What would repair—spiritual and material—really look like and what would it take? Back home, the family confronts the thorny topic of what to do now. You've read 7 of your 7 free articles this month.Please subscribe to continue reading.“If one is a white Northerner and the product of most of our schools and our American history classes, it’s really tempting to think that racism is just a white Southern problem, and therefore we blithely go about our business,” Browne said.
But, yeah, James DeWolf, who was one of the more prominent slave traders in the DeWolf family, apprenticed with … “It has sunk in enough to make it my life’s work, to try to make up for their deeds in some modest way — because I can’t possibly make up for their deeds, it’s too big — and I don’t feel guilt as if I did it and I have to make up for my own bad deeds,” she said, “but I do have a sense of responsibility and obligation, because there’s no turning back on knowing the extent of the damage that they did.”Swept up in the fairytale of New England, Browne said she had never thought to question how her family became so established. Documentary Explores The Truth of One Northern Family’s Involvement In The Slave Trade.
In the context of growing calls for reparations for slavery, family members struggle with the question of how to think about and contribute to “repair.” Meanwhile, Browne and her family come closer to the core: their love/hate relationship with their own Yankee culture and privileges; the healing and transformation needed not only “out there,” but inside themselves.From 1769 to 1820, DeWolf fathers, sons and grandsons trafficked in human beings. Together, the group of 10 retraced the slave trade route, from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba, and back. 9 Photos . DeWolf … Limited Series. DeWolf descendants walking to Narragansett Bay, Bristol, Rhode Island. “But there’s a funny way in which it still — literally, 20 years into doing this work — really hard for me to wrap my head around it because it’s so extreme and so big, that I still cannot fathom the scale of harm that they did.”To her horror, in between the memories of sun, sand and Fourth of July parades, Browne read: “I haven’t stomach enough to describe the ensuing slave trade.”In 2008, “Traces of the Trade” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and then aired nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” series to critical acclaim. “What was a lot more chilling was to realize that systems like enslavement require those that are willing to do the worst part of it, like the DeWolfs, and much larger numbers of people to do what the political philosopher Hannah Arendt calls ‘the banality of evil.’That was not enough for Browne.
For more information, call (631) 283-0967 or visit southamptonartscenter.org.We're happy you are enjoying our content. Back home, the family confronts the thorny topic of what to do now. Senator and was reportedly the second richest man in the United States.The issues the DeWolf descendants are confronted with dramatize questions that apply to the nation as a whole: What, concretely, is the legacy of slavery—for diverse whites, for diverse blacks, for diverse others?
This event is recommended for adults and children in middle school and older. She needed to know more, and if her grandmother wouldn’t tell her, she would find out through her own research — which brought her to a grim conclusion: the DeWolfs were not just amateur slave traders, she explained.“The concept of amnesia is a very potent concept and basically, in large part, due to the way the North has written the history books post-Civil War,” the first-time filmmaker said. It was truth by omission, overlooking one critical detail that, at her core, Browne says she somehow always knew.In fact, her descendants were the largest slave-trading family in United States history, spanning three generations. But there were clues sprinkled throughout her childhood — some obvious that she never fully registered as a young girl, and others more discreet, such as a childhood nursery rhyme about two African slaves, and a mural her great-grandfather painted, which includes a pair of African men driving a DeWolf stagecoach through Bristol, Rhode Island, their hometown.“I didn’t know what would come of a family journey, but I knew I didn’t want to do a solo journey. You've read 4 of your 7 free articles this month.