(单词翻译:单击)
When you think about political power and the link between people in power and slavery, you do start looking for parallels around you in the world today.
当你想到政治权力以及当权者和奴隶之间的联系时，你会开始在当今世界寻找你周围相似的东西。
You start thinking, "Okay, we have these fights over access to the ballot.
你开始想，“好吧，我们为获得选票而斗争。
Well, who had the right to vote, and how has that changed over time?
那么，谁有投票权，随着时间的推移，这有什么变化?
And how did the way it all began influence the way it's going now?"
这一切是如何开始影响现在的发展的呢?”
You can look at a lot of issues through this prism of, "We started as a country where the people who held power were so often the same people who held slaves.
你可以透过这个棱镜来看待很多问题，“我们最初是这样一个国家，掌权的人往往是拥有奴隶的人。
And what does that mean for us now?"
现在这对我们意味着什么?”
This project first started when DC did something that a lot of cities did around the summer of 2020 and created a list of all the public buildings and parks and schools that could be renamed because of various wrongdoing on the part of the people they were named for.
这个项目最初是在华盛顿特区做了一件很多城市在2020年夏天做的事情，创建了一份名单，列出了所有公共建筑、公园和学校，这些建筑、公园和学校可以被重新命名，因为这些建筑被命名的人有各种不当行为。
My job at The Washington Post is covering DC's local government, so I looked at DC's list and I tried to figure out who these people were and why they were on the list.
我在《华盛顿邮报》的工作是报道华盛顿特区的地方政府，所以我看了华盛顿特区的名单，我试图弄清楚这些人是谁，为什么他们会在名单上。
I realized that several of them were in Congress, and several of the people on the list separately were slave owners, and that was why they were listed.
我意识到他们中的一些人在国会，名单上的几个人分别是奴隶主，这就是他们被列出的原因。
So I thought, "Well, maybe these members of Congress were slaveholders."
所以我想，“好吧，也许这些国会成员是奴隶主。”
And I Googled members of Congress who were slave owners.
我在谷歌上搜索了是奴隶主的国会议员。
And it wasn't there, and I clicked to the second page of Google results, and it still wasn't there.
它不在那里，我点击到谷歌搜索结果的第二页，它仍然不在那里。
And I realized there was no list.
然后我意识到根本没有名单。
And pretty much right away after that, I realized I needed to make the list.
就在那之后，我意识到我需要列个名单。
I can imagine a lot of different uses for it, and I'm very excited to see, now that it's out in the world, how people do put it to use.
我可以想象它有很多不同的用途，我非常兴奋地看到，现在它已经在世界上流传开来，人们是如何使用它的。
Now if you're a historian, you have this extra layer of analysis you can do, where you can say, "Well, let's use this database and see if the slaveholders voted differently from those who were not slaveholders."
如果你是一个历史学家，你可以做这个额外的分层分析，你可以说，“好吧，让我们用这个数据库看看奴隶主和非奴隶主的投票结果是否不同。”
I think it will be useful for all of those cities like Washington, all across the country, that are having debates about whose names should be on buildings.
我认为这对所有像华盛顿这样的城市都很有用，全国各地都在争论谁的名字应该出现在建筑物上。
They can look up, you know, the person whose name is on your elementary school.
他们可以查到，你知道，在你的小学里一个人的名字。
You can look him up in this database.
你可以在这个数据库里查到他。
I'm also hearing from a lot of people who are researching their own family histories, who've already started getting in touch with me.
我也听到很多人在研究他们自己的家族史，他们已经开始联系我了。
There are people who are descendants of some of these congressmen who are looking to see whether they had slaveholders in their ancestry.
有些人是这些国会议员的后代，他们想知道他们的祖先中是否有奴隶主。
There are also people who are descendants of people who were enslaved by the congressmen.
还有一些人是被国会议员奴役的人的后代。
And oftentimes it's really hard for Black families to research their family genealogy, because there's just so little information recorded.
通常，黑人家庭很难研究他们的家谱，因为记录的信息太少了。
When I was going through these censuses to create this database, there's lots of information about the congressman.
我在整理这些人口普查资料建立这个数据库的时候，有很多关于国会议员的信息。
It says often their age or their birthplace or their profession.
通常会显示他们的年龄、出生地或职业。
There's very little information about the people they enslaved.
关于他们奴役的人的信息很少。
Oftentimes, they're just listed by age and gender, not even a name.
通常，他们只是按年龄和性别列出，甚至连名字都没有。
So that information can be really hard to come by.
所以这些信息很难获得。
And to the extent that it's helpful for Black families who are researching their family's past, that's really exciting to me.
在某种程度上，这对研究自己家族历史的黑人家庭是有帮助的，这对我来说真的很令人兴奋。
