Traces of the Trade: A Story From The Deep North. A Documentary Film/Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History

Traces of the Trade: A Story From The Deep North. A Documentary Film by Katrina Brown. (Cambridge, MA: Ebb Pod Productions, 2008. Color/86 minutes. $20.00-$195); Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. By Thomas Norman DeWolfe. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009, Pp. 272. $16.00, paper.)

As descendents of the largest slave trading family in the history of the United States, and as prominent Episcopalians, members of the DeWolf family undertook the arduous task of revisiting a family legacy that included transporting an estimated ten thousand Africans between the years 1769-1820. The film Traces of the Tradehy Katrina Browne captures the remarkable journey of the twenty-first century DeWoIf descendents of Bristol, Rhode Island, as they literally retrace the steps of how the slave trade worked in Ghana, Cuba, and New England. The film engages five levels of awareness of racism in our society, including the personal, the interpersonal, the institutional, the cultural, and the spiritual.

On the personal level, for example, the frustration and tension between the family members as they embark on the journey establishes an emotional foundation for the wrenching revelations they will...