From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is reveal. I'm Alex.

Father and son James and Amson Hagen are on a tour of Elmina Castle.

It's one of the many fortresses designed by Europeans built by Africans that

doubt the coast of Ghana and West Africa.

The system is devices to say. Someone be asked what that's right there.

Before being packed on the ships to make the long, often deadly journey across the Atlantic,

captive Africans were imprisoned for months in these white stone buildings.

They were kept in dungeons on the lower floors with living quarters for European and

slavers above. The Europeans called them castles.

Any other question please?

Something to say?

James's son, Amson, is chuckling because they've visited this and other slave castles before.

And his dad always asks a lot of questions.

James is Ghanaian-American, a retired high school social studies teacher from Maryland.

Amson's a graduate student in anthropology at the University of North Carolina.

Okay, where does the slaves who were left here were they in chains?

In most cases in dungeons they were not in chains.

But we have the difficult ones, James.

If less than 600 people here were slaves, they are not in chains.

And the masters are maybe about five or four of them.

Don't you think that they will be able to subcute them and free themselves?

Of course.

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