Battle Creek Hosts Movie on Slave Trade + Center for Healing Racism Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadAired January 26,2009
INTRO: Tonight in Battle Creek, there’s a free film showing about the biggest slave traders in America. They were from the North not the South and one of their descendants made the film. She’ll be on hand to talk about it. The event is sponsored by the National Center For Racial Healing, based in Battle Creek. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.
TRX1: If you missed the movie last year on PBS, you’ll have another chance tonight. Traces of the Trade will show at 6 O’clock.at the Kellogg Foundation in downtown Battle Creek. The filmmaker herself will be there. This is she: Katrina Browne, in a clip.
AX1: “What no one in my family realized was that the DeWolf’s were the largest slave trading family in U.S. history. They brought over 10,000 Africans to the Americas in chains. Half a million of their descendants could be alive today.”
TRX2: Browne takes family members to Cuba and Ghana where their ancestors traded slaves. The documentary is not just a history lesson. It looks at what the family has to reconcile within themselves. Their own shame and guilt. It’s a fitting topic for the National Center For Racial Healing to sponsor. Theresa Durham has gone through 3 workshops there.
AX2: “Tears flowed for me the very first time I went through a 2 day healing racism workshop. It was a real heart opening experience for me. I grew up in a community where a line was drawn between one part of the community and another part. Right here in Battle Creek. To the north was the white community and on the southern side was the black community.”
TRX3: The counties of Cass, Branch and Lenawee supported the underground railroad during slavery. Then blacks started coming to Detroit and other car towns in 1916. But even today, Michigan is considered one of the most segregated states in the nation. And that discourages dynamic entrepreneurs from doing business here. The Center for Racial Healing deals with white privilege, internalized racism and ally building. Teresa Durham says you have to look within yourself.
AX3: “Once you expose yourself there’s a certain amount of pain and tension that you do get inside of you because you’re doing that. But you tend to understand the other individuals in the room who are experiencing the same kind of feelings that you have.”
TRX4: Durham says you can feel embarrassed, well other white people with you in the group probably do too. You feel angry that your high school distorted the truth about race relations, that’s normal.
AX4: “in my experience in the sessions we went through people did say they were sorry. People did embrace one another.”
TRX5: The workshops attract people already willing to be self-critical. That’s a tiny percentage of us. Some might say the whole state should be in workshops like these.
AX5: “You just have a certain feeling when you walk away of exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion. But then when you have time to do your own self reflection there’s a connection that’s been made and you then have that freeness to have a dialogue and continue the dialogue and discussion.”
TRX6: Sharon Davis has roots in Adrian and Detroit. She’s been working on these issues for decades. Last week, she become the director of the Center for Racial Healing.
AX6: “These feelings that come up, regardless of how the wound got there, are exceedingly important to heal in various ways. So as you heard Teresa describe, a person can be wounded and not know it for a long period of time.”
TRX7: Davis says everyone is hurt by racism. Whites made the laws that people had to follow for almost 200 years. But whites hurt themselves too.
AX7: “We can’t write enough laws for this to go away. The big reason we can’t write enough laws for this to go away is that we need a foundation of the oneness of humankind. We must absolutely must be allies and that understanding is that we’re all created from the same dust and what happens to Teresa will happen to me and any other cultural group on this planet.”
TRX8: Davis and Durham remind us that Michiganders are also Latino, Asian, Arab and native American. There are many boxes to open up and barriers to cross. Davis has heard African-Americans discount the movie she’s sponsoring tonight in Battle Creek.
AX8: “For anyone out there who thinks this is a story about white people for white people it’s not the case at all. This is a story about the impact of the traces of this trade that still linger with us today and it’s part of the healing process.”