's cell, the men's dungeons and the women's dungeon. First of all many of the captives had been on over 500 mile marches from areas in present day Mali, Burkina Faso, The Ivory Coast, Togo, and Northern Ghana. If you read my earlier blog about the slave camp in Pinkora then you know that that place was about 500 miles from the coast. On their journey the captives were poorly fed and only given one bath about 20 to 20 miles from the castle. The purpose for this bath was to make the men and women appear more healthy so that traders would purchase them. At Elmina they kept about 600 men and 400 women up to a term of about 6 weeks to 3 months in order to have enough people to fill the boats for the middle passage (the leg of the transatlantic slave trade from the coast of Africa to the various ports in the Americas). The first room I mentioned above was the Men's cell which was actually called the condemned cell. It was called that because men who would dare try to revolt and break away would simply be put in this dark dank place 30 at a time without food, water, or light. The door remained closed until the men died (all of them). Then their bodies were thrown into the sea. The men's dungeons which held 600 at a time were about the size of three classrooms. There were no facilities for relieving one's self and people were only fed once or twice together, and when the captives became unruly they were chained together. There dungeons led to a door called the door of no return which exited to smaller boats which transported them to the larger slave ships anchored nearby.

The women's dungeons had a couple of added atrocities attached to them. Like the men, the women had no way to relieve themselves in any sanitary way. This included times of menstruation. The stench in the dungeons must have been as awful as anyone can imagine. While walking through the dungeons the other day I detected an odor that I don't belief will ever go a way. I knew visiting the castles would be very very tough for me and I was doing OK with the visit until this next part I am about to explain. Then I broke down and temporarily separated myself from my group. The women's dungeons were located below the governor's quarters. There was a courtyard where the women would exit and the governor would look below and choose the woman he wanted for the moment. She would then be cleaned by the guards in front of all of the other women and take upward through a spiral staircase through a trapdoor to the governor's bedroom. When the governor was finished the guards would then ravage her. On the other side of the courtroom was a chapel and on Sundays the guard would go to church and then proceed outside and also make selections of women they wanted to have. It was repulsive to hear about. I had to leave the area and I went to a secluded place in the castle and wrote this:

To every African American I say - I can not ever fully understand what visiting a slave castle like Elmina or Cape Coast can mean to you. I can imagine the pain must be great and complicated. To every teacher of European background, I can only say that we have a duty to say what we saw and how it impacted us. The tragedies that occurred here must never be forgotten and must never be diminished in its importance as history. A vast part of a continent was raped (for 400 years) and we should never forget. We must use the memory to fight injustice. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It is an injustice to not tell (in one's history class) what happened here and what to tell about the racism it has fueled on and on and on and on and on....

When is "never again" going to really mean it?