A Northern Family's Role in the Slave Trade (Documentary)
Northerners are usually portrayed as benevolent abolitionists. But one woman tells a different story of slavery in the "deep north."
American slave trading is a human rights atrocity forever associated with the Confederacy of the Southern United States. Northerners are stereotypically portrayed as benevolent abolitionists fighting the South's slave labor plantations. But history is rarely that cut and dried.
Katrina Browne is the producer, director, and writer of "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," which premiers on PBS as part of the Point of View film series on June 24. She grew up very proud of ancestry: Her New England-based DeWolf family is filled with generations of prominent and successful people. The fact that they originally made their fortune as slave traders was only ever mentioned in family lore as a footnote. As Browne says, "I never thought to ask how we got so established."
While attending the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., Browne received a DeWolf family history booklet written by her grandmother that referenced her family's slave-trading past. Browne was appalled. Then she realized that this was not news to her; rather, she had known most of her life that the DeWolfs were slave traders, but she had never fully acknowledged the horrendous truth about her family's past. After deciding that she had to do something to come to terms with her ancestry, Browne contacted 200 DeWolf descendants asking them to join her on a journey around the Triangle Trade route that made three generations of DeWolfs the most prominent slave-trading family in the United States. One hundred forty people never responded to her letter; nine relatives signed up.
"Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," which has screened at a number of film festivals, including Sundance, documents the 2001 journey Browne and her relatives took to trace her ancestors' route from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back again. The result is a powerful 86-minute film that starts an important and often uncomfortable dialogue about race.
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American slave trading is a human rights atrocity forever associated with the Confederacy of the Southern United States. Northerners are stereotypically portrayed as benevolent abolitionists fighting the South's slave labor plantations. But history is rarely that cut and dried.
Katrina Browne is the producer, director, and writer of "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," which premiers on PBS as part of the Point of View film series on June 24. She grew up very proud of ancestry: Her New England-based DeWolf family is filled with generations of prominent and successful people. The fact that they originally made their fortune as slave traders was only ever mentioned in family lore as a footnote. As Browne says, "I never thought to ask how we got so established."
While attending the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., Browne received a DeWolf family history booklet written by her grandmother that referenced her family's slave-trading past. Browne was appalled. Then she realized that this was not news to her; rather, she had known most of her life that the DeWolfs were slave traders, but she had never fully acknowledged the horrendous truth about her family's past. After deciding that she had to do something to come to terms with her ancestry, Browne contacted 200 DeWolf descendants asking them to join her on a journey around the Triangle Trade route that made three generations of DeWolfs the most prominent slave-trading family in the United States. One hundred forty people never responded to her letter; nine relatives signed up.
"Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," which has screened at a number of film festivals, including Sundance, documents the 2001 journey Browne and her relatives took to trace her ancestors' route from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back again. The result is a powerful 86-minute film that starts an important and often uncomfortable dialogue about race.