UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST

COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND LEGAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ART

DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND FILM STUDIES

COURSE CODE: FIL103 – HISTORY OF CINEMA

AR/BAA/18/0210
EVENT REPORT

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: A LITERARY MORNING

The intimate Faculty of Art conference room of the University of Cape Coast
hosted a literary morning on February 25, 2019 in commemoration of Black
History Month. The event was the collaborative effort of the Embassy of The
United States of America in Ghana, the departments of English, Music and
Dance, and Theatre and Film. The theme for the celebration of Black History
Month was: The Journey Back Home extrapolated from County Cullen’s
seminal poem Heritage, and in tandem with that, the centrepiece of the morning
was a discussion on Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing.

The programme started with a video playback of Osibisa’s Welcom home

followed by Dr Vitus Nanbigne’s welcome address. There was a video playback
of Maya Angelou’s poem Yet I Rise followed by Professor Kwadwo Opoku-
Agyeman’s remarks. Abigail Onumah then read two poems: it was magic: or
Barack by Michele a poem written by Professor Kwadwo Opoku-Agyeman and
then parts of County Cullen’s Heritage.

Readings from Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing segued the audience into the panel
discussion moderated by Dr Rogers Asempasah. There were heated exchanges
about the role of Africans in the slave trade that provided sober reflections. For
instance, the fact that Asantifo kidnapped and sold people into slavery before
Europeans showed up on the coasts of Africa, the fact that Mfantsefo were
middlemen between the Asanti kidnappers and the European buyers during the
transatlantic slave trade, and the fact that many people across the globe do not
know that after the abolishing of slavery the slave owners were paid
compensation for losing their livelihoods while the former slaves received more
punishment. There was also mention of the fact that the compensation that the
slavers received was seed money for capitalism, providing capital for the
technological advancements the world is experiencing today. The discussion
also considered home as a concept and what the author of Homegoing meant to
explore by homegoing and not homecoming. And then professor Kwadwo
Opoku-Agyeman provided some form of closure commenting that the story of
slavery was complex and that in discussing the topic one must consider the
stories of the slavers, the victims, the kidnappers, the middlemen and all the
emotions involved.

The discussion was brought to a halt, and Dr Vitus Nanbigne introduced some
people who read from their own work of poetry and prose bringing the event to
a close. The event was an eye opener, but the one thing that everyone present
hopefully takes with them is that in every situation especially when discussing
something as evil as slavery, the story of the victim must be paramount to all
others.