Slavery, reconciliation and me

How does it feel to meet someone who connects you to a darker chapter of your family history? Datshiane Navanayagam is joined by two women whose experience of this has led them to delve deeper into their own family’s ties to both slavery and enslavement.

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican novelist. She discovered that she’s related to both enslaved people and enslavers when an ancestry-tracking TV programme contacted her out of the blue. Diana's latest book, A House for Miss Pauline takes inspiration from what she discovered and the questions that are left unanswered.

In 2007 Betty Kilby Baldwin was contacted by a white woman in Virginia who suspected that she’s the descendant of the family once enslaved Betty’s. After meeting in person, the two women began a shared process of truth and reconciliation; co-writing a memoir and working with organisation called Coming to the Table which brings together people wanting to learn the history of their connection to slavery and its legacies.

Produced by Hannah Dean and Jane Thurlow

(Image: (L) Diana McCaulay credit Jeremy Francis. (R) Betty Kilby Baldwin courtesy Betty Kilby Baldwin.)