Family confronts the North’s slave-trading past
January 31, 2008 The Christian Science Monitor
A new documentary film titled “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North”, traces a family´s journey as it learns about and eventually comes to terms with its history as descendents of the DeWolfs family, a wealthy dynasty that became the largest slave-trading family in early America. Premiered at Sundance and to be aired on PBS´s Point of View the documentary highlights the way in which the history of slavery is one that continues to scar the nation´s psyche. The film posits that until an honest and open dialogue is established between America´s “two parallel societies”, as one of the film´s subjects puts it, the nation´s wounds inflicted by the history of slavery will fail to heal. Read about the documentary and the family´s support of a congressional bill, HR 40, that would create a commission to study slavery’s legacy and remedies.
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