This essay focuses on three historical points. First, slavery existed and sometimes flourished in Africa before the transatlantic slave trade, but neither the African continent nor persons of African origin were as prominent in the world of slaveholding as they would later become. Second, the captur...

Maulava gasped as a strong gust of red dirt swirled around her legs, and up through the many layers of her garments. The air was hot; stifling, and her gasp did little more than fill her parched mouth with another layer of dry, gritty soil. Like most Muslim women, Maulava was dressed con...

The 1845 autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, provides an elaborate examination of the hardships of slavery. Frederick Douglass' firsthand recounting of the whippings, beatings, and hangings he observed as a slave in the nineteenth century vividly illustrate the poor trea...

African slavery began when Africans were torn from their homes and shipped across the ocean to America. Once in America, the slaves not only lost their liberty but also their past. They had no one to appeal to for help when they were starved, beaten or sold away from their families. North...

"Human trafficking, at its most basic level, is defined by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 as (a) the recruitment, harboring, transporting, supplying, or obtaining a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for involuntary servitude or slavery; or (b)...

The constitution of the United States reads; "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In the 1830's, there e...