CBC Radio50%
First European ‘slave castle’ is a site of trauma and transcendence 33%
By Nicola Luksic0%
4/9/2026, 8:11:54 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Appeal to Emotion, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 20.1% saturation with 219 hits. Analysis detected 1,975 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,087 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.1% and a BS Rank of 33% (11,402 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 67.80% of the article peer group.
LISTEN | Elmina 'chooses to be resilient' :
“More than 400 years ago one race was subjected to one of the worst atrocities to ever happen on the earth.
And we haven’t fully recovered.
This place is a place for healing.
Regardless of where you come from, we have to see ourselves as one people.”
The edifice is a UNESCO World Heritage site and museum, and is one of the few left standing along Africa’s west coast.
At one point there were upwards of 40 fortresses used to imprison enslaved Africans before the transatlantic crossing.
As the site of the first European slave castle built on Africa’s west coast, the vibrant fishing town of Elmina can be considered ‘ground zero’ for the transatlantic slave trade.
“This is important for the world to see — it serves as a lesson to mankind,” said Philip Amoa-Mensah, who has been conducting tours of the Elmina Castle for more than 20 years.
“As soon as you arrive in Elmina, you see the slave castle — it's this towering building that's much larger than anything else in the town.
It's quite striking,” said Bayo Holsey, African American studies and anthropology professor at Emory University in Georgia.
The castle was initially built by the Portuguese in 1482 to secure their trade of gold and spices.
At the time Elmina was a small fishing community of about 200-300 inhabitants.
When the Portuguese built the castle on its shores, the population ballooned with the arrival of 500 armed Portuguese men and 100 Portuguese artisans.
“It must have been really jarring,” said Ato Quayson, chair of the department of African and African American studies at Stanford University.
He notes that all the castle’s components — including the stones, doors and locks — were imported from Portugal.
“Think of it in contrasting terms.
It did not resemble any of the existing architecture … The castle wasn't just a physical injury on the spatial environment, but it was also instituting a new epistemic order of social and racial relations.”
Within a few decades the castle warehouses were converted to imprison enslaved Africans before shipping them across the Atlantic.
The windowless dungeons would hold up to 1,000 individuals at a time.
While records aren’t complete, it’s estimated that 13 million Africans were forced into slavery before the transatlantic slave trade was largely abolished in the first half of the 19th century.
“The Elmina castle is the prototypical example that we can examine to understand the consequence of any of the castles that followed after it,” said Quayson.
Door of no return
Every castle would have had a ‘door of no return’ through which each individual would be forced to pass before being packed into ships.
The door of no return in Elmina is among the few that remains intact in its original form.
Individuals would have to file through the dark narrow stone corridors one-by-one before reaching the door.
“The most poignant thing about this door is that if you're an African American or diasporic Black person, and you stand before that door, you know that one of your ancestors made it through and lived,” said Quayson.
“The poignancy of that.
I've seen people react … the reaction is so visceral.
They break down in tears, even me, you know?
I've been there many times, but there's no time that I stand before that door and I don't shudder in horror at what happened.”
It was a deep desire to better understand the repercussions of the transatlantic slave trade that drew Holsey to visit Elmina for the first time in 2001.
“The history of the slave trade is central for any understanding of our contemporary world,” said Holsey.
“It’s that crucial historical node for thinking about the development of a global economy, of global capitalism, and very much tied within that is a notion of race and racism.
And so, we have to understand the slave trade to understand any of those things.”
A thriving present
Just a few hundred metres away from the castle walls is a vibrant fishing community.
“It is quite a contrast because right outside the castle you have this bustling community.
There's a great deal of activity going on that stands apart from this violent history that the slave castle represents,” said Holsey, whose PhD thesis explored the contemporary relationship Elminans have with the historic site.
“Many people [in Elmina] were not interested in publicly discussing the slave trade,” said Holsey of her initial visits.
“It wasn't considered appropriate to have public discourse about it.
I also discovered that for a lot of young people they were increasingly interested in this history.
They were tying it into more global Black discourses about the slave trade that has used it as a means to critique the racialized global economy that we exist in today.
“So there was a sort of dichotomy between how older generations were approaching the history and how the younger generation was thinking about it.”
Transcendence
Ghanaian poet Sarpong Osei Asamoah describes the contrast between the horror of what the castle represents and the thriving life outside the Elmina castle as “a two-sided wonder.”
“It represents transcendence,” said Asamoah.
“Elmina is bustling, Elmina is fishing, Elmina is creating life.
So I say Elmina has gone beyond tragedy and death to propagate life and prosperity… It chooses to be resilient and not identify itself as ground zero for trauma in the transatlantic slave trade.”
While Asamoah is optimistic about Elmina’s future, his visits to the Elmina castle have profoundly shaped his work as a poet.
His recent poetry book Yaanom features work inspired by his visits to the dungeons.
“My best lesson in the castle was the silence.
Because the silence spoke so much to me than any words could have ever done,” he said.
Download the IDEAS podcast to listen to this episode.
Guests in this episode (in order of appearance):
Philip Amoa-Mensah is an Elmina tour guide with more than 20 years of experience.
Ato Quayson is chair of the department of African and African American studies and professor of English at Stanford University.
He is the author of Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism.
Bayo Holsey is a professor of African American studies at Emory University.
She is the author of Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana.
Sarpong Osei Asamoah is a Ghanaian poet.
His poetry includes At Elmina Castle, I Bleed.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.