"The castles indeed forge a sense of community, albeit one filled with contradictions."

The Door of (No) Return
Cheryl Finley

Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI

No Place Like Home
The castles and forts of Ghana always have been sites of African/European contact and centers of cultural exchange. While their fundamental role in facilitating the slave trade is undeniable, it is important to bear in mind that they also served many different purposes, often simultaneously. During the period of the slave trade, Cape Coast Castle served as defense against rival competitors, a prison for the enslaved, a residence for foreign workers and visitors, a trading hall, a warehouse, a court of mediation, a dining hall, a place of worship, a missionary school, and a meeting place for local and foreign dignitaries. Thus, in one way or another, priests, slaves, doctors, carpenters, servants, traders, cooks, kings, and schoolchildren might have interacted with each other and occupied the same space.

The castles and forts developed a symbiotic relationship with the towns that grew around them, relying upon them for their work forces, housing stock, food production, and natural resources. Moreover, in response to the needs of local, national, or international interests, these buildings were continually adapted and converted to different uses. Likewise, the local economy shifted and changed. Today, the castles and the cities that surround them remain almost inseparable--spiritually, economically, and intrinsically. In the case of Cape Coast and Elmina, they share the same name; they thrive off of one another and it has long been that way. For nearly thirty years, the castles have been steadily renovated to prepare for their latest incarnation, as World Heritage Monuments. Following suit, the towns around them have shifted their economies towards tourism, with the construction of world class hotels and resorts, the preservation and restoration of historic architecture, the opening of new restaurants, the development of walking tours, a new international performing arts festival--Panafest--in 1992, and the improvement of roads and infrastructure. The castles indeed forge a sense of community, albeit one filled with contradictions.

Until recently, local inhabitants understood the historical function of these buildings to be fluid and constantly changing. But since the forts and castles were designated as World Heritage Monuments--a term that requires that they be preserved and conserved for the understanding of future generations of the international community--the multiplicity of meanings and uses that they once shared has dwindled. Designated as World Heritage Monuments, the forts and castles are marketed to tourists as memorials to the victims of the slave trade.

Many African American visitors to the Cape Coast and Elmina see these sites as tangible and necessary memorials, some of the very few places where physical evidence of their heritage can be seen, touched, walked through, and experienced with all of their physical senses. For them, having a physical place to link to their bodies--to the way they imagine the past--is the primary reason for their visit. There is something about the significance of a place for people who cannot trace their ancestry specifically, but know that their people at one time came from that place, passed through its doors, suffocated in the stench of its dungeons, were raped in the governors' quarters, and carried across the still-turbulent sea just outside the Door of (No) Return. These pilgrims, by "returning" to, or making recuperative homages to the dungeons, are staking a claim for their history, symbolically taking possession of their past. Their individual acts of performing memory--walking through the dungeons, leaving memorials, lighting candles, saying prayers, taking photographs, and writing about their experiences in the visitor comment books--leave physical evidence of their visits to these monumental memorials (fig. 16).

Fig. 16. Wreaths in front of memorial plaque, Elmina Castle

Their individual acts of remembrance and interaction with others like or unlike them speak to the power that physical places have for the articulation of memory and identity.

Further Reading:

The remarks by Richard Wright can be found in his Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos (1954; reprint, New York, 1995); the comment by my sister, Lisa Lennon, was made in a personal communication, May 1999; opinions of the GMMB regarding the development of tourism at the forts and castles, the attitudes of Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian visitors, and the various restoration and renovation projects were obtained in interviews with Nana Ocran, director of education, Cape Coast Castle; Stephen Korsah, tour guide, Elmina Castle; and Gina Haney, US/ICOMOS, August 1999. Opinions of tourists were obtained in interviews conducted in August 1999 or from the visitor comment books. The viewpoints of people living in Cape Coast, Elmina, and other neighboring villages regarding the castles, forts, and tourism were obtained in interviews in August 1999. The comment by Farah Jasmine Griffin was obtained from the visitor comment book and in a personal communication, April 21, 2001. For aspects of architectural and cultural history of the forts and castles see, for example, Kwesi J. Anquandah, Castles & Forts of Ghana (Accra, 1999); Albert van Dantzig, Forts and Castles of Ghana (1980; reprint, Accra, 1998); and J. Erskine Graham Jr., Cape Coast In History (Cape Coast, 1994). For a general history of Ghana, see for example, F. Buah, A History of Ghana (New York, 1980) and F. Agbodeka, An Economic History of Ghana (Accra, 1992). For a general history of the slave trade see, for example, James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York, 1981); Philip D. Curtin Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wisc., 1969); Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760-1810. For Dolores Hayden's comment regarding place memory, see her Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass., 1995). For more on cultural heritage tourism, see James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1997); Edward M. Bruner and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Maasi on the Lawn: Tourist Realism in East Africa," Cultural Anthropology 9:435-70; Chris Rojek and John Urry, Touring Cultures: Transformation of Travel and Theory (London, 1997); and Edward M. Bruner, "Tourism in Ghana: The Representation of Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora," American Anthropologist 98, no. 2 (1996): 290-304.

Acknowledgements:

For generously funding the field research for this project, I would like to acknowledge the following entities at Yale University: the History of Art Department (Lehman Traveling Fellowship), the John F. Enders Research Fellowship, the Pew Program in Religion and American History, and the Center for the Study of Race, Inequality and Politics. For contributing their hospitality, wisdom, and helpful comments, I would like to thank the following individuals: Professor Kellie Jones, Professor Laura Wexler, Kofi Blankson, Paa Kwesi Ocancey, Rosamund H. Arkorful, Grace Amonoo, Sara Asafu Adjaye, Zelda Cheatle, Michael Birt, Nana Ocran, Stephen Korsah, Gina Haney, and Mwenda, Japhiyah and Menefese Kudumu-Clavell. Finally, I would like to offer my deepest appreciation to Robert Forbes, executive coordinator of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, for recommending me to Common-place.

All photographs the copyright of Cheryl Finley.

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