HUNDREDS OF YEARS LATER...IRON BARS AND THICK STONE WALLS SPEAK OF THE INHUMANITY OF ELMINA SLAVE FORTRESS

Not surprisingly, many of the rooms used to house slaves at Elmina were without windows. As the slaves were readied for the waiting ships, they were moved to dark, windowless rooms...some of which are seen in photographs later in this series. The bars look weakened by virtue of age--and so does the mortar. I "tested" them and there was not even a hint of being able to bring them down. Just imagine being captured in a forested area hundreds of miles from this fortress. Then try to imagine being chained together with other captives and marched relentlessly over the land to the coastal area and the slave fortress Elmina. Surviving that tortuous journey, imagine being incarcerated for weeks, perhaps months, until European slave ships arrived to haul you off to an unknown destination. Finally, imagine being on a slave ship, along with hundreds of other forlorn slaves. The transatlantic middle passage, as it was called, might encompass anywhere from six to eight weeks. And if you survived all that, you were "rewarded" with a lifetime of human bondage in a new land...thousands of miles away from your motherland. It was the destruction of a people by fellow human beings who did not recognize their enslaved captives as human. No names were recorded--only a number. In some cases said number was branded on the forehead of the slaves.