These Black Celebs Are Now Ghanaian Citizens As African Nation’s ‘Year Of The Return’ Program Expands

Black Americans have obtained Ghanaian citizenship through its 'Beyond The Return' program.

Black celebrities are returning to ancestral lands in an official way. Many obtained Ghanaian citizenship as the West African country continues its ‘Year Of The Return’ program.

Dr. Umar Johnson, Yandy, and Mendeecees Harris joined 500 others in a Detty December citizenship ceremony. A month prior, Ghana granted the legal status to its largest cohort of people from across the Black Diaspora. According to ABC News, the majority hailed from the United States.

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Ghana has encouraged Black people globally to reconnect with the motherland through its “Year Of The Return” program. Its 2019 launch coincided with the 400 year anniversary of when the first enslaved people arrived to America in 1619. Ghana’s Tourism Authority and the Office of Diaspora Affairs oversaw its extension and renamed it “Beyond The Return.”

For many, if not most, the designation represents more than another place to call home. It symbolizes a reclamation of one’s identity once stolen from their ancestors.

“I didn’t need (citizenship) to tell me that I’m African. Anywhere that I go in the world and someone looks at me, I’m melanated,” new Ghanaian citizen Keachia Bowers told ABC News. “But my ancestors who wanted to return and come back home, those ancestors who never made it back, that passport, for me, is for them.”

Moreover, Ghanaian citizenship provides a refuge from the racial discrimination and dangers known too well by Black Americans for hundreds of years, from Jim Crow to contemporary issues like police brutality.

“I first visited Ghana in 2015. From then on, I knew this is a place that I wanted to be and a place where I wanted to show other diasporans, African-Americans, that we have a place where we belong,” said one of the program’s participants, Deijha Gordon

Colonizers used Ghana’s “Gold Coast” to ship off enslaved Africans for what would become American slavery. Over an estimated 1 million people were taken from the area from 1501 to 1866, per Statista.

The country still features memorials that mark this unfortunate history of the slave trade. Ghana continues to foster a pipeline for Black people to reclaim their heritage.

“It just feels good to have a connection to an African country as an African-American, as a Black American,” Gordon added. “Because back in America we don’t have anything to trace our roots to but Africa. To have that connection here, I feel like I’ve done something right.”