"What do you do when you find out you're related to the largest slave trading industry in history?," posed author Thomas DeWolf at the beginning of his presentation on Wednesday night at Pohick Regional Library in Burke. His talk, a part of the 2010 Fall for the Book Festival, focused on his book, Inheriting the Trade, which documents his pursuits of tracing his family's history with the slave trade in the United States.  

DeWolf began the evening reading from the introduction to his book. The dynamic speaker explained to the audience that his interest in his family's genealogy began when he found he was distantly related to both actress Drew Barrymore and Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolver. His adventure in finding out about his family history brought him and his cousins to Bristol, Rhode Island, where the DeWolf family operated their slave trading industry. As DeWolf explained, Bristol was a part of a slave trading triangle that traded slaves kidnapped from Ghana and goods acquired in Cuba.  

Throughout the evening DeWolf emphasized that the history taught to him as a child was only a small part of the entire story. He focused on how he learned how involved the North was in the slave industry, how our leaders made compromises that allowed for slavery to occur and how the ripples from slavery still continue in the race relations in our country to this day. When referring to the discomfort people have when discussing race, he stated, "If we can start having this conversation, then the book is successful."

DeWolf also wanted to use his book to help encourage those to look at their own family histories. He prefaced this with a small warning, "When you start searching your genealogies, you'll find both heroes and horse thieves." But he continued his encouragement explaining how his own journey has helped him. "I feel more liberated now than ever before to step through this door and deal with this discomfort," DeWolf stated.

The author concluded the evening with questions from the crowd. The inquisitive audience kept the event going until the librarians had to begin encouraging people to leave since the library was closing. DeWolf ended the evening with one last statement of hope to his audience. "I hope to encourage people to investigate their own lives and address the injustices in their own lives and communities that occur because of inaction."