Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick’s trip to Ghana brings emotional reckoning with slavery’s past

It was an experience unlike anything Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick expected.

There were the hours of briefings and meetings on critical issues — the economy at home and abroad, terrorism, competition with China and Russia — and a state banquet in Ghana.

But the most impactful part of a just-concluded trip was walking in the places where enslaved Africans were imprisoned before being sent to the United States from Ghana, which was a center of the slave trade for 150 years.

[ RELATED: After cardiac arrest, NFL’s Damar Hamlin backs Cherfilus-McCormick’s plan for more defibrillators in schools ]

Cherfilus-McCormick, a Broward/Palm Beach County Democrat and member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, participated in the Ghana leg of Vice President Kamala Harris’ weeklong, multi-nation trip to Africa.

She discussed what she saw — and championed Harris’ performance as vice president — during a telephone interview after she returned to Washington, D.C. Cherfilus-McCormick departed with Harris and U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on Air Force Two on March 25. She had to leave early and returned to Washington, D.C., on March 28 for committee work on Haiti legislation.

Cherfilus-McCormick had previously traveled to Egypt in northeast Africa, but never before to West Africa. “This was my first time in Ghana, my first time exposed to the direct correlation of our past.”

The delegation, she said, was “welcomed as African descendants back to Africa. … Being there with the most successful people in the U.S., it brings chills,” she said, adding, “It just really connected a part that I never knew going to Africa would be like, and that was another level that was just unbelievable to witness.”

Other participants included the presidents of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, and the National Urban League, Marc Morial; the presidents of historically black colleges and universities — including Howard University, the HBCU in Washington, D.C., that both Harris and Cherfilus-McCormick attended — business executives; and movie director Spike Lee and actors Idris Elba and Sheryl Lee Ralph.

In the nation’s capital, Accra, Cherfilus-McCormick saw a castle that was used to keep enslaved people captive before survivors were forced onto ships to transit the Atlantic Ocean. When there weren’t enough enslaved people brought in, she said, children were kidnapped and spirited through tunnels so their parents wouldn’t realize they’d been taken and trafficked. Burial grounds mark where bodies sometimes washed up on shore, she said.

“It was fascinating, but it was very emotional,” she said. “To see the beginning of the plight of all Black descendants, what we went through and to return back to Africa as successful people, that’s what was life-changing. The story of overcoming. Seeing how much we’ve come through. How we survived.”

Cherfilus-McCormick is a staunch supporter of the vice president. “She is committed to leaving a lasting impact in legacy, and she’s been working night and day to make sure that they’re not little impacts but they’re larger impacts,” she said.

The vice president has taken a pummeling from pundits, Democrats (speaking anonymously) and Republicans (speaking publicly), all criticizing her performance.

In February, the New York Times reported that “the painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.”

A Monmouth University Poll released March 21, found 36% approve and 53% disapprove of Harris’ performance, a net negative of 17 percentage points. President Joe Biden fared a bit better; he had a net negative of 10 percentage points.

Among Democrats, Harris had a net positive of 60 percentage points; Biden had a net positive rating of 77 points.

“None of it is fair,” Cherfilus-McCormick said, especially the at-times open-but-anonymous chatter about whether President Joe Biden should keep Harris as his running mate if, as expected, he runs for reelection in 2024.

Cherfilus-McCormick, who is the first Haitian American Democrat elected to Congress, said the criticisms of Harris don’t stem from her performance. “When you’re the first, especially being the first as a woman, a woman of color, I think people do things to you they never would have done to anyone else,” she said.

“In tearing her down, what it does is remind everyone who suffered any kind of inequality, it reminds you of what happens when you get to that position. It reminds all women what we struggle with every single day, being second guessed. The truth of the matter is any time you’re new in that position, you’re a woman, a person of color. … The old guard will question you, that maybe you should do it differently,” said Cherfilus-McCormick, a lawyer who was CEO of a home healthcare business before she won a 2022 special congressional election.

“Compared to any other vice president, she’s outperformed them, she’s outpaced them,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “She’s resilient, and she’s proved everybody wrong.”

The U.S. has important security interests in Africa, especially because China has been attempting to woo support there and establish itself as the dominant superpower player on the continent.

Countering those efforts was a central reason for Harris’ trip, though she and administration officials played down international rivalries and played up economics during the trip.

Ghana is one of the continent’s most stable democracies, but it faces severe challenges.

Its economy, among the fastest growing in the world before the COVID-19 pandemic, faces a debt crisis and soaring inflation that is driving up the cost of food and other necessities and dragging down an economy that once was among the region’s strongest.

[ RELATED: ‘Dead kids can’t read.’ Jared Moskowitz and Marjorie Taylor Greene have fiery exchange on guns in schools. ]

Extremism: Islamist militants and Russian mercenaries who operate in nations north of Ghana. Cherfilus-McCormick said there is a “rising influx and concern when it comes to Muslim extremists.” If not countered, she said, that could ultimately threaten the security of Americans.

China: African nations are both being wooed and squeezed by China, Cherfilus-McCormick said. Ghana has a $2 billion deal with a Chinese company to develop roads and other projects in return for access to a key mineral for producing aluminum.

But Ghana also needs loan restructuring with China, Cherfilus-McCormick said. “When it comes to economic insecurity and instability, it is China who has all this debt and who is trying to put our allies in a tight position so they can get all of their alliances and their allegiances.”

U.S. interests: Cherfilus-McCormick pointed to the war in Ukraine, where the U.S. is helping the nation invaded by Russia.

“One of the reasons why we’re spending so much and doing so much now is because we weren’t preventative. We saw the international world on a decline and we just allowed it to happen,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “If we don’t step in right now and assist, then we know that Muslim extremists, they will step in. Not only will the Muslim extremists step in but we know directly when it comes to security that it is Russia that is partnering with the Muslim extremists so they can create instability,”

Failing to act now, she said, means “we’re going to end up going there and helping anyhow.”

Cherfilus-McCormick said economic ties with African countries benefit those nations and the U.S.

Cherfilus-McCormick said there are opportunities to work with people from Ghana on many economic-related issues, including climate change, irrigation and access to water, and recycling. “Their technology and the things they’re inventing could definitely have an impact on the United States.”

This report includes information from The Associated Press.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com, on Twitter @browardpolitics and on Post.news/@browardpolitics.