Bloodlines of the Slave Trade: Film Screening and Discussion

Bloodlines of the Slave Trade examines the very different stories of two families linked to two notorious, wealthy slave traders of the 1830s, John Armfield and Isaac Franklin.

Rodney Williams, who is Black, is descended from an enslaved woman whose child was fathered by Armfield. She may have been, with many others, forcibly marched from Alexandria VA to Natchez and Louisiana. Williams follows part of that path on the Natchez Trace to the site of slave sales and then to the Angola State Prison, once a plantation owned by the trader, Isaac Franklin. At that former slavery site Williams relates his own family experience of modern Black incarceration.

Susanna Grannis tells how her white family kept quiet about their connections to Armfield and Franklin and how she, too, ignored this history for many years. When finally facing these connections, she and other family members moved away from the calcified history of their family and nation to a more honest story of America.

Susanna Grannis is a library patron and member of the Neighbors of Northern Columbia County. A discussion with Susanna will follow the showing. Light refreshments will be served.