Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. with King Togbi Nyaho Tamakloe, V
Working with His Royal Highness King Togbi Nyaho Tamakloe, VI, Sena Amenyo, the host of Progressive Minds, is organizing an 11-day trip to Ghana. He is inviting African Americans to come back home and claim free land as restitution for the enslavement of Africans in America with the help of indigenous Africans.
In an interview with the Chicago Crusader on Tuesday, February 6, Amenyo said the trip is more like a “homecoming for African Americans to come back home. We are going to Ghana to restore African Americans back to their land.” He was referring to King Tamakloe’s promise to give African Americans free land if they come back to Ghana.
During the trip, Amenyo said participants will go see the free land, located in the Anlo Kingdom in the Volta Region of Ghana.
There will also be a mini ceremony for each individual, welcoming them back home. Also on the agenda is the Hogbetsotso Festival in the Volta Region of Ghana in remembrance of the Anios people who escaped the tyrannical rule of Togbe Agorkoli from Notsie about four centuries ago.
The biggest festival in the country, Amenyo said it is symbolic of their journey from their former home in Togo to their present settlement in Ghana.
A number of kings gather at this official site who will welcome the delegation back to the land of their ancestors. The next day, King Tamakloe will have his own King Festival where there will be a ceremony “as a way of people being restored back to the land,” said Amenyo.
He said the land will be portioned out to those wanting to live in Ghana, and if they want to purchase more land they can. “The King has thousands of acres of land. They will also be connected to the business sector “so that they can also be part of the development of Africa.”
“The Chinese are gladly taking the land and are living in Ghana. They are living like Ghanaians, learning the language. They are living like Africans, so why not our own people. Do you want to wait until they take over the entire place before African Americans start going back to buy land from the Chinese? It should not be done like that. This is a movement for us,” Amenyo said.
On Saturday, June 22, 2024, Amenyo will hold his annual Exchange Ceremony at the Kehrein Center for the Arts, 5628 W. Washington, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., where the next king will be crowned. The recipients have yet to be named.
In July 2022, King Tamakloe crowned Reverend Jesse Jackson King of the African Diaspora and named him Zonke Zizwe, which means “all nations of the world,” saying Jackson has brought a “sense of humanity because all of us are the embodiment of humanity,” Dr. Bishop Jessica Mbangeni told the Chicago Crusader.
When King Tamakloe crowned Jackson, he shocked many when he apologized for the Africans who sold their own people to slave traders seeking to stockpile their African slaves. That is when the King offered African Americans free land in Ghana as restitution.
“After 400 years, it is on us to bring our people back home as a way of giving restitution and bridging the gap and restoring them back to the land of their ancestors,” Amenyo said.
The 11-day trip to Ghana departs Friday, October 25, 2024, and returns Tuesday, November 5, 2024.
The price is $5,500 per person with a $1,000 deposit to reserve your seat. The fee includes flight, hotels, food, entertainment and local transportation. Also included are entrance fees; Hogbetsotso Festival; Door of No Return; Kwame Nkrumah Independence Square; Accra nightlife and markets; waterfalls and beaches; Fort Prinzenstein; and the Cape Coast Castle, one of 40 slave castles built by white slave traders in Ghana.
Known as a network connector, community activist Andrea Denise Graham is a staffer at Sullivan High School who has traced her lineage back to the 1700s; she is busy helping Amenyo organize the 11-day trip to Ghana.
She was impressed with the people of Ghana, many of whom expressed a desire to come to the United States. While she wants African Americans to take a DNA test to find their African relatives, she also hopes Africans will do the same to find their cousins in the United States.
Graham would also like to connect Sullivan High School students to international travel and trade. “It’s challenging, especially getting the resources,” to make this possible.
“In Ghana, there is no unemployment insurance or hardship benefits like we do. Everywhere you go there are markets where people are selling something. More needs to be done to create industry so they can have jobs.
“I talked to this one man at the hotel where I was staying, and he had been unemployed for six years. Now he works at the hotel as an accountant and is very grateful just to have a job,” Graham recalled.
The $100-a-day hotel she stayed in is located in East Legon, and it only has six rooms. “They have weddings and special festivities there. That is how they make money, and if you get an apartment, you have to pay two years’ [rent] in advance.”
For further information, call Amenyo at: 815.409.9123 or Graham at: 312.804.1141.
- Chinta Strausberghttps://chicagocrusader.com/author/chinta-strausberg/
- Chinta Strausberghttps://chicagocrusader.com/author/chinta-strausberg/
- Chinta Strausberghttps://chicagocrusader.com/author/chinta-strausberg/
- Chinta Strausberghttps://chicagocrusader.com/author/chinta-strausberg/