Elmina, Ghana: Elmina was built by the Portuguese in 1482. While it began as a military fortress and a trading outpost, it was later used primarily as a holding site for enslaved Africans. After being captured by slave traders from various locations in the interior, slaves were sent to castles like Elmina to await transportation to the New World. The conditions in the dungeons of Elmina were horrific, with rooms being filled to capacity. Slaves were not given adequate food and water and the sick were simply left to die, packed in among the living in the depths of the castle. The dungeons have been maintained in their original condition, a living testimony to the suffering undergone by the enslaved as they awaited their transition to the American plantation.
My family owned a few slaves in North Carolina in the early 1800s. When I visit the slave castles in Ghana, Senegal, Benin, and Nigeria, I think of the lives interrupted, torn apart.
the colosseum in rome