My Family Owned Slaves

Now today, Alex, we're focusing on your book, Blood Legacy.

It's a tale of your own family.

We're talking great-grandfathers, time six, way back, 200, 250 years, but about their involvement in slavery.

And we've talked quite a bit about slavery over the years on Trapped History in the broadest sense.

But today's a chance to take a deep dive into it from one slave-owning family's perspective.

We're going granular today.

And we just want to be clear about what we're doing today and about what we're not doing.

Firstly, we're not telling the stories of the enslaved.

That's something for another day.

It's hugely important, the most important, but it's not something we're equipped to do justice to today.

And secondly, by telling Alex's family story, we're not putting the stories of the enslavers above the stories of the enslaved.

We're not here to draw attention away from the people that all of this happened to.

And thirdly, we're not in the business of white self-pity.

This isn't an exercise in self-flagellation, making this quote-unquote all about me.

What this is about is very simple.

Again, three things.

Firstly, and this is the history bit, how and why could people do this? How could your ancestors, Alex, how could they do this? Secondly...

How do you, Alex, how do you today face up to an extremely unpalatable, shameful family history? And thirdly, I think it's about accountability.

Again, as Carla said, it's not about guilt or some sort of narcissistic self-importance, but it's also not about trying to wish it away, to whitewash it away.

It's about being able to look this in the eye and say, yep, we did that.

The other thing for me is the we is a really important part of this.

I don't think we can get away with saying, oh, it's them.

It's royalty.

It's aristocracy.

We're all in this together.