15 years of public school education and Eboni Hogan's poem is the first I have ever heard of Elmina. This fierce, beautiful, and frightful fortress was the literal and figurative "point of no return" where over 30,000 west African slaves passed through each year, on their way to Brazil and other Portuguese colonies.
"Elmina, like other West African slave fortresses, housed luxury suites for the Europeans in the upper levels. The slave dungeons below were cramped and filthy, each cell often housing as many as 200 people at a time, without enough space to even lie down. The floor of the dungeon, as result of centuries of impacted filth and human excrement, is now several inches higher than it was when it was built. Outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever were common. Staircases led directly from the governor 's chambers to the women's dungeons below, making it easy for him to select personal concubines from amongst the women.
At the seaboard side of the castle was the Door of No Return, the infamous portal through which slaves boarded the ships that would take them on the treacherous journey across the Atlantic known as the Middle Passage." -PBS
::le sigh:: I won't lie. I broke down when I heard this poem. And, because I'm a sucker for punishment, I just had to do my own research on Elmina. I'm just so sad that I didn't know sooner and heartbroken over that fact that this ever happened at all...
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