Selected Resources
The Slave Trade and Slavery in the North
Published Text & Teacher Guide
A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England explores the nature of the triangular trade and the extent of slavery in New England. It discusses the effects of the trade in slaves and of slavery itself for the new Americans of the time, helping students to understand how history, and the telling of history, affects us today.
Web Links - Brown University
Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
In 2003, Brown University President Ruth Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. The committee, which included faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students, and administrators, was charged to investigate and to prepare a report about the University's historical relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. It was also asked to organize public programs that might help the campus and the nation reflect on the meaning of this history in the present, on the complex historical, political, legal, and moral questions posed by any present-day confrontation with past injustice. Resources available include:
- collected and digitized historical documents pertaining to the Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally (1764-65)
- a Repository of Historical Documents
- a link to teaching resources developed by the Choices Program
- and a copy of the final report of the committee.
Scholars Online
Developed by the Choices Program, Scholars Online videos bring university scholars into high school classrooms. The Videos are designed to supplement Choices printed curricula and are organized to enrich the student readings, lesson plans, and homework assignments in Choices printed material.
Listen to James Campbell respond to the question: How has the telling of this part of American history changed over time?
- Take a guided walking tour of Newport with Keith Stokes to explore life for African Americans in colonial America. The Lives of Four African Artisans in Newport, Rhode Island.
Slavery Connects the North and the South (Supplemental Lesson)
In the four hundred years after Columbus first sailed to the New World, some twelve million Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves. About 500,000 of these people came to mainland North America, what is now the United States. Excerpted from A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England, this online lesson plan explores the triangle trade.
Web Links - Additional Resources
African-American Mosaic
A Library of Congress online exhibition with graphics, primary sources, and historical narrative.Eyes of Glory
Explores the history of blacks in Newport, Rhode Island.History Now
an online quarterly journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
- Antislavery Before the Revolutionary War, Sylvia R. Frey
(Published in Issue Five: September 2005)
- Examining the Middle Passage
(Published in Issue Two: December 2004)
lesson plan for middle school- Interactive Map of Primary Sources
(Published in Issue Two: December 2004)
Hitchcock Collection
Several hundred images relating to the slave trade, including maps, housed at the University of VirginiaPriscilla's Homecoming
Documents, images, and history tracing one girl's journey from Africa to America, and her descendant's return visit to Sierra LeoneSlave Voyages
This interactive Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database contains more than 34,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866.Slavery in New York
The New York Historical Society's exhibition includes online resources and educational materials.Traces of The Trade
Describes the upcoming feature documentary about the DeWolf family of Bristol, Rhode Island, the largest slave-trading family in the United States
NOTE: This is a selected list of web resources on the slave trade and northern slavery. Additional resources are available from the Supplemental Materials page for the curriculum unit, A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England.