Friday, March 30, 2007

Brown University Openly Displays Links to 18th Century Slave Trade

Brown University's Committee on Slavery and Injustice in cooperation with officials of the prestigious Ivy League school are displaying exhibits of a variety of articles including merchant ledgers, journals and clippings from newspapers that document the Brown family's involvement with the slave trade. Jason Zepp wrote an interesting piece posted on Yahoo! News yesterday just after 12pm.

Culturegeist posted a link to some excerpts from the 109-page report from the Brown Committee on Slavery and Injustice in a Tuesday, March 27th post titled "British Apology for Role in Slave Trade Stirs Controversy", scroll down to check it out or just click the link on the right side of the page.

Brown has traditionally served as one of the Ivy League's more progressive institutions and Culturegeist must extend kudos and props to the Providence, Rhode Island school for being courageous enough to take the lead in a movement that will find America and nations like Great Britain slowly starting to finally and openly explore the role slavery has played in the foundation and evolution of this nation. While New England abolitionists were the leaders in the movement to end slavery in America, New England was a region that participated in and profited from the Atlantic Slave trade - sending at least 100 different voyages across the Atlantic to bring some 100,000 Africans to be sold into slavery.

This is just the beginning of America's long-overdue self examination of it's role in one of the most vast human rights violations in history. Because America can never move forward and evolve as a nation until it is open about it's history, Culturegeist will continue to document this historic shift in the perception of who we really are.

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