On Tuesday evening, Sept. 8, the Freedom Center is offering a free showing of a most unusual documentary film, entitled “Traces of the Trade,” about one family’s journey of discovery about its slave-trading past.

The subject would be remarkable enough if the family were from a Southern state of the old Confederacy. But the family in “Traces of the Trade” is from Rhode Island — in the heart of New England — and in fact was purported to operate the largest slave trading business in American history.

The film was produced and directed by Katrina Browne, whose forefathers — the DeWolf family — carried on a slave trade from 1769 to 1820. They sailed their ships from Bristol, Rhode Island to West Africa with rum to trade for African men, women and children. Captives were taken to plantations that the DeWolfs owned in Cuba or were sold at auction in such ports as Havana and Charleston. Sugar and molasses were then brought from Cuba to the family-owned rum distilleries in Bristol. Over the generations, the family transported more than ten thousand enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage. They amassed an enormous fortune. By the end of his life, James DeWolf had been a U.S. Senator and was reportedly the second richest man in the United State

The film follows ten DeWolf descendants (ages 32-71, ranging from sisters to seventh cousins) as they retrace the steps of the Triangle Trade, visiting the DeWolf hometown of Bristol, Rhode Island, slave forts on the coast of Ghana, and the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba where slaves were sold at auction. The film grippingly chronicles the descendants trip of discovery and how they came to terms with their past.

“Traces of the Trade” will be shown at 6 p.m. in the Harriet Tubman Theater. There is no admission charge, but to RSVP, please call 513-333-7554.

More information and background about the film is available at http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/synopsis/.

A book review by Carl Westmoreland, Senior Historian, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

The history of the Underground Railroad in the United States is rooted in the soil of Black self-sufficiency. A growing number of Americans and members of the world community are being drawn to the universality of the drama of the struggle of America’s most despised people to become free — slaves. A new book expands and enriches the palette of those ordinary people who composed America’s second revolution. “Making Freedom: The Extraordinary Life of Venture Smith,” by Chandler Saint and George Krimsky, is a book well worth reading and savoring.

It is agreed by most American historians and scholars that the revolution of 1776 was instituted by and for the benefit of white males. While the Revolutionary War was underway, men of African descent were petitioning the Massachusetts legislature to initiate laws that would emancipate. Venture Smith, who had been enslaved in Long Island and Connecticut, was singlehandedly engaged in his own battle to secure emancipation. Born near present-day Ghana and transported as a slave to the Caribbean island of Barbados, Broteer Furro was an anonymous slave for more than 25 years. Before his life’s journey ended, Venture Smith (as he was renamed) purchased his freedom, bought land, and help secure the freedom of other African men.  As a businessman, Smith learned how the American economy worked. And to the highest extent possible, he used that knowledge to earn the respect of his peers — white and black.

Freed from slavery, he became an active and respected member of society in late 18th Century New England, and even narrated his life experience, published in a book entitled Venture Smith, 1729?-1805 A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa, but Resident Above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself.

Venture Smith’s story is a celebration of the power of the ordinary. What appears to be a predictable rhythm of work of loyalty to family and community left a mark on those who knew or Smith. Venture Smith led no army, he slew no dragons; however, he cleared pieces of rocky land, bought a pew in his church and secured a final resting place — and purchased a granite head stone — for his wife and himself in a white cemetery.

Dr. Krimksy’s and Mr. Saint’s research of the public record resulted in a detailed documentation that defies the redundant excuse that the lives of Africans in America could not be properly researched. The archaeological work at Venture Smith’s grave site was witnessed and monitored by his direct descendants, whose very presence enables us to put a Black face on a family that goes back to America’s founding.

The story of Venture Smith illuminates the lives of ordinary Black men and women who would not be denied personal freedom. Smith was never given a banquet; to our knowledge, no brass band played for him during or after his life. His legacy and his bloodline have been preserved by the existence of men and women who carry his name. Venture Smith’s descendants cooperated with the authors, and it shows: they participated in the telling of an inspiring personal history that allows all Americans to see great, great-great, great-great-great grandsons and daughters of a son of Africa.

What would really make Venture Smith’s story live on would be roundtable discussions between the authors and members of Smith’s family, perhaps on radio or through a television documentary. That would be something special and productive for us all.

Local public radio station WVXU’s weekly “Around Cincinnati” program featured an in-depth interview with the Freedom Center’s Dina Bailey, who explained the meaning and significance of the Freedom Center’s new exhibit, entitled “Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art.”

To hear the interview, click on this link to access the Around Cincinnati online home page. Scroll about halfway down the page and click on the “Grass Roots” link.

The exhibit opens to the general public on Tuesday, February 10, and will be here through April 20.

Around Cincinnati airs on Sunday evenings at 7 p.m. on WVXU, 91.7.

Search the Voyages Database: Look for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expeditions. Create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.

It’s often said in history museum circles in the United States that if you want to draw a crowd, do something about the Civil War.  That one event, a bloody conflict in which more than 600,000 people lost their lives to end slavery and preserve the Union, still resonates through the passage of time as this nation’s most important historical moment.

Now, with the bicentennial of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 2009 fast approaching, public interest in the Civil War undoubtedly will mushroom from its already high plateau.  In examining Lincoln’s life and times as President, as war time leader, and as the protector of the Constitution, we may, as a nation, confront once again the causes of that war and America’s involvement with the ugly stain of slavery.

This topic — how we understand the Civil War — is at the heart of a new exhibit opening at the Freedom Center in mid-October, entitled “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War.” It also is the subject matter of two museums, one old, one new, in Richmond, Virginia — the Capitol of the Confederacy. Edward Rothstein, a New York Times writer on cultural affairs, examines these two museums and how they differ in explaining the causes — and contemporary interpretations — of the Civil War and Lincoln’s role in it. A key excerpt:

Both institutions also inadvertently provide lessons on the limits of relativism. Yes, the Confederacy is a part of American history that needs to be better understood, and slavery and race should not be the only windows through which it is viewed. But another kind of judgment is also needed here. Much depends on whether we view the Civil War as the apocalyptic end of a roseate past or the bloody beginning of a promising future. And that is what contemporary controversies over the Civil War are all about.