It is my deepest honor to speak before you today on this day of international remembrance of the
victims of the transatlantic slave trade. I have dedicated my life’s work to excavating the modern legacy
of transatlantic slavery, and so my thoughts are never far from what has become the defining subject of
my journalism, and what I believe continues to be the defining undercurrent of life in the Americas – the
legacy of slavery.
I stand before you the great-great-grandchild of enslaved men and women born here in the United
States of America, part of the millions who lived and died under the brutal, immoral and inhumane
system of chattel slavery that existed for the first 250 years of the land that would come to think of itself
as the freest nation in the history of the world.
— source un.org | 29 Mar 2022