I live in Rhode Island, where the academians are suddenly hot to correct our whitewashed history. When I was in public school 30 years ago, slavery was something that only involved the southern American states. 20 years ago it was amended and we were taught that while Newport was a port that slavers passed through on their way to the south, there was no slavery in RI. In fact, our proud little state was an important stop on the underground railroad.

That's all well and good, but the full name of our state is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; the majority of the state was plantation fields at one point. Newport was the busiest slaving port in the country, and when Congress banned slave transport our cunning businessmen found a loophole and Bristol became the new hot slaving port. There are still historic houses with basement cells in both these towns. The truth as the academics are telling it now is that little Rhody was up to its eyeballs in both trading and owning slaves.

Recently, these academics traced the bloodline of a speech pathologist who is descended from a slave documented to have come through the Newport slave market on a ship owned by the Brown family. They invited her (the descendant) to visit the state and had a parade, week-long lecture series, and several state dinners in her honor. Seems kind of weird. Are we going to do this for the many thousand more descendants who must be out there in the world?