The Living Consequences

The U.N. General Assembly, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, has approved a resolution calling for the erection of a permanent memorial in New York to commemorate the slave trade and its legacy.

The resolution stresses the importance of raising awareness of the history and “lasting consequences” of the slave trade, and calls on all member nations to develop school curricula and other educational programs to teach “the lessons, history and consequences of slavery and the slave trade.”

Representatives at the debate on the resolution also raised the issue of an apology, called for reparations for slavery and the slave trade, and stated explicitly that the foundation of much of the world’s wealth and poverty lies in the history of slavery.

Click here to read the rest of this entry

Recent news reports have publicized the fact that John McCain’s family owned slaves in the pre-Civil War South. As Douglas Blackmon related on the pages of the Wall Street Journal last Friday, Senator McCain’s great-great-grandfather owned a 2,000-acre plantation in Teoc, Mississippi where about 120 slaves labored in bondage.

Today at the Huffington Post, Abby Ferber explores the parallels between McCain’s story and that of the slave-trading DeWolf family, as chronicled in Traces of the Trade and Inheriting the Trade.

Click here to read the rest of this entry

Jerry Large of the Seattle Times has an insightful column today about the annual Seattle Race Conference held on Saturday. This year’s conference, marking the 20th anniversary of reparations to Japanese-Americans held in U.S. concentration camps in World War II, was devoted to reparations and other forms of redress and racial healing.

Click here to read the rest of this entry

Tom DeWolf, the author of Inheriting the Trade, was interviewed this afternoon on the Cliff Kelley Show on WVON-AM radio (“The Talk of Chicago”).

This turned into a lengthy and well-received interview, with Tom being asked to stay well into the show’s second hour to continue the conversation and being asked to return another time.

I have several comments after the jump, but the full interview with Tom can be heard here.

Click here to read the rest of this entry

The Providence Journal, which has frequently covered Traces of the Trade and other stories relating to the history of Rhode Island and the slave trade, has a review in Sunday’s edition of Tom DeWolf’s Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History.

The book review is a companion to a feature story about the film leading the Sunday arts section, but the review is available online now. The review is not kind, but I think the reviewer’s reasoning is highly instructive about Tom’s intended audience.

Click here to read the rest of this entry

I ran across an interesting post today, on the question of who might give or receive compensation for the history of their ancestors:

should the govt pay reparations to Irish families who lost loved ones during the civil war?

after all they are the only true victims, thousands of Irish got off the boat in New York, and were carrying a gun for the US, fighting to end a slavery cause they had nothing to do with. … not to say the slaves were a guilty party, but I think that if you give reparations to blacks, and reservations to native americans, you should give reparations to Irish descendent’s that honorably fought to end a slavery cause they had no part in making.

I think this position isn’t at all unusual among many whites in this country, and I believe it illustrates several important issues.

Click here to read the rest of this entry