Late yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives formally apologized for slavery and the era of Jim Crow discrimination against African Americans.

The House passed H.Res. 194, a resolution sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), by voice vote after the measure attracted 120 co-sponsors. The resolution follows a similar measure by the Senate in February, apologizing for U.S. actions against Native Americans, and a congressional apology and reparations twenty years ago to Japanese Americans and their descendants for the use of concentration camps by the U.S. in World War II.

…Let the first of January, the day of the abolition of the slave trade in our country, be set apart in every year, as a day of publick thanksgiving for that mercy. Let the history of the sufferings of our brethren, and of their deliverance, descend by this means to our children, to the remotest generations; and when they shall ask, in time to come, saying, What mean the lessons, the psalms, the prayers and the praises in the worship of this day? Let us answer them, by saying, the Lord, on the day of which this is the anniversary, abolished the trade which dragged your fathers from their native country, and sold them as bondmen in the United States of America.

– Absalom Jones, Minister, St. Thomas African Episcopal Church of Philadelphia and freed slave

With these words, on January 1, 1808, Rev. Absalom Jones hailed the legal abolition of U.S. participation in the transatlantic slave trade, a victory which seeded the ground for greater changes yet to come.

(more…)

Tom DeWolf writes:

Now that we have a blog up and running on the Traces of the Trade site (thanks, James!) I’ll add a couple of posts to introduce myself (especially for those who haven’t seen the film or read the book).

I’m one of the ten DeWolf family members who participated in the international journey to make the film. In a certain sense, I was sort of the “odd man out” in our group. I’m not directly descended from the slave traders like the other nine family participants (I’m descended from the older brother of the first slave trader in the family; a carpenter from Connecticut). I have no roots in New England like the others. The descendants of my carpenter-ancestor were all farmers in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Iowa. I was born and raised in California and have lived on the west coast all my life. As you’ll learn in one of the pivotal scenes in the film, of all our fathers, mine is the only one without an Ivy League education.

(more…)