The Essential Blog » Traces of the Trade tonight on PBS!

CES’s very own Juanita Brown has been involved as a co-producer of the documentary film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North which priemiers tonight on PBS. CLICK HERE to watch the trailer. Last week the Bill Moyers Journal offered this special preview of the documentary as well.

In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, one might think the tragedy of African slavery in the Americas has been exhaustively told. First-time film-maker Katrina Browne thought the same, until she discovered that her slave-trading ancestors from Rhode Island were not an aberration. Rather, the De Wolf family were the most prominent actors in the North’s vast complicity in slavery, buried in myths of Northern innocence.

Most of the relatives Browne invited to join her never responded. Some were against the effort, including one who felt he had never done anything to anyone and saw no reason why he should be implicated in the DeWolf history. But when the 10 DeWolf descendants, ranging from siblings to seventh cousins, came together to retrace the Triangle Trade from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba, they found they formed an answer to their relative’s objection.

Several in the group — and everyone’s father — with one exception, are Ivy League graduates. The family’s preponderance of elite alma maters showed that its privilege endures. The DeWolf slave fortunes were plowed into other, legitimate businesses, a pattern matched in the larger U.S. economy, and secured privilege for the family for generations. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. Read also, excerpts from Tom DeWolf’s Inheriting the Trade, a powerful and disarmingly honest memoir of the journey.

Filmaker Katrina Browne on her goals for the film:

“In Traces of the Trade, we wanted to ask this question: What is our responsibility? I’m less concerned with understanding the extreme inhumanity of my ancestors than with understanding the mundane, ordinary complicity of the majority of New Englanders who participated in a slave-based economy. That has more parallels to me and my family today: well-intentioned white folks who are still part of systems that do harm. It’s important to roll up our sleeves to deal with what we all inherited from our country’s history.”

The film’s accompanying discussion guides include some historical background, resources for further learning, tips for facilitators, and, of course, a collection of questions and observations. These materials are free to download and designed to provoke conversation about the film and issues of race, equality, and repair in the U.S.

”Traces of the Trade“ (an official selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival) offers powerful new perspectives on race relations, white privelege, and racial inequity as we continue to work to achieve the Unrealized American Dream.

Premieres June 24, 2008 at 10PM. Check local listings.

We’re grateful to Juanita for her work on the film. Post here after watching and tell us what you think, how you may use this in your teaching, and how it informs your view of this previously obscure facet of our histories.

on 25 Jun 2008 at 11:32 am Jill Davidson

We watched from our living room in Providence, Rhode Island, and I am still processing how the stories we tell ourselves as Northerners are indeed filtered through a willful desire to disassociate from the slave trade and its legacy. We go to Bristol frequently - for the parade, to go to Colt State Park, because it’s a nice town, to see friends, lots of reasons - and we glance around, see Linden House just don’t think about it all that much. And of course, the same goes for institutions, edifices, and habits of mind here in Providence. There’s a lot more to think about, of course - this is what is striking me immediately, here in this place that had so much physical overlap with the Bristol of the film.

And then there’s the identity issues to work out. I have not given an extensive amount of thought about my own complicity and/or lack of awareness around slavery and its aftermath; as a descendent of European Jewish immigrants, most of my family was not here during the eras in which slavery was an active institution in this country. But I am much more aware than I was that this does not mean that my ancestors and I are not involved in real ways that we have not thought about.

Traces of the Trade tonight on PBS!

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