Slavery

I BELIEVE I'm entitled to reparations for having to read yet another letter on slavery. At what point do some folks in the African-American community embrace the glorious possibilities of their lives today? Scott Wolf Philadelphia

AS SOON as he learned the ugly truth, the chairman of financial-services giant Wachovia Corp. issued a remorseful nostra culpa. "We are deeply saddened by these findings," Ken Thompson said. "I apologize to all Americans, and especially to African-Americans. " Wachovia acknowledged that it "cannot change the past or atone for the harm that was done. " But it promised to make amends by subsidizing the work of organizations involved in "furthering awareness and education of African-American history.

PHILADELPHIA MADE history once again yesterday with the opening of the President's House on Independence Mall, believed to be the country's first federal commemoration of slavery. The $11.2 million project, known officially as "President's House: Freedom and Slavery in Making a New Nation," stands on the footprint of the original structure where presidents George Washington and John Adams resided from 1790 to 1800. The open-air site, at 6th and Market streets, also pays homage to the nine slaves of African descent who were owned by Washington and worked in the house: Austin, 32, Christopher Sheels, 16, Giles, 32, Hercules, 36, Joe Richardson, 26, Moll, 51, Oney Judge, 17, Paris, 16 and Richmond, 14. Hercules was Washington's chef and Oney Judge was maid to Martha Washington and her grandchildren.

I THANK Michael Smerconish for spreading the word (May 31) about the archaeological dig at the President's House site at 6th and Market, where George Washington presided from 1790- 1797 with nine of his 316 enslaved Africans from Mount Vernon. Smerconish correctly noted that the dig recently uncovered partial foundations of the bow window, the prototype for today's Oval Office. But in regard to the partial foundations of the walls of the kitchen, he is incorrect in noting that the kitchen had a basement so those blacks could move between it and the main house "without going outside.

RE COUNCILMAN Goode's response to my letter on the slavery-disclosure ordinance: I agree that it was wrong to use slaves as collateral for loans and investments. Slavery was wrong and disgraceful. But the councilman still fails to tell how these disclosures will address discrimination. What do any current discriminatory practices by these institutions have to do with what happened hundreds of years ago? Can't they be investigated for what they are doing now? If I am being investigated for embezzlement, do you also investigate my great-great-great-grandfather?

From the perspective of the late 20th century, the most intriguing aspect of Abraham Lincoln's rise to political power is the combination of his eloquent moralism against the extension of slavery to the Western territories with his willingness to tolerate it in the South. In his 1861 inaugural address, for example, in an effort to save the Union, Lincoln even endorsed a constitutional amendment forbidding Congress from interfering with slavery in the states. The states that had seceded, however, were unimpressed.

RE MINISTER Meritazon's recent op-ed on reparations: First off, sir, study your history before sticking your hand out for something no one alive today was responsible for that happened 300 years ago. The rich African war lords enslaved their own people, then figured a way to make even more money by selling them to anyone willing to pay. Second, don't you know that men, women and children are still forced into slavery every day in...

Re "Multicultural congress pushes for slave memorial at Liberty Bell" (article Aug. 9): A memorial on Independence Mall commemorating those who were enslaved at our first president's Morris Mansion is most suitable. It will also serve as a bridge to the century of slavery in the City of Brotherly Love way before George Washington brought his menservants from Virginia to Philadelphia right after the creation of the American presidency. The truth about slavery in Philadelphia is too often buried.

SLAVERY IS alive and well. Not the old-time slavery - that is rare, although it exists in a few backwaters of the world. I'm talking about neo-slavery, which goes by the name of "human trafficking," and its reach is global. A lot of people throw the term around, but many don't understand it. Under federal law, at least one of three elements must exist to be considered "human trafficking": force, fraud, coercion. Without at least one of those, it may be exploitation or cruelty, but it is not "human trafficking" under U.S. law. These and other points were put on the table Saturday at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute during a film screening/panel hosted by state Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat representing parts of Montgomery and Delaware counties who is best known for having a sense of humor and a reliably liberal voting record.

If Rachel Weisz has a favorite film genre, it's the one that Silkwood and Erin Brockovich can be filed under: "You know," she explains, "a thriller in which an ordinary woman does an extraordinary thing, one lone person up against a huge organization, David-versus-Goliath-style. " And that, in a nutshell, is what Weisz - as real-life former Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkovac - is doing in The Whistleblower , a tough tale of sex trafficking, corruption, and cover-ups set in postwar Bosnia.

RICK SANTORUM didn't wait to be asked. The day the conservative Christian organization Family Leader announced its defense-of-marriage pledge, Santorum called to ask where he could sign. Even so, he managed to be only the second signer. Michele Bachmann was first to send back her signed document. Neither was in as big a rush to clarify their position after learning that they had signed a pledge stating that black children were more likely to be raised in a two-parent home during slavery than they are "after the election of the U.S.A's first African American president.

BACK IN THE DAY, when major league baseball resembled a half-vast plantation and teams owned players forever and a day, the Cardinals traded centerfielder Curt Flood to the Phillies. It was October 1969 and Flood got the news from the publicity guy, so far down the chain of command he rattled when he walked. Flood said, hell no, he won't go. What he actually said was, "In the history of man, there's no other profession except slavery where one man is tied to one owner for the rest of his life.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the U.S. secretary of state Last year I met a group of young girls in Cambodia living in a shelter for survivors of human trafficking. They wanted the same things we all desire for our children: the opportunity to live and learn in safety, to grow up free to fulfill their God-given potential. But for these girls, those basics seemed nearly insurmountable. They had already endured traumas that defy description and shock the conscience. A decade since the United Nations adopted the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, there are more slaves living in the world today than at any point in history.

RE THE LETTER "A Worse Fate than the Irish, Diane," from James Webb Sr.: Mr. Webb, although your people may have been kidnapped, I remember learning that it was your own people that sold Africans into slavery. And just as your people suffered on ships coming to America, the ships to Ellis Island carrying the Irish weren't the Titanic. Many of these immigrants never survived the long trip. And imagine their surprise when they arrived in the Land of Opportunity to face help-wanted ads followed by "No Irish Need Apply.

My husband and I jumped the broom on Juneteenth 1983. Translated, that means my husband and I wed on June 19, 28 years ago. It also means both of us are old, but that's probably fodder for an AARP column. The point is, both Juneteenth and the broom hold important cultural and historical significance among American Americans. The centuries-old tradition of jumping the broom stems back to slavery, when enslaved African Americans, whose masters often prohibited them from marrying, ceremoniously jumped over broom, symbolizing settling into a new life together.

PLACERVILLE, Calif. - Jaycee Dugard refused to "waste another second" in the presence of the married couple she said stole her life. She didn't want to be in a northern California courtroom yesterday as 60-year-old Phillip Garrido, the serial sex offender who kidnapped, raped and held her captive for 18 years, was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison and his wife, Nancy, 55, was given a decades-long sentence. The feelings the 31-year-old victim had never been able to express while she was held prisoner did make it into court.

EARLY in the predawn darkness of April 12 exactly 150 years ago, a signal gun from the artillery batteries ringing the Charleston, S.C., harbor sent a shell sparkling into the air over Fort Sumter, the U.S. outpost in the middle of the harbor. All of the cannons and mortars then opened up, and in 34 hours, bombarded Fort Sumter into surrender. The Civil War had begun. And 150 years later, many black Americans give a collective shrug and say, "So what?" It's a surprising answer, since the most obvious result of the Civil War was the emancipation of nearly 4 million black slaves, along with three amendments to the Constitution that abolished slavery and promised the freed people full and equal citizenship.

By Steven Conn One hundred fifty years ago today, Edmund Ruffin proudly fired a shot at Fort Sumter, a federal military installation in the harbor of Charleston, S.C. Almost ceremonially, it began the Civil War. Four years and more than 600,000 dead Americans later, Ruffin fired what some consider the last shot of the war when he killed himself, so distressed was he that his beloved Confederacy had lost. History is written by the winners, the old adage goes. But in the case of the American Civil War, that hasn't been entirely true.