First Readings Discussion Questions: Slavery and Justice

Please feel free to engage with the following discussion questions about the text to share with your seminar facilitator on ASK :

1. How does this history challenge your previously held conceptions and understanding of the transatlantic slave trade? Of “the North”? Of Brown itself?

2. One of the labels that is often attached to New England’s relationship to slavery is “complicity”: what meaning does that word convey? What does it illuminate and what does it obscure? Are there other terms that better express the nature of moral responsibility for acts of violence that might be perpetrated thousands of miles away in one’s name or for one’s benefit?