Michael O. Moore, creator of the Knoxville African American Film Festival,
will host the showing here Feb. 20 of “Traces of the Trade,” a documentary
about the largest white slave trading family in U.S. history.
With the showing will be a speech and question and answer session by
Katrina Browne, maker of the film and a descendant of the slave trading
family, the DeWolfs of Rhode Island. The DeWolfs reportedly brought more
than 10,000 African slaves to the Americas over three generations, from
1769 to 1808.
The event will be at 7 p.m. at Downtown West Cinema on Friday, Feb. 20.
Admission is free of charge. The showing of the film, which was an
Official Selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, is one of many
local events marking Black History Month.
Browne of Boston, MA, found out at age 28 that her DeWolf ancestors had
made their fortune trafficking in human slaves. She contacted 200 family
members and asked them to be in the documentary. Nine responded.
In the movie, Browne and the nine family members travel the “triangle”
followed by slave traders: from their old hometown of Bristol, Rhode
Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. They
find appalling reminders and artifacts: a pair of real DeWolf slave
shackles and a local nursery rhyme about a pair of child slaves given by
an early DeWolf as a Christmas present to his wife.
Slavery became illegal in the U.S. with the passage of the 13th Amendment,
which was ratified in 1865 following the end of the Civil War.
Browne, now 41, holds a master’s degree in theology from the Pacific
School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., and a bachelor’s from Princeton
University. She is a seventh-generation descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf,
the first slave trader in the DeWolf family.
Moore, owner of Fitness Focus in Knoxville, began the Knoxville African
American Film Festival in 2005 when he brought Mario Van Peebles, maker of
the 2003 film, “Badasssss!” to Knoxville. Moore has worked since with the
Knoxville Museum of Art, the Regal Corporation, the East Tennessee Film
Commission, and a range of local businesses and contributors to showcase
notable movies involving African Americans. For more information, contact
Moore at (865) 705-2251.
CUTLINE: Katrina Browne
For more information, contact:
Kelly Norrell
Publicity Chair
806-0132
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