Distinguished scholars, writers, musicians, visual artists, and organizers from the international community will convene at NYU to discuss slavery, the slave trade and its consequences, in plenary, panels, readings, performances, conversations and film/video screenings. The first international symposium "Slave Routes: The Long Memory" took place at New York University in October 1999. Several thousand people attended the activities and the population at large was reached through the televised viewing of selected sessions of the symposium. We are pleased to be organizing this historic commemoration honoring the memory of those who perished, rebelled and resisted enslavement, and those who continued the struggle to abolish the system of the slave trade and slavery. There are many questions concerning the geographic scale of the slave trade, the human losses sustained by Africa, the number of deaths along the way in ports of embarkation and on slave ships, the impact of deportation, exile, and dependency and the role of the slave trade in the economic and industrial development of the trading and receiving countries. The need for more in-depth analysis and for more information, investigations, critical evaluation, and publications remain substantial. The purpose of Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition, and Creative Progress is to review new information concerning the overthrow of