Tracing Center

The Tracing Center educates and inspires dialogue on the history and legacy of race, privilege, diversity. Home of 'Traces of the Trade.'

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

Emancipation wasn't a gift from white folk. Pass it on. #Juneteenth

"The actions of those men helped transform a conflict fought initially to preserve the Union into one that destroyed slavery as well." https://t.co/BKwXpbZfKs

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

This will break the brains of those who insist California was a "free state" and thus never had slavery. https://t.co/xMJ8MaGSch

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

"In the United States, the history of unseeing is so pervasive that it takes will and work to acknowledge what is right before our eyes." https://t.co/ra0RtCBf6c

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

Elizabeth Freeman ("Mumbet") should indeed be an American icon. Her determination not only propelled Massachusetts to gradually reject slavery, but beautifully symbolizes the grassroots efforts which eventually led to emancipation. https://t.co/nkKhHk1l3t

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

The House Speaker wants us to believe that while white people can work hard *and* be paid what they're owed, Black Americans can't collect their own debts, without becoming hopelessly dependent on others.

King explicitly rejected this double standard.

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

Deeply saddened by the death of Professor Charles Ogletree, who fought tirelessly, as both a public defender and a Harvard law professor, to expose and combat racial and other systemic inequities.

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

I understand it's hard to acknowledge your ancestors benefited substantially from slavery—much less to contemplate making that right.

But we need to stop pretending only "aristocrats and fat cats" have ancestors who profited from slavery.

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

"They refute the notion that it is possible to bury this history and still understand America."

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

“There’s very little Boston history where they tell the truth. When liberal white people tell us how sorry they are, and how they want to apologize, I want them to understand the horror that I’m talking about.” — @ByronRushing

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

“If Boston can tell a different story about America, then America can start telling a different story about itself.” https://t.co/GoaouJGVQp

[Nicholas Knisely @wnknisely]

This describes our experience in Rhode Island too. Reconciliation begins with relationship not so much with gestures not organically grounded in an ongoing conversation. https://t.co/vFTyFsydE7

[CeCe Falls @CeceF]

Kyle, the @CBSBigBrother production folks, the house & all the people feeling sorry for Kyle need to watch this doc. Especially the parts where the white people have confront themselves. #BB24 Traces of the Trade | POV | PBS https://t.co/nNrwSRJBV5

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

"There are signs saying, 'A wealthy person lived here.' Nowhere does it say this ground was walked on daily by enslaved people. Or, that this wealth was made by enslaved people." — @joyfulmuseums https://t.co/TozJuU6jIq

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

“The apologize part is difficult for me.”

“But if my words can help your community heal and our community in Boston heal, then I’m ready to sign onto this.”

— Boston City Councilor Frank Baker

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

Clearly, we aren't intended to notice that this was a monument, in a majority Black city, praising the Confederacy as a fight to protect the "rights" of "the people."

Even my kindergartner knows what "right" was being defended by white southerners in 1861-65.

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

"In what leading historians say is a first ... we found Haitians paid about $560 million in today’s dollars. But that doesn’t nearly capture the true loss."

https://t.co/dC1jUVThnb

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

Powerful article detailing opportunities to learn about slavery and Black history in Bermuda. https://t.co/4c2BVKLfTI

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

If you aren't prepared to handle a little *stares in Frederick Douglass*, then I'm sorry, but you have no business on a board overseeing an historic site connected to slavery.

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

In that vein, this map accompanying the book review dramatically misrepresents which states had slavery, and when they abolished it. I'm talking about states from Massachusetts to California.

[James DeWolf Perry @JDeWPerry]

I don't mean to suggest he was simply a "slave holder," like many of his peers.

Before joining the Senate, James DeWolf was our nation's most prolific slave trader. He and his family brought more than 12,000 enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage: https://t.co/XYRskrvIic