Keep the castle dungeon grounds sacred, African Americans holler

KOFI AYIM

A cross section of African Americans is livid at the commercialization of some portions of the Elmina Castle in Ghana. They contend that grounds of slave dungeons in Africa and elsewhere should be maintained as sacred for historical and posterity purposes, devoid of money-making activities.

In an interview, Professor James Small, a conspicuous figure within the African diaspora in the U.S. and a renowned Pan-Africanist, said he could not fathom the motivation to run a restaurant inside a place where so many Africans were taken into captivity and subjected to inhuman treatment before embarking on the notorious Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean to the so-called New World and beyond.

The obviously upset and irritated former professor at the City College of New York said it is insensitive to dine, drink, and have fun right on the bones and blood of those who perished while in transit inside the dungeon. He observed that it is nauseating to utilize a sacred ground to build financial fortunes.

The motivational speaker and one-time Imam at Malcolm X’s Muslim Mosque Inc. said he is spearheading a petition drive to the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to help facilitate the removal and/or relocation of the extant restaurant and bar inside the castle.

He noted that the petition is gathering traction not only among African Americans but among other people and communities that understand preservation of historical monuments. He pointed out that Africans born outside the continent need a sacred pilgrimage place to spiritually bond with the motherland and the ancestors upon whose sacrifices and resiliency Africans have survived and thrived.

Professor Small, who calls Ghana his second home, highlighted the importance and history of the totality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impact on Black people and Africa.

He lamented that it would be disingenuous to whitewash and dilute the most profound holocaust in the modern world. “That is exactly what’s being done, and people must speak up against it. It’s our collective history.

Slave dungeons must remain as they are for their historical and academic value, or we’ll have no history to tell our descendants,” he emphasized.

The Rev. Dr. Eleanor Moody-Shepherd, a regular visitor to Ghana, said she agrees with those who think it is a mockery to reduce the Elmina Castle to an entertainment place, instead of keeping it intact to commemorate the atrocities meted out to African ancestors.

“It is a place where we grieve and teach others of how Africans and Westerners collaborated to displace and cause many of our ancestors to die during the horribles of the Middle Atlantic Passage and beyond,” said Dr. Moody-Shepherd, a Presbyterian clergywoman.  

“People of African descent in the diaspora continue to suffer from this history. In the diaspora they still have managed to pit us against each other, keeping us from unifying and gaining the power to change the historical oppression that started in places like Elmina,” she added.

Ms. Bisi Adjapon, author of Daughter in Exile and The Teller of Secrets, believes that “running a restaurant inside the hallowed place that houses the ghosts of lost ancestors is a sacrilege beyond measure.

Elmina Castle is at once a place of untold horrors and a sepulcher where many perished. The smell of corpses still permeates the dungeons. Others will frame it as reclaiming it for good. That narrative is flawed. As a country that has opened its arms to diasporan Blacks, Ghana needs to keep the castle sacred for those who return to mourn their ancestors.”

Dr. James Amemasor, a former Museums & Monuments Education Officer at Cape Coast Castle who now lectures at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says he has always regarded Ghana’s castle-dungeons as key sites to understanding the Trans-Atlantic trade in Africans.

He continued, “Once a setting where people were torn from one another and taken into bondage, the castle-dungeons now bring people together again to learn about and reflect on the experience of enslavement and dispersion of Africans.

It is, therefore, very disturbing to learn that as a nation we have not developed the habits of mind about the sacredness of those castle-dungeons and are now turning them into restaurants. This development is unacceptable and must be changed.”

Dr. Kofi A. Boateng, a community and opinion leader in New York, suggested that visitors to Elmina Castle could forego dining and wining while on tour inside the castle. “If Ghana deems the preservation of the last stops of Africans before they were dumped into slave cargo ships as sacred places, then it must declare these lands sacred.

Sacred means people go there not to celebrate or feed the body but to learn and deeply reflect. These are not places to support local restaurants.  That should happen elsewhere. Imagine a Jewish person operating a restaurant on the grounds where God first spoke to Moses.

That sacred ground will not be violated. So, we should not violate ours. Our ancestors were forced and beaten to be hungry for days and months. Visitors to Elmina Castle can fast for a few hours,” he opined.

Professor Small contends that Africans who ended up in the Americas during chattel slavery have unalienated and spiritual consanguinity to slave dungeons scattered in Africa, and those places should be treated with respect and dignity.   

Posted by admin on Apr 25 2024. Filed under top stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry