“What most Americans don’t know is the extensive complicity of the North in slavery. The victors write the history books, so the North wrote the history on slavery and very conveniently painted it solely as a Southern sin, whereas in fact the Northern colonies and states owned slaves for over 200 years and were the main slave traders…I’m a firm believer in the U.S. government apologizing because of all the ways in which the government supported and condoned and made slavery possible.”

— Katrina Brown, whose family was the subject of the PBS documentary, “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.” Brown’s ancestors, the DeWolfs, worked out of Bristol, Rhode Island in the late 1700s and early 1800s, trading rum for more than 10,000 men, women, and children from West Africa whom they brought to the United States to be sold as slaves. The DeWolfs grew to be one of the wealthiest families in the nation through the slave-trading business.