Slave Trade

NEW HAVEN -- A group of American and British college students are learning about slavery the hard way, coping with seasickness, barked orders like "clean the galley!" and standing watch in the rain. The seven students are aboard the Freedom Schooner Amistad, a near-replica of the famous ship that sparked a slave revolt. The ship left its home base in New Haven last month for a 16-month, 14,000-mile voyage to Nova Scotia, Britain, and Africa that traces a 19th century route of the slave trade.

The following was submitted by the Medford Public Library: "Ten Hills Farm" tells the story of five generations of slave owners in colonial New England. Settled in 1630 by John Winthrop, Ten Hills Farm was a six-hundred-acre estate in the area of the Royall House in Medford. Each successive owner of Ten Hills Farm, from John Winthrop to John Usher to Isaac Royall, would depend upon slavery's profits until the 1780s, when Massachusetts abolished the practice.    We have selected two titles for children.

NEW HAVEN -- The ship Amistad has arrived in Britain, where it will mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade as part of a voyage retracing the route of the slave trade. Freedom Schooner Amistad, a reconstruction of the ship made famous by a slave revolt, left New Haven in June for a 16-month, 14,000-mile voyage to Nova Scotia, Britain, and Africa. Fifty students will board the ship for portions of the journey and share their experiences with millions of others worldwide through live Web casts and e-mail correspondence.

History is the vehicle for most of Barry Unsworth's novels, but he never lets the vehicle preempt the passengers. It is for their sake that he provides it; to display and explore their complexities as if only in movement might a character's concealing pleats unfurl. In "Losing Nelson," the charting of the admiral's battles serves to illuminate the wondrously kinky landscape of the hobbyist who charts them. In "The Songs of the Kings," the Trojan War is a tragicomic ring for a circus of Greek dolts and schemers, as well as a beautifully inflected satire on our contemporary politics.

In "Hanging Captain Gordon," a history of the 1862 execution of a ship captain engaged in the slave trade, Ron Soodalter estimates that a full cargo of 800 slaves could be purchased in Africa for $32,000 in 1850 and then later sold for 30 times that amount . Despite an 1820 US law that made slave trading a capital offense, the business -- supported by big banks, large insurance companies, and corrupt government officials -- continued to thrive until...

PROVIDENCE - One of Rhode Island's most celebratory occasions will be tainted next weekend by reminders of one of the ugliest chapters in its history. WaterFire, a nighttime public arts display that draws tens of thousands of people to downtown Providence on weekends in the summer and fall, will reflect on Rhode Island's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade Saturday. Actors spread throughout the crowd and accompanied by torchbearers will read aloud the names of slaves sold on ships that departed from Rhode Island.

PROVIDENCE - Supporters of a bill aimed at curbing human and sex slave trafficking said yesterday that the legislation is urgently needed in Rhode Island because the state has become a safe haven for predators. At a State House rally, about 200 people, including law enforcement officials, politicians, activists, teenagers, and clergy, crowded the rotunda and cheered on speakers pushing for passage of legislation before the General Assembly. "This crowd today shows that we know what's going on, and we don't want it anymore," said...

LONDON -- An emotional Mayor Ken Livingstone apologized yesterday for his city's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, saying London was still tainted by it. The notoriously outspoken Livingstone seldom apologizes for anything, but he choked up as he read an account of the brutal tortures suffered by slaves in Britain's Caribbean colonies. And the politician nicknamed "Red Ken" for his left-leaning views angrily denounced the role of his city's corporations in financing the trade.

Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution , By Charles Rappleye, Simon & Schuster, 399 pp., illus., $27 Rhode Island, in the years when America was melding as a nation, was a conflicted place. Local patriots seized and burned the British revenue ship Gaspee three years before the battles of Lexington and Concord, yet Rhode Island, which was founded as a tolerant refuge for Colonial dissenters, was the last state to ratify the Constitution -- prompting pro-ratification Providence and Newport to...

