Penn State Centers Join with U.N. To Research Era of Transatlantic Slave Trade

December 9, 2002

University Park, Pa -- The Transatlantic Slave Trade -- the forced migration of approximately 12 million people, and the death of many more in war and captivity, over the course of 400 years -- changed the face of the world, creating the Western Hemisphere we know today with its legacy of racial problems. Six out of every seven persons who crossed the Atlantic to take up life in the Americas in the 300 years before the American Revolution were African slaves.

Penn State's George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center is leading the University's efforts as one of five institutions involved with the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in a multi-national collaboration devoted to research on and better teaching about the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The project, "Breaking the Silence: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project," links more than 200 public schools in 21 countries around the Atlantic Rim to promote better teaching of the slave trade, abolition, African culture, the endurance of slavery and racism, and to foster the search for reconciliation around this chapter of American and world history.

"Tragic as is this narrative, the peopling of the Americas offers more than a story of cruelty and despair," says the Richards Center Director William Blair, associate professor of history at Penn State. "It is a story of the first international campaign for human rights -- a humanitarian movement that highlights the extraordinary acts of ordinary men and women of all ethnicities and creeds who shared a common commitment to freedom.

"Slavery and emancipation lay at the heart of America's Civil War and the topic represents an essential thrust of the research and teaching emphasis of the center. Penn State is extremely well-situated to participate in the national conversation on slavery's history and ongoing effects," Blair adds. "As importantly, Penn State has a number of fine scholars spread throughout various departments-within and beyond the College of the Liberal Arts-who specialize in slavery and freedom struggles from antiquity to the present. This project allows us to capitalize on this important resource within the University, which can contribute to a better understanding of the creation of race and-with a hard work over an extended time-find ways to encourage its unmaking."

The George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center is located in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts. In collaboration with the Regional Humanities Center at Tulane University, New Orleans; the Gilder-Lehrman Centre at Yale University; the Low Country Atlantic World Program, College of Charleston, South Carolina; and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Richards Center's goal is to create the foundations for broadening the understanding of future generations of the history and impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Nationally, the goals of "Breaking the Silence" are to increase the breadth and depth of teaching at public middle and high schools about the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the struggles for emancipation, and, in so doing, address the legacy of racism in the United States. Each member university or research center partners with a local school system in developing and testing curriculum which, once developed, will be made available to the 200 linked schools involved with the project. At Penn State, the Richards Center is coupled with the State College Area, Pa., school district in a partnership that already has resulted in a teacher workshop at Yale University last summer and a number of projects begun among students in the district.

At the same time, the Richards Center is collaborating with other entities within Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts: the Rock Ethics Institute and the Africana Research Center, on developing means of expanding "Breaking the Silence" both locally and nationally. The centers together are planning:
--summer teachers' institutes, modeled on the highly successful seminars that the Richards Center has held for the last few years for public school teachers;
--a meeting of scholars from around the Atlantic rim to be held in 2005 to reassess the state of scholarship in this important area of study and suggest a research agenda;
--an exhibit, "Contemporary Artists' Visions of Slavery" at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State's University Park Campus;
--development of university-level curricula for use at Penn State, its World Campus, and at other universities;
--support for collaborative research projects addressing the issues of the project;
--long-running brown-bag series, lectures, seminars, and symposia.

Currently, the three research entities at Penn State are sponsoring "Breaking the Silence: Slavery and Freedom Struggles," a speaker series that will continue through 2005. The next speaker event in the series, Barbara Fields of Columbia University, will occur on March 20. Also scheduled is Troy Duster, professor at the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge and Department of Sociology at New York University, who will speak in April on Penn State's University Park campus.

Penn State's official involvement in the UNESCO project began early in 2002, but will be greatly helped by a recent philanthropic endowment investment. George and Ann Richard made a gift of $3 million in October 2002 to endow what is now the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center. Organizers re-named the Center to honor the Richards' gift, which will help enable the Richards Center to make Penn State "the pre-eminent place for studying an important focal point of American history," according to Blair.

For more information about the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project see http://www.unesco.org/education/asp/flagship/tst.shtml. For more information on the Penn State collaboration on Breaking the Silence: Slavery and Freedom Struggles or the three Penn State centers and institutes involved in the project, please visit the Breaking the Silence Web site at http://rockethics.psu.edu/bts/index.htm.

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Contact:

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 vfong@psu.edu

Gabe Welsch (814) 863-1827 gjw106@psu.edu

EDITORS: Dr. Blair is at 814-863-0151 or RichardsCivilWar@psu.edu by email.