After months anticipating my vacation, I arrived in Ghana, ready to relax and take in the sights with Ben, my Ghanaian friend and host. I had planned to learn more about the culture and history of the former Gold Coast. Little did I know that this trip would teach me just as much about what it means to be black and American.
Exploring Accra during my first few days there, I found the capital quite similar to Dakar, Senegal, and Nairobi, Kenya, cities I’d visited as a student years earlier in the course of summer internships. The same mix of modern and traditional—developed and underdeveloped—struck me as I walked through the downtown market. Some men wore brightly decorative traditional clothing; others favored Western styles. Vendors were hawking everything from fragrant spices to suitcases. And smells drifting in from open sewage channels nearby threatened to overpower the more pleasing aromas of the food stalls.
The residential area I stayed in could have been an upper-middle-class California neighborhood, dotted with beautiful stucco homes and breathtaking landscapes. But when we made our daily trips into the inner city, beggars surrounded our car, demanding money. Those who were handicapped crawled in the streets, hands outstretched. Every day I grew more keenly aware of my privilege as an American and angrier about the imbalance of wealth in the world.
When Ben suggested a visit to the Cape Coast Castle—a common tourist destination about two hours from Accra—I naively agreed, knowing little about the castle’s history. Hardly anyone else was there when we arrived, so we were able to have our own private guided tour. The castle houses the West African Historical Museum now, but the British colonial administration had its headquarters there in the 1870s, before moving to Accra.
As we walked around the grounds, our guide gave us a capsule history. Cape Coast, dating back to 1662, was one of nearly 100 forts and castles built along Ghana’s Atlantic seaboard by European colonial powers from the late 15th century through the 17th century. At first these outposts served as trading centers for gold, ivory and other products, but they also became major transit points for the slave trade that sent millions of Africans—prisoners from local wars or victims of systematic raids—to the Americas over several hundred years.
At first glance, from the outside, the castle looked deceptively small. But the main entrance opened onto an expansive courtyard. The ocean was no more than 200 meters away, separated from the castle by a protective wall neatly lined with an impressive array of cannons anchored there to fire at enemy ships.
When our guide led us down to the dungeons that once held slaves in unspeakable conditions, my tourist excursion became an awakening. As we descended the pathway, the afternoon sunlight quickly faded, leaving us in near darkness. The only light entering the dank quarters came from a single, narrow slit at the top of the wall facing the ocean. We went into the separate men’s and women’s quarters, and learned that the slaves, crammed together, had been forced to lie in their own bodily wastes. Then our guide showed us the small, airtight death chamber where captives who dared to rebel were imprisoned without light, food or water until they died.
Before coming to Cape Coast Castle, I’d heard of black Americans experiencing an emotional upheaval when they came to Africa and confronted slave fortresses. I doubted such a distant historical phenomenon as the slave trade could ever elicit such a reaction from me. But as I stood in the midst of those damp, dark cells, I felt suddenly shaken, overcome with sorrow. I began to see images of the tortured souls weighed down in chains. I had to walk away from our intimate tour and hold back my tears as the pain of some of the most inhuman acts in modern history gripped me.
Slavery had come alive in my mind and body. In those moments, I too had become a prisoner—held captive to the past and present evils of the world. At the same time, I felt a sense of connection to Ghana and its people that would last forever.
Terrance Pitts, ’87, is a freelance photographer and writer in Baltimore. He last wrote for STANFORD on American blacks in Paris.
