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Reflections on the Bicentennial of the 1807 Abolition Act and on the 2007 Conference in Ghana

The Ghana conference, organized by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, brought together scholars from universities and from research institutions located in various countries, museum directors, students and authors, as well as individuals with a special interest in the history of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade such as myself. I am an independent researcher with an interest in the history of the peoples of Africa and other parts of the world. I am currently employed as an aerospace engineer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes Airport Technology in Renton, Washington, and also serve as Vice President of the Black Genealogy Research Group of Seattle.

The Institute raised funds to grant scholarships to individual African students, professors, and researchers, providing for their transportation and lodging in order to facilitate their attendance and participation in the conference. This resulted in an interesting mix of attendees coming together to commemorate the bicentennial.

During the breaks, lunch, and dinner periods I conversed with the other participants. I met people from New York, Norway,  Denmark, Holland, England, Nigeria, Benin, Senegal, and Switzerland, all places of interest to me. I was pleased to find that I was staying in the same hotel complex as were the museum directors/associates of the Liverpool Slavery Museum, the Arendal Museum in Norway, and the Dutch Slavery Museum in Amsterdam.

I consider it a special privilege to have been able to attend and participate in this conference. I believe this conference was historic and brought together a community of researchers and interested parties meeting for the first time at a major historic location in sight of the Elmina and Cape Coast castles.

My conclusion from this conference is that the consequences of abolition differed domestically and internationally. The abolition acts did not end slavery on the African continent nor its stigma. Colonialism under different European powers did interfere with slave routes and led to their dismantling long after 1833. Internationally, the abolition acts stopped the Atlantic slave trade in the northern hemisphere but shifted the Atlantic trade to the southern hemisphere. Trade in the southern hemisphere eventually came to a halt around 1865 due to changes in Brazilian attitudes and enforcement of laws against slavery. Slavery on the African continent still exists in various forms, and the stigma resulting from having ancestors captured in slavery still is an issue that remains today and needs to be addressed.

For me, Harriet Tubman provided a common thread linking America and Ghana. My trip began with my daughter on July 24, 2007, at Harriet Tubman Davis’s gravesite in Auburn, New York. During the Ghana conference, I learned from one of the attendees that Harriet’s siblings were of the Akan tribe as based on a DNA study. Consequently, today in the suburbs of Accra, the capital of Ghana, at the Aburi Botanical Gardens, there is a monument to Harriet Tubman. (Coincidentally, at my family reunion picnic in New York on July 21, I learned that DNA shows that my own relations are Akan descendents!)

On this trip, from July 19 through August 12, I visited Harriet Tubman’s graveside, her birthplace in Bucktown, Maryland, her Underground Railroad terminus at St. Catherines, Canada, and her place of honor in the country of Ghana on the outskirts of Accra on the way to Koforidua. This was a journey with many lessons well learned and experienced at heart and one I will never forget!