Elmina and Cape Coast Slave Castles, Ghana
The Elmina and Cape Coast castles, now a memorial museum, were built for the timber and gold trade. It wasn’t long, however, that a far more gruesome trade would operate from these ports from the 1600s to the 1800s – enslaved human beings. Traders stole people from their homes and families and taken to the castles. They had the bare minimum of food in their dark dungeons. They endured abuse, filth, and disease.
Captive people waited in these cells to go somewhere known only to the captors preparing them for transport. The captors justified the conditions and shockingly high death rate by claiming it weeded out the “strongest” prisoners for the work to come. The castles were their last view of their homeland as they passed through the Door of No Return. Once through the door, they boarded ships on their way to overseas slave markets.