identity on tyne is a group for writers and artists of colour in North-East England. The Roots Initiative was their response to the bicentenary, in partnership with the Literary and Philosophical Society. The writer Sheree Mack examined the region's involvement in the slave trade and the abolition movement through historical documents, creative writing and poetry. A heritage walk around Newcastle highlighted the events, individuals and places involved in the slave trade, slavery and the abolition movement in the North-East.

The muralist David Fichter adapted Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quotation “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards freedom,” for this 2002 mural in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The mural features Susan B. Anthony, Rosie the Riveter, William Lloyd Garrison and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as a young Frederick Douglass.At around the same age as he appears in this mural, Douglass gave a speech in nearby Boston on February 8, 1855 where he drew attention to the psychological impact of enslavement: “Whipping is not what constitutes the cruelty of Slavery," explained Douglass. “To me the thought that I am a slave is more terrible than any lash, than any chain.”