They were once America's cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?

[appalachiablue]

28. Franklin, the slave trader's descendants face the past; Freedom Hs. Update:

"Like we descended from Hitler’: Coming to terms with a slave-trading past," Washington Post, Feb. 8, 2018. The family secret lurked in the background as the cousins grew up in Maine, Maryland and Tennessee. Something about the Southern ancestors, back in the Civil War days, that most of the adults wouldn’t talk about, although those who married into the family would occasionally give hints.

“My grandmother was never really forthright about it,” said Lyn Hoyt, 53, of Nashville. “She called [her husband’s ancestors] ‘horse traders’ and said, ‘You don’t really want to hook your wagon to the Franklins.’ ”

When Hoyt and her cousins finally put the clues together, what they discovered horrified them: This family of educators, scientists and physicians was indirectly descended from Isaac Franklin, the biggest and most successful slave trader in the pre-Civil War United States, who with his partner John Armfield shipped thousands of black people from their “slave pen” in Alexandria into brutal servitude in the Deep South...More...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/like-we-descended-from-hitler-coming-to-terms-with-a-slave-trading-past/2018/02/07/3d65b0bc-f48a-11e7-b34a-b85626af34ef_story.html



- A slavery-related exhibit at Freedom House in Alexandria, Va., a museum in the former 19th c. slave trading offices.