Bicentennial of abolition of slave trade

Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade (via legislative act and signature of Thomas Jefferson). I would not even be aware of this date, were it not for Scott Horton’s blog. I went to the web to find other pages to link to, and while there were tons of pages about the British abolition (which was a bit earlier, March of 2007), there were very few about the US act. What does it say about us that we do not take the time to remember this piece of history? Surely something about our inability — with generations of systemic racism — to attend to this painful wound in our history. Eric Foner has an excellent piece in the NYT about this issue.