On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the location where millions of enslaved Africans were imprisoned before being put onto ships headed for the Americas. She entered through the fort’s dark doors and descended into the dungeons.
Harris was insisting on recalling the tragic past through her visit to Cape Coast Castle, despite the fact that earlier on Tuesday she had stood in front of a monument honouring Ghana’s independence and imagined a glorious future for the U.S. and Africa driven by creativity on the continent.
She remarked from the fort as the sun was setting over the ocean, “The tragedy of what happened here must always be remembered.” “That is unavoidable. It must be instructed. History should be studied.”
The most well-known representative of President Joe Biden’s administration to visit Africa during this time of increased American outreach to the continent is the nation’s first Black and South Asian vice president. Her second day in Ghana’s activities are a part of a week-long vacation that also includes stops in Tanzania and Zambia.
Many of the slave-holding fortifications in West Africa, like Cape Coast Castle, were located in Ghana. The local government has seen maintaining them as a part of its duty to preserve history.
Harris skipped her prepared remarks to talk bluntly about the anguish “that reeks from this place,” and the horrors endured by the people who passed through those walls; mass kidnapping, sickness, rape and death. Those who lived were sold into bondage in the Americas.
“And yet, they survived,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. She said the endurance and determination of the African diaspora in the world should be admired.
“All of us, regardless of our background, have benefitted from their fight for freedom and justice,” she said.
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During their tour, Harris and husband Doug Emhoff walked past a plaque commemorating a visit by Barack and Michelle Obama, the nation’s first Black president and first lady. The couple walked along the stone ramparts flanked by cannons, pausing to gaze out over the sea as waves crashed on the rocky shore below.
She passed through white archways and down a darkened path leading through the infamous “door of no return,” through which slaves left the coast and never came back. Harris choked back tears, her hand on her mouth, as she approached. She placed a white bouquet of flowers, given to her during the arrival ceremony, at the entrance to a women’s dungeon nearby.
Harris has proved to be a potent messenger in Ghana, and thousands waited hours earlier Tuesday at Independence Square for a chance to see her speak at the Black Stone Gate monument.
“Because of this history, this continent of course has a special significance for me personally, as the first Black vice president of the United States,” she said to huge cheers from the crowd. “And this is a history, like many of us, that I learned as a young child.”
During her remarks at the monument, Harris pledged a new era of partnership with Africa, envisioning “a future that is propelled by African innovation.”
Much of her remarks there focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, part of her effort to spotlight Africa as a place for American private-sector investment. It’s something that Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said he hopes to see after years of being overlooked.
