Traces of the Trade--A Story of the Deep North

“Dear kith and kin, I'm writing with information and invitations related to the documentary film project I have embarked upon about our mutual DeWolf ancestors and the slave trade.” From a letter by Katrina Browne to 200 family members and descendants of Rhode Island slave trader Mark Anthony DeWolf
Although Traces of the Trade debuted in 2006, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in last year, and aired on PBS's POV series, we never felt the noise around it was big enough. Over the past few years the North has had to take its sorrowful, yet rightful place as a key player in slavery in America (the New-York Historical Society's fantastic two-year exhibition “Slavery in New York”, brought  home the unalterable fact that New York City was a slave capital for two centuries). Still, we often look to the South.  We think that it can't be told enough, the story of how the American colonies, and then our entire nation was at one time or another completely engaged in human trafficking, international, and  domestic slave trading (the United States abolished slave trading outside of its borders in 1808, but this only fueled a lucrative slave industry domestically, some slavers literally breeding black people for market)
Katrina Browne asked her “kith and kin” to look into the parts of their family  history that she felt could not be ignored, however shameful, and it was, indeed, so: This one family, whose name is etched into the stained glass windows they donated to St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Bristol, England, brought more than 10,000 enslaved African to the Americas. This took place over three generations, beginning in 1769, and continuing well after its ban in the United States in 1808—they got special dispensation from Pres. Thomas Jefferson to continue trading! The phrase “filthy rich” takes on its full, intended meaning.
We watched Traces, and followed the family to Bristol, which was a major port of the Transatlantic trade routes, to Ghana, to the old slave forts, to Cuba, where the DeWolfe's owned sugar plantations. The group of ten (nine family members responded to Browne's request) become increasingly discomfited, at one point, and African-American woman on her own trip to Ghana makes it clear that they, as white people, are something she did not want to see.
Enlightened, yet at the same time ground down by the  “accumulated weight of slavery's detailed brutality”  the family asks: If they accept some responsibility for the "living consequences" of their ancestors' crimes, what can they do to make things right?
A good question, considering that up to half a million of the  descendants of the 10,000 Africans sent into slavery are alive today. And this, perhaps, is at the heart of what Browne attempted to do. “For all the progress that has been made in race relations and racial equality,” she wrote in her letter to her family, “the disparity in social opportunity and life prospects is still huge and the lack of trust still profound between blacks and whites.”
Apology is a healing thing, but sustained acknowledgment  is a true reparation, acknowledgment writ large in the annals of our history, acknowledgment of unearned privilege, the damage it has done, and the fact that, even though we as a nation have elected a man based not entirely on the color of his skin but on “the content of his character”, we have still not entirely overcome, not nearly so.  This goes a ways toward overcoming.
For upcoming screenings and events  or to order the DVD visit tracesofthetrade.org.
For a preview, click below.