Slave Trade abolished! Let's celebrate!
By Lisa randle@c oRfacn.eddlue
On March 2, 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed into

Slaves were often transported considerable distances down river by black slavers to be sold to Europeans as depicted in this drawing, Boy Travelers on the Congo, by Thomas W. Knox, New York, 1871.

law An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any

port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States

from and after the first day of January, in the year of our

Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight. In order to mark the bicentenary of this important legislation, one of the crucial steps in this country's protracted and often painful progress to full emancipation for all its citizens, the Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic World (CLAW) program at the College of Charleston has been working with partners throughout Charleston and South Carolina to stage a series of commemorative events.

These events kicked off last March with an interfaith ceremony on Liberty Square in downtown Charleston March 25, 2007, (the exact 200th anniversary of the equivalent British law banning the international slave trade) and have continued with a series of events at the College of Charleston and other historic sites around the region, but the commemoration kicks into high gear in the first half of next year.

The S.C. National Heritage Corridor's juried traveling art exhibition, The Connection, is open and will travel through fall of 2008. Work that illustrates the historical and contemporary connections between Barbados and S.C. will be showcased throughout S.C. and on the island of Barbados, West Indies. Proposed destinations for the exhibition are Anderson County, Greenwood County, Aiken County, Charleston County, and Barbados, West Indies. For further details please contact Elizabeth Harm at 803- 608- 0501.

Roots and Branches: An African- American Genealogy

Workshop Series, begins January 12 with more sessions taking place March 8, May 10, July 12, September 13, and November 8. The sessions will be held at the Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1519 Sam Rittenberg Blvd., Charleston. For more information e- mail info@gullahroots.com or call Wevonneda Minis at 843 670 6115.

From February 15- April 27, 2008, the State Museum will

host Finding Priscilla's Children: The Roots and Branches

of Slavery an exhibition chronicling the poignant story of Priscilla, a 10- year- old African girl kidnapped into slavery in 1756, whose exile began in Sierra Leone and ended in Charleston. For further details visit www.museum.state.sc.us or e- mail Elaine Nichols at Elaine.nichols@museum.state.sc.us.

From February 19- 22, a joint workshop of the southeastern chapters of the National Association for Interpretation and the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums will meet in Charleston with the theme of

Telling Your Story, Providing Experiences and making

Memories. A plenary session entitled Implications of the

Slave Trade on the Charleston Region. It features Lisa Randle (Charleston Site Coordinator for the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Curriculum Initiative), Nichole Green (Curator of the Old Slave Mart Museum), and Shawn Halifax (Natural and Cultural History Program Coordinator, Charleston County Parks). For further details call Trampas Alderman at 803- 267- 3675.

On February 28- 29, at Wannamaker County Park, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission will host African- American Heritage Days for elementary and middle Schools. For more information or registration, call 843- 795- 4FUN (4386). On- line registration at www.ccprc.com.

From March 25- 29, the CLAW program will host a major international conference featuring some of the world's leading scholars on slavery and the slave trade and including a performance of a truly unique multimedia piece called Requiem (featuring USC professor Kwame Dawes) as well as a public reading by Louisiana's former poet laureate Brenda Marie Osbey. For details of the conference visit www.cofc.edu/atlanticworld or call Simon Lewis at 843- 953- 1920.

April brings the College Literature Association to Charleston for the first time in their history for their annual convention. This year's theme is (Re)Roots and

(Re)Routes: Transatlantic Connections in Language and

Literature, and the keynote speaker is world- renowned African- American novelist Charles Johnson. For details of the conference visit www.clascholars.org/ or call Valerie Frazier at 843- 953- 1921).

In May, the replica of the slave ship Amistad will dock in Charleston harbor on the final leg of a circum- Atlantic voyage begun in March 2007. Visit www.schirmer.com. For details of the Spoleto Festival USA visit www.spoletousa. org/ or e- mail Nunally Kersh at nkersh@spoletousa. org.

May also sees the opening of the art exhibition Landscape

of Slavery:The Plantation in American Art at the Gibbes Museum on Meeting Street in downtown Charleston. www.gibbesmuseum.org or email Marla Loftus at mloftus@ gibbesmuseum.org.

Toni Morrison Society will convene for their fifth biennial conference from July 24- July 27. It is hoped that Ms. Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 will

attend in person. The conference theme is Toni Morrison

and Modernism. Visit www.tonimorrisonsociety.org or call Alma Jean Billingslea at 404- 270- 5571.

Many programs will take place at the College of Charleston and around the state, involving such partner organizations as the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and theWest Africa Council of S.C. Numerous historic sites such as Caw Caw Interpretive Center, Drayton Hall, Magnolia Plantation, Middleton Place Plantation, and the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site will also be staging events that draw attention to slavery, the slave trade, and African- American history in general. All of this activity is on top of the recent formal opening of the Old Slave Mart Museum, the recent announcement of the commissioners of the federally- funded Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, and the City of Charleston's commitment to build the International African- American Museum.

There will also be a series of six workshops on African- American genealogy as a follow- up to the October 27 conference Roots and Branches headlined by Tony Burroughs and Dorothy Spruill Redford. For full details call Simon Lewis at 843- 953- 1920.