For most of the 134 years since the last slaves were freed, the history of human bondage has been pushed to the margins of American memory.
But now, as if the dam built by white guilt and black pain has begun to give way, this terrible chapter in the nation's past has become the focus of widespread fascination. Slavery suddenly seems to be under scrutiny everywhere -- in the blossoming of black genealogy on the World Wide Web; in an unprecedented outpouring of books, films and CD-ROMs; in the popularity of slavery memorabilia; in celebrations of emancipation and new pride in slave ancestry.
Thousands are expected to gather in New York City on July 3 for a ceremony launching a "Middle Passage Monument" -- a wave-shaped aluminum sculpture -- to be lowered into the Atlantic on the route of millions of Africans 'forced journey to slavery or death. Juneteenth, a commemoration of the day -- June 19, 1865 -- that word of freedom finally reached Texas, was marked yesterday in dozens of cities, including Baltimore.
Colonial Williamsburg, which for its first 50 years ignored slavery altogether except for euphemistic references to "servants," has chosen "Enslaving Virginia" as the central theme of its programs this year.
A group led by former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder is raising money for a slavery museum and research center at Jamestown, Va., on the lines of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Cincinnati's museum documenting the Underground Railroad is expected to open in 2003.
Ripples becoming a wave
"All these little ripples are beginning to make one big wave," says Pat Bearden, 57, a retired Chicago teacher and president of an exclusive new society: To join, you must prove you are descended from a slave. The International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry is building a genealogical database and collecting oral histories and has created a traveling exhibit of photographs of former slaves.
"Something fundamental is happening," says Orlando Bagwell, the Baltimore-bred documentary filmmaker who produced last fall's PBS television series on slavery, "Africans in America." "As a nation, while we're not eager to open a discussion of race, we're troubled that race remains an issue. We know something's wrong. And slavery is the obvious area that has never been adequately addressed."
