Slavery Family Trees Exhibition in Lancaster hopes to transform the future by facing the past

The Slavery Family Trees Community Research Exhibition was launched in October 2022 at Lancaster City Museum and runs until February 26, 2023.

It is a collaboration between Lancaster Black History Group (LBHG), Lancaster University, University of Central Lancashire and Lancaster Museums.

The LBHG project ‘Slavery Family Trees’ was led by Dr Sunita Abraham, Geraldine Onek, Professor Alan Rice, Professor Imogen Tyler, Jamie Reynolds and Dr Nicholas Radburn.

Funded by Necessity, the project worked with local schools, university students, voluntary organisations, community and faith groups from across the district to research and record some of Lancaster’s most prolific merchant families involved in Atlantic slavery.

“In facing the past more honestly, it is our hope to transform the future,” said Prof Imogen Tyler.

“Between 1700─1800 at least 122 ships sailed from the port of Lancaster to the coast of Africa where Lancastrian merchants were involved in the capture of an estimated 23,000 African men, women and children.

“These enslaved Africans would go on to be sold in the Caribbean and Americas, and while their lives often involved hard labour on plantations, they continuously resisted the violence, torture and degradation they experienced at the hands of European colonists.”

Members of the community research project have gone on to collaborate with Lancaster University Library, Sewing Café Lancaster, Lancashire Archives, Lancaster Priory, Lancaster Judges Lodgings Museums, the Decolonising Lancaster University Network and Lancaster Museums.