ALBANY, N.Y. -- State legislators are directing schools to teach students more about the struggles and triumphs of different races and ethnic groups, and some critics are objecting. A mission in New York will examine whether the "physical and psychological terrorism" against Africans in the slave trade is being adequately taught in schools. The commission is named for the slave ship Amistad, which was commandeered by slaves who eventually won their freedom in a US Supreme Court ruling.

WASHINGTON - Almost two centuries before there was a man named Obama in the White House, there was a man named Obama shackled within a slave ship. There is no proof that the unidentified Obama has ties to President Obama. All they share is a name. But that is exactly the commonality that Emory University researchers hope to build upon as they delve into the origins of Africans who were taken up and sold. They have built an online database around those names, and welcome input from people who may share a name in the database or have such names as part of their family lore.

Marvis Sylvers’s vacation to-do list when she arrived in Boston from Tucson: She wanted chowder, to see Faneuil Hall, and to take her daughters to hear Frederick Douglass’s fiery Independence Day speech, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro.” “I wanted them to experience the Fourth of July in the city, to understand our piece of it,” she said. The celebration in Douglass’s time, she said, “wasn’t our reality.” Sylvers and her girls were among more than 150 people who gathered yesterday at the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common for...

WILLEMSTAD, Curaçao — On a humid November morning I learned that when a square-jawed, tan, and smiling gentleman who refers to himself as Captain Goodlife offers you a ride, it is tough to say no. Especially when his water taxi skims at white-knuckle speeds over the stunning turquoise sea at Playa Santa Cruz. Eventually Captain Goodlife — I never tire of that name — stops at a spot where you can dive off the boat and snorkel into a cave where the sun reflects off the blue water and turns the walls a stunning shade of cerulean while tropical fish mingle below your feet.

Veteran journalist Simon Winchester has, in recent years, taken to writing what might be called geological blockbusters. His method is to focus on a relatively contained event — the eruption of Krakatoa, say, or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 — and envelop it in several layers of context, social, scientific, historical, political. Winchester’s technique gives him license to pursue tangents hither and yon, which are annoying and charming in equal measure. The subject of his new book, “the S-shaped body of water covering 33 million square miles’’ otherwise known as...

W HO : Veronica McCormack, 57, of Watertown WHERE : Tanzania WHEN : Three weeks in June WHY : “A colleague had told me about Amani Children’s Home for street kids and he got me involved in fund-raising, so I wanted to see it firsthand; also a friend invited me to visit,’’ she said. FAMILIAR FACE

PROVIDENCE - Supporters of a bill aimed at curbing human and sex slave trafficking said yesterday that the legislation is urgently needed in Rhode Island because the state has become a safe haven for predators. At a State House rally, about 200 people, including law enforcement officials, politicians, activists, teenagers, and clergy, crowded the rotunda and cheered on speakers pushing for passage of legislation before the General Assembly. "This crowd today shows that we know what's going on, and we don't want it anymore," said Representative Joanne...

The following was submitted by the Medford Public Library: "Ten Hills Farm" tells the story of five generations of slave owners in colonial New England. Settled in 1630 by John Winthrop, Ten Hills Farm was a six-hundred-acre estate in the area of the Royall House in Medford. Each successive owner of Ten Hills Farm, from John Winthrop to John Usher to Isaac Royall, would depend upon slavery's profits until the 1780s, when Massachusetts abolished the practice.    We have selected two titles for children.

WASHINGTON - Almost two centuries before there was a man named Obama in the White House, there was a man named Obama shackled within a slave ship. There is no proof that the unidentified Obama has ties to President Obama. All they share is a name. But that is exactly the commonality that Emory University researchers hope to build upon as they delve into the origins of Africans who were taken up and sold. They have built an online database around those names, and welcome input from people who may share a name in the database or have such names as part of...

At first glance, it seems an ordinary portrait of a little girl. Dressed in her Sunday best, she has an oversize bow in her hair, her feet, in white shoes and socks, are delicately crossed at the ankle, while her hands are politely clasped in front of her. Yet closer inspection reveals steeliness in her dark eyes, as the defiant tilt of her head makes clear that even at 4, Paule Marshall was someone to be reckoned with, ready to, as she writes,...