As she emerged from the female slave cell at Cape Coast Castle, the Vice President, Kamala Harris, gave the impression that she was in a state of extreme fear. Harris, while she was inside the famed dungeon of the slave trading outpost, lay a bouquet of flowers down on the floor and placed her hand on the wall. By doing so, she was able to physically connect herself to the misery of the Africans who had been kept there in the past.
Harris is reported to have said, when in the castle, “Being here was immensely powerful.” The castle is a relic of the brutality that existed across the Atlantic. “The illegal acts that were carried out at this particular site. The blood that was shed on these very grounds at a previous time. We must never, ever forget the unimaginable evil that took place in this very spot,” she said. It is impossible to contradict the evidence. It is vital to have an education in history, and it is a requirement that it be taught.
That was an out of character display of emotion coming from the often stoic and boundary-breaking leader, who was frequently reluctant to talk about her own predicament as a Black woman living in the United States. Harris’s voice broke as she talked while she was standing at a makeshift podium in front of the cannons that run down the ocean. She was facing the guns while she was speaking. She made spontaneous observations in order to convey what she had seen at various points in time.