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Page 8 The Skanner Portland & Seattle March 6, 2019 News New Interactive Website Featuring Henry Louis Gates, Tracks Slave Voyages By Stacy M. Brown,NNPA Newswire Correspondent n his PBS series, “Find- ing Your Roots …” Henry Louis Gates Jr. presents guests whose roots cover the globe – from Samoa, Nigeria, Taiwan and Sicily to Iran, Ireland, India and Cuba – and almost everywhere in between. Each episode weaves together their sto- ries, gleaned from cut- ting-edge DNA analysis and old school genealog- ical detective work. And, at the center of it all and guiding every dis- covery is Gates, the Al- phonse Fletcher Univer- sity Professor at Harvard University and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Gates is also now fea- tured on a newly updat- ed website, slavevoyages. org, which contains data- bases of the Trans-Atlan- tic and Intra-American slave trade. The databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative re- search by scholars who draw upon information in libraries and archives around the world, ac- cording to a news release. The new slave voyag- es website counts as the product of three years I of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, comput- er programmers, and web designers, in con- sultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America. Among the many unique features are an African names database. The producers of the site note that during the last 60 years of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, courts around the Atlantic basins con- demned over 2,000 ves- sels for engaging in slave trafficking and recorded the details of captives found on board those ships, including African names. Links are provided to the ships in the Voyages Database from which the liberated Africans were rescued, as well as to the African Origins site where users can hear the names pronounced and help us identify the languages they think the names originated from or are used. The site also takes a deep look at the slave trade within the Ameri- cas, which, after the ini- tial disembarkation of African captives in the New World, has received scant attention from his- torians, especially for the period prior to the abolition of transatlantic slave traffic. An article on the site examines similar types of intra-American traf- ficking as an introduc- tion to the launching of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database, which aims to document evidence of slave voyag- es throughout the New World. “The site now offers access to details of more than 36,000 slave trading voyages between Afri- ca and the New World; 11,000 voyages from one part of the Americas to another part; and 92,000 Africans who were forced to take the voy- age,” Gates said. “Users can analyze data and view video and they can contribute cor- rections and add infor- mation on voyages the editors don’t even know about,” he said. The web- site allows viewers to explore the dispersal of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world. According to the web- site, the digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers ac- cess to the documenta- tion available to answer them. It recounts how Euro- “The site now offers access to details of more than 36,000 slave trading voyages between Africa and the New World; 11,000 voyages from one part of the Americas to another part; and 92,000 Africans who were forced to take the voyage,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. pean colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved la- borers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. Also, how those colonizers forced millions of most- ly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Those viewing the web- site can analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, time- lines, and animations to see the dispersal. Sponsored by the Na- tional Endowment for the Humanities, the work on the site was done at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, the University of California at Irvine, and the Univer- sity of California at Santa Cruz with the Hutchins Center of Harvard Uni- versity providing sup- port. “I find it inspiring that our fellow Americans are so determined to ex- plore their own ancestral heritage,” Gates noted. Public Pays Respect to Richardson SALEM (AP) — Top officials in Oregon heralded Secretary of State Dennis Richard- son as a faithful pub- lic servant in front of hundreds of mourn- ers who came togeth- er across party lines to remember Oregon’s top elections official. A state funeral was held for Richardson on Wednesday in the House of Representa- tives. He died at age 69 late last month following a battle with brain cancer. Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said Richardson left a legacy of “kindness, respect and civility,” an especially “important one in today’s world.” Flags were lowered to half-mast last week in honor of Richardson. Richardson was given a farewell ceremony with full military honors fol- lowing the funeral. As secretary of state, Richardson held the second-highest office in the state and was the first Republican elected to statewide office in 14 years. Brown is expected to name his successor in the coming weeks. A combat helicopter pilot during the Viet- nam War, Richardson stood up for veterans, including appearing in a video on Oct. 5 promot- ing a business luncheon aimed at giving them more business opportu- nities. He supported diversi- ty, promoting a “Black in Oregon, 1840-1870” ex- hibit this year at the Or- egon State Archives, an agency of his office. “It reminds us that, al- though we have come a long way on the path of freedom and equality, we still have much to do if we truly are committed to ‘liberty and justice for all,’” he wrote. Richardson and his wife Cathy have seven daughters, one of them adopted. As such, he paid special interest to the state’s substandard fos- ter care system. An audit conducted by his office, released in February, said casework- ers were strained to the breaking point amid a drop in available foster homes for 11,000 young- sters and cited manage- ment shortcomings. “This isn’t a problem for the governor to fix, not a problem for the Legislature just to fix. It’s our problem. These are our children,” Richard- son told journalists. On Aug. 28, he ap- peared in a video on his office’s Facebook page, speaking in a hoarse voice and saying he was fatigued from the strong medications he was re- ceiving, but insisting he was doing well in fight- ing the illness while fighting for Oregonians as secretary of state. “I am still on the job, and all in for Oregon,” he said. But on Oct. 16, he ad- vised his two colleagues on the State Land Board, Brown and state Treasur- er Tobias Read, that he was not well enough to attend a scheduled meet- ing the next day. He as- signed Deputy Secretary of State Leslie Cummings to attend the meetings for the duration of his cancer treatment. Richardson was elect- ed to the second-highest office of the state in 2016, two years after running unsuccessfully for gov- ernor as the Republican nominee, losing to Dem- ocrat John Kitzhaber. He earlier on was elect- ed to the Oregon House of Representatives in 2002, where he served six terms for 12 years.