Renaming Ghana’s Colonial Castles: UCC and America’s Teaching Arts Institute Call for Change

By Isaac Arkoh

Cape Coast, May 30, GNA – A delegation of African Americans from the Teaching Arts Institute (TAI), Bolton, USA, and their counterparts from the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), have appealed to government to rename colonial castles across Ghana as “Slave Dungeons.”

The 27-member delegation highlighted the centuries of human indignity and brutality endured at the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, describing the current term “castles” as a whitewashed misrepresentation that failed to reflect the true horrors the sites symbolised.

Led by Ms Kim Poole, Executive Director of TAI, the delegation which included lecturers, students, and parents together with officials at the Department of Music and Dance, UCC made the appeal after visiting the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles.

The tour was to enable them to reconnect with their roots and also strengthen collaboration with UCC through cultural exchanges and shared learning experiences between students of the two institutions.

TAI fosters a community of teaching artists who partner with educators to meet diverse students’ needs through the arts, transforming classrooms with creativity and joy.

The institute offers training on educational trends, curriculum standards and classroom management, supported by masters teaching artists, networking and collaboration.

In separate interviews with the Ghana News Agency, the Executive Director of TAI explained that the word “castle” traditionally, denotes a luxurious fortified residence for royalty, symbolising power, and protection.

However, she said the so-called colonial castles had prisons where millions of enslaved Africans were confined in cramped, dark, and suffocating dungeons before being shipped across the Atlantic, never to return.

Specifically, she said the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles starkly contrast the grandeur associated with castles, which was originally built as trading posts and later used by European colonial powers, representing grim depots of human suffering and inhumanity in West Africa.

She emphasised that the castles’ imposing facades masked the horrific realities within their walls and argued against using beautiful names that whitewashed the pain and indignity suffered by Africans.

Mr Elijah Etheridge, a Parent and a Lecturer at TAI, reflected: “Today, those of us here in Ghana remember our ancestors’ shared terrible history, marked by cruelty, greed, and lamentations.

Ghana was a major hub for the abduction and shipment of individuals, families, and communities into slavery across the Atlantic, yet, the signs greet us with ‘Cape Coast Castle’ or ‘Elmina Castle,’ when in truth, these were d9ungeons that still bear the stench of struggle and indignity.

He acknowledged Ghana’s current economic challenges but cautioned against despair or romanticising the West as lands free from hardship.

For many enslaved Africans and their descendants, their survival depended on resilience and perseverance, qualities they encouraged Africans today to embrace in overcoming the lingering effects of slavery, including poverty and inequality and in building a future that honoured their ancestors’ legacy and freedom.

Supporting these views, Dr John Doe Dordzro, Head of the Department of Music and Dance at UCC, stated that renaming these sites “Slave Dungeons” would powerfully acknowledge their true historical function and the suffering endured there.

Such a change would honour those who passed through the “door of no return” and serve as a sober reminder of slavery’s atrocities.

It would also align with the African Diaspora’s desire for truthful historical representation, fostering recognition of ancestral pain for healing.

“The demand to rename the castles reflects a necessary confrontation with the brutal legacy of slavery.

“While castles evoke images of luxury and power, these Ghanaian sites stand as monuments to one of history’s darkest chapters, making the name ‘Slave Dungeons’ both fitting and essential,” Dr Dordzro added.

Some students also called for the reopening of the blocked underground tunnel at Cape Coast Castle, the path through which chained prisoners were marched from the dungeons to the infamous “door of no return” after the abolition of the slave trade.

As part of TAI’s community support and empowerment efforts, the delegation donated laptops to Edinaman Senior High School, which had only two functional computers for its 4,800 students.

Mr Ebenezer Obeng, the school’s headmaster, expressed deep gratitude and called for increased support and ongoing exchanges between the two institutions.

GNA

Edited by Alice Tettey/Linda Asante Agyei