Slave traders in the family
Published on July 6th, 2007
As some of you know, there is a documentary film coming out about several of my ancestors and their role in the slave trade.
Traces of the Trade tells the story of the D’Wolf family of Bristol, R.I. and follows ten of our family today, as we retrace the route of the triangle trade and discuss the implications of this family legacy for U.S. race relations today.
My great-great-great-great-great grandfather, U.S. Senator James D’Wolf, was the patriarch of a prominent Rhode Island merchant family. What family history has downplayed for generations is that this was also the most successful slave-trading family in U.S. history.
In the documentary, directed by my cousin, Katrina Browne, ten of us travel from Bristol to the coast of Africa and to Cuba, visiting trading posts, slave dungeons, and ruined plantations. We meet with a variety of scholars, activists, and ordinary people to explore, through conversation and reflection, what our family’s past might mean for the legacy of this country and for race relations today.
Those of us in the film range in age from 32 to 70, and include sisters, brothers, a father and son, and distant relatives who had never met before. We brought a variety of perspectives to the conversation, and we disagreed at least as often as we agreed. But we were all convinced that an honest exploration of the history of our family, and this nation, are essential to resolving and, one day, moving beyond the legacy of slavery.
The film was completed in June 2007 and will be shown publicly beginning in the fall of 2007.
Reparation has as much validity as Mexicans trying to get part of the Southwest returned to Mexico, or Native Americans trying to get their land back. Game is over and we lost, end of discussion. White folks are not ruling the world because they give [deleted] back. You have to take it then you can legalize and justify it in books. We as African people got out asses kicked and still are getting our asses kicked. So wasting time trying to get white folks to pay for [deleted] that happened hundreds of years ago is a lost cause. Most of us do not understand or even know about the history of the slave trade.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Howard.
I would hope that even if there’s no undoing the past - whether slavery or the territorial expansion of the U.S. - there could be social justice to address the lingering consequences of those events on people today.
You may be right, of course, that it won’t be possible, in the end, to get a majority of whites to agree to take real action to address the legacy of the past. But I’m not sure that it isn’t worth the effort, especially if so many people say that they aren’t even aware of our history. Learning about that history and its effects on today’s society may just change more than a few people’s minds.
Thanks,
James
damage done to my people my your family can never be repaired or repayed.Your family like many others that profitted from the trade needs to attempt to establish an educational center discussing the evil of the trade and how its legacy has not been addressed and how it continues to harm blacks today.
Dino, I agree with you completely. My family can’t establish an educational center, since we aren’t a wealthy family, but we’re trying to do our part to promote education about the evils of the slave trade and its enduring legacy today.
I just watched the documentary. It was painful on so many levels. I also noticed that your family members seemed to get physically weaker and weaker as the journey progressed. The faces went from anxious/excited to having an expression of almost doom. The bodies of your family members while in africa and Cuba seemed almost broken.
I think the thing that bugs me most is the total eradication of blacks from american history. In high school i hated history even though i loved my teacher. she got to the part about slavery, said “it was not a peculiar institution” and moved to the next chapters. I’ve only come to love history since attending a black college and meeting other people who stressed our importance in the founding of this nation. I think not knowing our history, and not knowing that the african american experience is so very interwoven in the founding of this country is devastating to african americans. We basically are influenced to believe that blackness is bad and whiteness is everything there is to aspire to. I don’t know how i really feel about reparations. I have stories i could tell you about what happened to my landowning black grandfathers, but i think the lack of education about black people and their very integral role in this country is crippling to both blacks and whites.
I’m glad your family had the courage to undertake this journey. Many don’t.
Also, just wanted to say it was eerie watching the family discussion about privilege and how many of you were ivy league educated, yet didnt feel that was privilege. I recall the comment about learning to read at 4 and getting good grades. I think the point is precisely that! there are many african americans who are smart and who have achieved good grades but due to skin color could not even consider a Harvard or Princeton education. At that moment i wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say you aren’t the only one who is smart and high achieving. Great documentary though.