This entry by Producer/Director Katrina Browne is cross-posted from the blog of the Tracing Center, the nonprofit founded to carry on the mission inspired by Traces of the Trade. 

I’m one of the jaded ones now.

So it surprised me not to find Fernando Wood rearing his pro-slavery head again, this time as a Democratic Congressman from New York. Here he was on the big screen in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, showing up in 1865 as a vocal opponent in Congress to the passage of the 13th amendment. I knew of him from four years earlier, when in 1861, as mayor of New York City, on the heels of South Carolina’s secession, he proposed that the city should also secede from the Union. He was well aware that New York’s economy was inextricably tied to slavery.

Once you know about the North’s complicity in slavery and racism you see the through-line almost everywhere you look. The winter-spring of 1865 that is the subject of Lincoln thus becomes just one more chapter.

In the popular, white, non-southern imagination, we put Lincoln on a pedestal, but we subconsciously put ourselves on that pedestal too, because he is our symbol of northern determination to end slavery. That was us. The good guys.

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James DeWolf Perry is a regular contributor. He appears in Traces of the Trade and is director of research for the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery. This entry is cross-posted from James’ own blog, The Living Consequences, and the opinions expressed are his own.

Professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr. has an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times in which he takes on the issue of reparations for slavery.

Gates will, no doubt, attract enough controversy for his general approach to the issue. He is convinced that our society must address the issue of reparations, and that we must reach a “just and lasting agreement,” which he believes will have to be “a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime.”

Remarks like these will land any public intellectual in the U.S. in hot water these days. Just consider the case of Goodwin Liu, whose mild remarks related to reparations at one of our events in 2008 became a central issue in his nomination by President Obama for a seat on the Ninth Circuit.

However, this essay is most notable for telling difficult truths about the central role of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade, and thus about the shared culpability of people of different races in the resulting history of slavery.

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Please note: This is an archived blog post, and these are not active job listings.

MANAGERS AND PROGRAM SPECIALISTS SOUGHT

Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North is an Emmy-nominated documentary film which has become the basis for outreach efforts focused on advancing the cause of racial justice and reconciliation and expanding understanding of the history and legacy of the North’s role in slavery.  Thanks to a recent major grant, we are in a position to expand our work beyond the first-year of release, to pursue more systemic institutional impacts.

The various positions/function areas described below are not full-time.  We list them all together here with the hope that applicants might be interested in, and capable of, filling various roles— possibly combining small part-time positions in such a way as to create fuller part-time positions, or a full-time position.  For example, the Program Director role could be combined with the Training Coordinator position for a 20-30 hr/wk position.  We are also open to applicants who are only interested in one position.  We hope that these positions will grow with more funding.

To Apply: Please submit a cover letter, resume, three references, and a writing sample to Madeline McNeely at human.resources@tracesofthetrade.org. When emailing, please put in subject line: Candidate – last name, first name (such as “Candidate – Jones, Julia”).

Deadline: The preferred application deadline for these positions is September 1, 2009. After that date please send an email to Madeline McNeely at human.resources@tracesofthetrade.org to see if positions might still be available.

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