Modern slavery is widespread, but systemic injustice in society means this crime is able to perpetuate, hidden in plain sight. This expose shares moving survivor stories uncovering the harsh reality of modern slavery, and reveals what is going on behind closed doors, encouraging all of us to challenge this current atrocity.
The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War
During the Civil War, the US government abolished slavery without reimbursing enslavers, diminishing the white South's wealth by nearly 5 percent. After the Confederacy's defeat, white Southerners demanded federal compensation for the financial value of formerly enslaved people and fought for other policies that would recognize abolition's costs ......
How American symbols inspired enslaved people and their allies to fight for true freedom In the early United States, anthems, flags, holidays, monuments, and memorials were powerful symbols of an American identity that helped unify a divided people. A language of freedom played a similar role in shaping the new nation. The Declaration of ......
Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire
Jamaica Ladies is the first systematic study of the free and freed women of European, Euro-African, and African descent who perpetuated chattel slavery and reaped its profits in the British Empire. Their actions helped transform Jamaica into the wealthiest slaveholding colony in the Anglo-Atlantic world. Starting in the 1670s, a surprisingly large ......
The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Iceland in 1627
In the summer of 1627, Barbary corsairs raided Iceland, killing dozens of people and abducting close to four hundred to sell into slavery in North Africa. Among those taken were the Lutheran minister Reverend Olafur Egilsson. Reverend Olafur (born in the same year as William Shakespeare and Galileo Galilei) wrote The Travels to chronicle his ......
Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, ......
The intertwining of U.S. Catholicism and race-based slavery is a painful aspect of the Church's history. Many scholars have shied away from this uncomfortable topic, but in recent years a cadre of historians have studied Catholics' varied roles: as enslaved persons, slaveholders, defenders of slavery, and, in a few cases, advocates of abolition ......
The State of Emancipation after the Freedmen's Bureau
This book offers the definitive history of how formerly enslaved men and women pursued federal benefits from the Civil War to the New Deal and, in the process, transformed themselves from a stateless people into documented citizens. As claimants, Black southerners engaged an array of federal agencies. Their encounters with the more familiar ......