Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Brown's Slave-Trade Memorial

This post, "Brown University to Erect Slave-Trade Memorial," from The Living Consequences interested me because it relates so directly to Traces of the Trade and which is probably the result of efforts such as those made by the DeWolf descendants, including James with this blog. I was shocked to read that "James D’Wolf and his family sent out a thousand slaving voyages, more than half of those sent out from the entire country, and brought more than 110,000 enslaved Africans to the New World", a statistic of which I was not at all aware. It definitely shakes up the popular notion that slavery and the slave trade were ways of the South (and limited mostly to the South).

It seems very important that Brown is responding to recommendations from the 2006 report by the Committee on Slavery and Justice, which seeks to understand and spread information about the university's historical involvement with the slave trade. The other reccommendations, which appear to focus mainly on education initiatives both within the university and in the greater community. That such a prominent university would designate time and money to this endeavor is important.

We have not talked too much about memorials in our class, but they stand as real, physical objects symbolizing and evoking our memory and devotion to "never forget." To memorialize something is also to bring it permanently into the public sphere, a process that the DeWolf family was beginning to engage in by the end of Traces of the Trade, and which James is continuing through his blog. Memorials, as generally large, public structures, force us to look and remember. Of course, without also providing education, the public may never fully understand Rhode Island's slave-trade involvement, however, it seems that is the intent of the educational initiatives that accompany the reccommendation for the memorial.

Something else that interested me was the Committee's reccommendation for "a memorial to honor Native American heritage."I think it is wonderful that a committee on slavery and justice would extend its arms to the plight of Native Americans in this country. The violent dislocation, enslavement, and genocide that was inflicted on Native Americans was and (perhaps maybe in its contemporary manifestations) still is vastly unacknowledged in the public's collective understanding. Bringing those narratives to light through memorialization is just as important. I was surprised but deeply appreciative that the Committee recognized the two injustices on the same level, because I think they often are not.

No comments:

Post a Comment