With the door to its dark past finally closed, Ghana has opened a door to a bright future, said Laban Carrick Hill in The New York Times. “One of the few African nations with a history of smooth transitions of power in free elections,” it has become an example of what tomorrow could hold for the rest of Africa. But for many years Ghana, called the Gold Coast by its European colonial masters, was haunted by its “tragic role” in the slave trade “as a major shipping point” for Africans sent in shackles to the Americas.
Ghana, I discovered, “doesn’t flinch from its past.” I paid my respects with a visit to Cape Coast Castle, an “imposing stone fortress” near the town of Elmina that was once the “last stop for countless slaves headed across the sea.” It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Walking the same path through town that the captives had taken, I came upon the “Door of No Return”—a “small wooden door built into a stone archway” that would lead to a life of bondage. “I paused there, overcome by emotion. It was difficult, almost terrifying,” to step through the door, even though it has been two centuries since the slave trade was abolished by the British.
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