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Three Suggestions for Antislavery Organizing on Campus

One of the largest antislavery groups to emerge before the Civil War was one of the most unlikely. Located in the isolated northwest corner of Ohio, the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society attracted over 500 members. Led by a rural schooltea

The Government Home for Girls

(Author’s Note: The following account was written by me several years ago after my visit to a government home for trafficking survivors in an Asian country. I have changed the names and a couple of minor details to protect the ongoing work in this lo

Am I Still Not a Man and a Brother?

As noted in a recent gallery marking the 175th anniversary of Anti-Slavery International, photographs and images have long been central to antislavery campaigns. In this guest post drawn from a longer article, historian Zoe Trodd asks what contempor

David Brion Davis: An Appreciation

On July 28, President Obama awarded the National Humanities Medal to eminent historian of slavery David Brion Davis. This is no small achievement. The Medal is the highest honor bestowed by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a prize that “hon

James Annan

As the youngest child of an illiterate family, being enslaved was not uncommon in Ghana when James Kofi Annan was growing up. He had not begun primary school when he was sent away by his father to work in a fishing village nine hours away from his ho

Ravi Shanker Kumar

More than 300,000 children are estimated to be trapped in India’s carpet industry. Most of India’s carpets are woven in Uttar Pradesh, where the majority of workers are low-caste Hindu boys. Ravi Shanker Kumar was one of them. His parents were succum

Vulnerability to Trafficking Among Acid Attack Survivors

As a psychologist trying to understand human behavior, there is one concept that I reference more frequently than any other. It is that of my former graduate school professor, who said, “People don’t come into therapy to be told what they should do.

The Narrative Matters: Guidelines on Writing about Slavery

Earlier this week, one of the headlines in The Guardian posed the question: What happens when children’s books fail to confront the complexity of slavery? Referring to the controversial cover of A Birthday Cake for George Washington depicting a smili

Survivor Empowerment Ideas

We use the word empowerment as one of the six forms of abolition. Empowerment is the phase where survivors are able to get jobs and support themselves. It is the final piece needed in the story of true freedom for a survivor. I say true freedom becau

10 Things You Should Know About Modern Slavery

Today is the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. This is what you need to know. No one knows how many slaves are in the world. The one thing lacking in the world of anti-human trafficking work is good data. We just don’t have it. Every time an