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The University of North Carolina Press
2 DVDs (40 min. and 50 min.), film text, teacher's guide
Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia
"The bloody Writing is for ever torn"
In August 2007, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture convened an international conference in the Republic of Ghana to consider the consequences of decisions made and implemented by the governments of Denmark, Great Britain, and the United States between 1792 and 1808 to end their participation in the Atlantic slave trade. The first pan-African congress of historians held on that continent since 1961, the four-day conference included 300 scholars, students, and other participants from twenty-three different countries, more than half in sub-Saharan Africa. This two-disc DVD set is drawn from that meeting, which began as an idea for an academic conference and became a transformative experience.
"The bloody Writing is for ever torn" is set in Elmina and Cape Coast castles, two restored sixteenth-century slave trading forts from which 1.8 million enslaved people were transported to the Americas and the Caribbean between 1500 and 1867. In words and through cultural performances, this film captures multiple understandings of a painful, fiercely contested past and the sharing of historical knowledge and lived experience that characterized the conference.
The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins, Effects, and Legacies combines a distillation of some of the meetings sharply different scholarly perspectives and interpretations with compelling images and graphics in a format specifically designed for classroom use. The DVD is accompanied by a film text and a teacher's guide.
"Watching these films brought back to me the tremendous emotional impact of the Ghana conference. I would never have guessed that academic papers and comments could be extracted, edited and presented to such stunning effect. Anyone who teaches the Atlantic slave trade will find material here that will engage and excite students. In the shadow of one of West Africa's great slave castles, 'The bloody Writing is for ever torn' explains the nature and significance of this meeting of scholars and students, the first such meeting of African historians in more than a generation and the first ever congress of Africans and non-African scholars of the subject in Africa. The footage of people in northern Ghana still living in a fort built to protect them against slave raiders and alive to the reality of an internal slave trade that is much more than historical memory is tremendously powerful. The film of the Ghanaian dance company's representation of enslavement, sale and the middle passage, played out amongst the ominous shadows of the great slaving fortress of Elmina, embodies a kind of living history that challenges teachers and students alike to think anew about African slavery.
"As participants of the conference, we are gratified to see the rich, provocative (and sometimes painful) discussions and journeys that took place, captured in a way that chronicles our experience in all its facets. We are also thankful that you fashioned a portion of the film as a resource for educators who wish to understand the contours of the slave trade, and how this important period spelled the beginning of the end of slavery in Great Britain and North America. Well done."
--Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution; and Rex Ellis, associate director for curatorial affairs, Smithsonian Institution
"This conference on the effects of the abolition of the Atlantic Slave trade brought together many distinguished scholars and graduate students and provided an opportunity for the first time for them to exchange ideas and reflect on the causes and in African soil consequences of the abolition of the slave trade. The first film demonstrates the pertinence of the various and diverse arguments - humanitarian, economic and political - that factored and contributed to the abolishment of slavery in the nineteenth century. It is an excellent teaching tool that combines both the scientific arguments of the some of the leading specialists in this field with visual images from the past and present that illustrate so well the magnitude of this human tragedy that lasted for several centuries and whose consequences continue to shape our destiny.
"A more vivid and challenging account of the abolition of the Anglo-American slave trade I cannot imagine. Historians from Africa, Europe, and the Americas, gathered at a conference in what was once a slave port in Ghana, comment on the origins, effects, and legacies of abolition on a background of African art, music, and dance, and raise questions and reveal paradoxes that are of great present concern."
--Bernard Bailyn, Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, Harvard University, Emeritus
"There is a contagious immediacy to scholars interpreting the history of the abolition of the slave trade two hundred years ago at a site in Ghana from which 1.8 million Africans were transported to slavery. The vivid images of the slave trade that accompany the short talks shock viewers much as they were they were intended to do at the time. Listening to historians from Africa, Great Britain, and the United States debate the legacies of the slave trade pushes us to reflect on what should be the public memory of a subject at once painful and inspiring. Here is the past come alive in the present."
--Alfred F. Young, The Newberry Library and Northern Illinois University, Emeritus
"The bloody Writing is for ever torn is powerful and emotional. The second film, The Abolition of the Slave Trade: Origins, Effects, and Legacies, is deeply informative."
--Barbara Oberg, Princeton University, editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
Paper: $59.95
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116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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