In 2001, at forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to
discover that he was related to the most successful
slave-trading family in American history, responsible for
transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His
infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol,
Rhode Island, curried favor with President Thomas Jefferson
to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When James
DeWolf died in 1837, he was the second-richest man in
America.
When Katrina Browne, Thomas DeWolf's cousin,
learned about their family's history, she resolved to
confront it head-on, producing and directing a documentary
feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep
North.
Inheriting the Trade is Tom DeWolf's powerful
and disarmingly honest memoir of the journey in which ten
family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and
uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other
northern states.
Their journey through the notorious
Triangle Trade—from New England to West Africa to
Cuba—proved life-altering, forcing DeWolf to face the
horrors of slavery directly for the first time. It also
inspired him to contend with the complicated legacy that
continues to affect black and white Americans, Africans, and
Cubans today.
Inheriting the Trade reveals that the
North's involvement in slavery was as common as the South's.
Not only were black people enslaved in the North for over
two hundred years, but the vast majority of all slave
trading in America was done by northerners. Remarkably, half
of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade
originated in Rhode Island, and all the northern states
benefited.
With searing candor, DeWolf tackles both
the internal and external challenges of his journey—writing
frankly about feelings of shame, white male privilege, the
complicity of churches, America's historic amnesia regarding
slavery—and our nation's desperate need for healing. An
urgent call for meaningful and honest dialogue, Inheriting
the Trade illuminates a path toward a more hopeful future
and provides a persuasive argument that the legacy of
slavery isn't merely a southern issue but an enduring
American one.
"Exploring the links between a grand
Rhode Island mansion and dungeons in Ghana, Tom DeWolf
traces the infernal trade that gave his family, and this
country, great wealth and power. His journey into the past
forces painful questions to the surface, and illuminates our
present." —Henry Wiencek, Winner of the National Book
Critics' Circle Award and author of An Imperfect God: George
Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of
America
"Thomas DeWolf's personal journey into his
family's long hidden slave trading past is a compelling
invitation to explore how our country and many institutions,
including churches, benefited from this dark chapter. Such
exploration is essential if we are to move forward to a
place of repair and racial reconciliation." —Frank T.
Griswold, 25th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal
Church
"Tom DeWolf's deeply personal story, of his
own journey as well as his family's, is required reading for
anyone interested in reconciliation. Healing from our
historic wounds, that continue to separate us, requires us
to walk this road together." —Myrlie Evers-Williams,
civil rights leader, chairman emeritus of the NAACP
(1995-98), and author of The Autobiography of Medgar Evers,
Watch Me Fly, and For Us the Living
"Inheriting the
Trade is like a slow-motion mash-up, a first-person view
from within one of the country's founding families as it
splinters, then puts itself back together again." —Edward
Ball, author of Slaves in the Family
"Inheriting the
Trade is a candid, powerful and insightful book about how
one family dealt with the infamous slave trade. This book is
jarring in its candor, and revealing in its honest
assessment of slavery and the Dewolf family. We must read
important books like this one, if we dare to appreciate
every aspect of our history, and as the Dewolf family does,
dare to change our judgments about the wretched history of
slavery." —Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Executive
Director, The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race
and Justice at Harvard Law School
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