2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the ending of the slave trade throughout the British Empire. Following this step by the British government the relatively young republic of the United States of America passed a federal law prohibiting the external slave trade with Africa, which effectively outlawed the transatlantic slave trade between this country and the continent of Africa. Whilst this legislation saw the slave trade outlawed, slavery itself continued via the domestic slave trade that developed between the southern states until the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865, marking at least officially, the ending of slavery in the United States. All sorts of questions are raised by this anniversary of the formal ending of the slave trade within the United States. How important is this commemoration given that slavery continued within the interior of the United States until 1865? Have African-American communities been able to reclaim the history of enslavement for themselves and in what ways? And to what extent can the legacies of slavery ever be done justice to? The anniversary of the ending of the slave trade will serve as a peg on which to hang wider questions relating to subaltern people within the United States and the ways in which they have sought to reclaim the histories of their ancestors that for so long have been subject to the master narrative.