The Living Consequences

Will Moredock, in an opinion piece in the Charleston City Paper this week, revisits the effort of the South Carolina State Ports Authority to systematically remove all references to slavery and blacks from its maritime history of Charleston and South Carolina.

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I have very mixed feelings about the designation of February as “Black History Month,” despite the opportunities it presents for those of us who regularly make public appearances to discuss our nation’s history of slavery and discrimination and its impact on our society today.

I always appreciate the opportunity to speak about the story of the DeWolf family and the legacy of our nation’s history of slavery and discrimination. Spreading the message of this blog (and of Traces of the Trade) is important to me, and Black History Month programs generally offer a positive context in which to bring this message to the middle school, high school, and college students who are usually my favorite audiences.

In short, I strongly support efforts to teach our children the full history of the United States, including the role of black Americans and such related topics as slavery and discrimination, and to encourage children to explore the meaning of this history for our society today.

However, I tend to side with those who believe that “Black History Month” usually results in limited exposure to a speaker or two, or to a brief unit on isolated topics in black history, rather than to a comprehensive curriculum about the African-American experience. What I find particularly damaging, moreover, is the pigeon-holing of “black history” into a single month and its treatment as a specialized topic, rather than as an integral part of American history.

As I often tell audiences, especially of younger people, the history of American slavery and discrimination isn’t black history, and it can’t be considered apart from the rest of the American story.

In other words, this is our shared history.

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Earlier this year, we saw the launch of Voyages, an innovative new web site designed to make available to the public the latest incarnation of the invaluable Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

On December 5 and 6, Emory University will host an international group of scholars for a conference to celebrate the launch of Voyages, to commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the trade, and to present research on the slave trade.

Those of us who have worked on the history of the DeWolf family and the slave trade in Rhode Island for the documentary Traces of the Trade, and the book Inheriting the Trade, found earlier versions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade database, including the original 1999 database as well as the more recently updated database and the beta version of the Voyages web site, to be invaluable as research tools.

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The American Jewish Committee has a booklet, available online, which beautifully tells the story of the diversity and shared values of our country at Thanksgiving.

America’s Table: A Thanksgiving Reader tells the personal stories of eight inspirational Americans, representing a variety of racial, ethnic, and personal backgrounds. They are recent immigrants and from long-standing American families; self-made success stories and the beneficiaries of inherited privilege; the descendants of slaves and those who benefited from slavery.

The reader contains passages intended to be read aloud at Thanksgiving, as well as details of all eight Americans profiled. The focus is on the the diverse experiences and shared commitments of all Americans, and on the often difficult history which we have experienced. The emphasis is positive, without shrinking from the negative aspects of our shared history, and there is no no suggestion that the American story is darker than the histories of other parts of the world.

Hat tip: Toby, Ann, and Nanda of Rhode Island for Community & Justice.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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