January 13th is Remembrance for all the Victims of Elmina Castle Day!!!

January 13th is Remembrance for all the Victims of Elmina Castle Day!!!

Although this is horrible place, I think it is an important historical place and point that we all remember and never forget because it was the beginning of a very dark and horrible time in history.  Many ancestors of today's families went through this building or never made it out of that building and their memory deserves to be honored and remembered. One thing I will say though is that the people in Ghana that run this now museum should definitely re-name it and definitely take Castle out of the name, this is definitely NOT a Castle and doesn't deserve that title at all no matter how the building looks or it was built! "Built in 1482 by Portuguese traders, Elmina Castle was the first European slave-trading post in all of sub-saharan Africa. Located on the western coast of present-day Ghana, it was originally built to protect the gold trade but following its capture by the Dutch in 1637, it came to serve the Dutch slave trade with Brazil and the Caribbean. The castle came under British ownership in the 1800s. 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." Please click the link below and learn more about Elmina Castle and the atrocities that happened there. 

http://www.pbs.org/wonders/Episodes/Epi3/elmina.htm