Reparations and African complicity in the slave trade
Posted April 30th, 2010 by James DeWolf PerryJames DeWolf Perry is a regular contributor. He appears in Traces of the Trade and is director of research for the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery. This entry is cross-posted from James’ own blog, The Living Consequences, and the opinions expressed are his own.
Professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr. has an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times in which he takes on the issue of reparations for slavery.
Gates will, no doubt, attract enough controversy for his general approach to the issue. He is convinced that our society must address the issue of reparations, and that we must reach a “just and lasting agreement,” which he believes will have to be “a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime.”
Remarks like these will land any public intellectual in the U.S. in hot water these days. Just consider the case of Goodwin Liu, whose mild remarks related to reparations at one of our events in 2008 became a central issue in his nomination by President Obama for a seat on the Ninth Circuit.
However, this essay is most notable for telling difficult truths about the central role of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade, and thus about the shared culpability of people of different races in the resulting history of slavery.
Announcing the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery
Posted April 1st, 2010 by James DeWolf PerryTraces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North and Ebb Pod Productions are pleased to announce the formation of a partner organization, the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery.
The Tracing Center has been formed by people who have long been involved in Traces of the Trade and in the use of the film for national and international outreach efforts involving the history and legacy of slavery. Their intention is to broaden and deepen those efforts and to develop related programming. This development will also allow Ebb Pod Productions to focus on its core mission as a film production company.
For more on the Tracing Center, please see its new web site at www.tracingcenter.org.
A.P. story on Traces participants in Cuba
Posted April 1st, 2010 by James DeWolf PerryThe Associated Press has a story out about a return visit to Cuba by two DeWolf descendants featured in Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.
The story, “US family finds traces of slave-trade past in Cuba,” covers a just-completed trip to Cuba by Producer/Director Katrina Browne and historical consultant James DeWolf Perry, both of whom also appear in the film, along with Tulaine Marshall, who works with them at the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery.
On the trip, the trio visited the site of Mount Hope, a Cuban slave plantation owned by Perry’s fifth-great grandfather, James D’Wolf, the leading slave trader in U.S. history. They also held the Cuban premiere of Traces of the Trade, spoke at a number of public events, participated in activities surrounding the voyage of the Schooner Amistad to Matanzas and Havana, and reunited with Cubans who were in the film, advised the project, or were part of the Cuban crew during filming.
For more on the A.P. story and the visit to Cuba, see Perry’s blog, The Living Consequences.
