The Tracing Center is pleased to announce that our founding executive director, Katrina Browne, has taken on a new role as our director of ideas and external affairs. This shift will allow her to dedicate her time to public activities, content development, and other work on behalf of the organization.

The board of directors has hired James Perry to be our new executive director. James was the founding board chair and president of the Tracing Center and has been centrally involved, since 1999, with Traces of the Trade, for which he shared an Emmy nomination.

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We have an op-ed today at CNN.com on how to understand the relationship of the North to slavery and race on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

The essay, written by Executive Director Katrina Browne and Managing Director James DeWolf Perry, builds on our ongoing work around the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and the enduring historical myths which blind us to the legacy of slavery and race today.

Here is how the op-ed begins:

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, a war that redefined national and regional identities and became an enduring tale of noble resistance in the South and, for the rest of the country, a mighty moral struggle to erase the stain of slavery.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on the beleaguered Union garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. By April 14, the fort had fallen and the war had begun in earnest.

By the time Fort Sumter was again in Union hands, following the evacuation of Charleston in the closing days of the war in 1865, the war had become the bloodiest in the nation’s history — and has not been surpassed. Yet the relationship of the North to the South, and to slavery before and during the war is not at all what we remember today. The reality is that both North and South were profoundly complicit in slavery and deeply reluctant to abolish our nation’s “peculiar institution.”

To read the full article, go to “Civil War’s dirty secret about slavery” at CNN.com.

Here is our first newsletter:

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In April, our executive director, Katrina Browne, was invited to Bermuda to screen Traces of the Trade and to facilitate dialogues on the history and legacy of slavery and the slave trade.

The following video, “Discussing the Trade,” was created by local filmmaker Alex Dill at one of these dialogues. In October, this video aired on local television in Bermuda, along with daily broadcasts of Traces of the Trade, as part of follow-up programming organized by the Tracing Center and Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda (CURB).

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Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North has won an award, for “Best in Festival,” at the Nov. 1-5, 2010 International Film Festival South Africa in Kwa Zulu Natal.

Traces of the Trade was directed by our executive director, Katrina Browne, with co-directors Alla Kovgan and Jude Ray.

This December, the Independence National Historical Park (INHP) opens its new exhibit at the President’s House – site of the residence of George Washington and John Adams while the capital was in Philadelphia.

The exhibit, which consists of a partial reconstruction of the house along with text panels, features information about how Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived and conducted their executive branch business. Washington brought some of his slaves to this site and they lived and toiled with other members of his household during the years that our first president was guiding the experimental development of the young nation toward modern, republican government.  The lives of the enslaved members of Washington’s household are commemorated at the site.

Last spring, the committee leading the exhibit development afforded Tracing Center staff the great honor of commenting on the final draft of the exhibit text.  Tracing Center staff also conducted a training session about the history of slavery in the North for INHP Interpretive Rangers and staff.  For more information visit Independence National Historical Park’s President’s House website.

Juanita Brown, the co-producer of Traces of the Trade, and I were invited to screen Traces as part of FUNGLODE’s Dominican Republic Global Film Festival… a truly special film festival that I can’t say enough good things about.

Our visit to the country was sponsored by the U.S. embassy there, to whom we are very grateful!!! It was an incredible chance to test again, after going to Cuba, how the Spanish-subtitled version of the film does or does not resonate for people in former Spanish colonies that were built on a slave-based economy.

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This fall the Tracing Center presented a series of special workshops for Rhode Island educators on the role of the North in slavery.

The history of Rhode Island’s complicity in slavery and the slave trade has been missing from the state’s classrooms for generations. The Rhode Island Department of Education mandated teaching about the state’s complicity in slavery/slave trade in its Grade Span Expectations (teaching standards) in 2008. Some teachers don’t know the history, other teachers are aware of the historical information, but are unsure how to teach it. The workshops covered content knowledge about Rhode Island’s complicity in slavery and the slave trade, as well as tools for how to effectively and sensitively teach the subject matter to students of all backgrounds. Through our training in content and pedagogy and the written resources provided for them, they returned to their classroom better equipped to teach about slavery and its legacies.

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Our executive director, Katrina Browne, and consultant Juanita Brown are in the Dominican Republic this week at the invitation of the U.S. embassy in Santo Domingo to present “Traces of the Trade” and participate in panel discussions and programs about the history and legacy of slavery and the slave trade.

“Tras las Huellas de Mis Ancestros: La Historia Oculta de Nueva Inglaterra,” the Spanish-subtitled version of the film, is screening at the 4th Dominican Global Film Festival (DRGFF). Katrina Browne is the director and producer of the documentary, and Juanita Brown is a co-producer.

In the picture above, Katrina and Juanita are meeting Leonel Fernandez, the president of the Dominican Republic (second from right) and actor Randi Acton at the festival’s opening reception in Santo Domingo last night.

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