Harold Fields is a regular guest contributor who appears in the film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Harold is active in restorative justice and racial reconciliation projects in Denver and around the nation, and his work with the Tracing Center includes serving on its board of directors. The opinions expressed are his own.

I have watched and listened to stories about the 33 trapped miners in Chile with great interest and empathy.  It is a blessed miracle that these men had survived for 17 days after the August 5th mine collapse before rescuers learned they were still alive.  It seems that the whole world was stunned by the initial estimate that it would be Christmas before the men could be freed safely.  Just today I am hearing that this goal might be accomplished by October, due to international cooperation from Germany who is sending a more powerful engine.

What strikes me are the parallels and differences from accounts of the conditions of captured Africans in Ghana during the Triangle Trade.  In the documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North and in Tom DeWolf’s book Inheriting the Trade, we learn of the conditions in the Cape Coast Castle dungeons where people may have been kept for months until there were enough to fill waiting ships.

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

The Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum, a traveling exhibit consisting of a replica of the trucks involved in one of the most shocking cases of modern-day slavery in the U.S., is currently touring the nation.

The museum has toured Florida extensively, as well as appearing on the National Mall and at the State Department in Washington, D.C. It is now on a lightning tour of other East Coast locations: today, the museum is at City Hall in Boston; tomorrow, it will be in western Massachusetts, and by the end of the week it will be in Baltimore before ending the tour seven days from now with a stop in Charlotte, N.C.

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