Slavery Free Communities

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (MSHT) are global crimes impacting local communities. Vulnerable people are exploited through labour, sex and forced criminality. Churches and Communities are increasingly encountering these victims and survivors, and consequently need to develop more effective engagement. The book will highlight that Churches and Communities are in a unique position to partner towards slavery-free communities. Beginning with the narratives of survivors who experienced three different forms of MSHT, including labour exploitation, sexual exploitation and domestic exploitation, the book then shows how practitioners and theologians respond to these narratives through exploring theologies of suffering, ecology, missiology, restorative justice, trinitarian theology and liberation theology. Offering faith responses from organisaions such The Salvation Army, The Clewer Initiative, BMS World Mission and Rene Cassinhe the volume also includes a final resource section with prayers and liturgy for survivors and victims as well as for church and community responses. The book includes a forward by the Rt Hon Theresa May MP and an opening prayer by the Most Revd Justin Welby

Explores the long-neglected rural dimensions of northern slavery and emancipation in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley. Slavery and Freedom in the Mid-Hudson Valley focuses on the largely forgotten history of slavery in New York and the African American freedom struggle in the central Hudson Valley prior to the Civil War. Slaves were central actors in the drama that unfolded in the region during the Revolution, and they waged a long and bitter battle for freedom during the decades that followed. Slavery in the countryside was more oppressive than slavery in urban environments, and the agonizingly slow pace of abolition, constraints of rural poverty, and persistent racial hostility in the rural communities also presented formidable challenges to free black life in the central Hudson Valley. Michael E. Groth explores how Dutchess County’s black residents overcame such obstacles to establish independent community institutions, engage in political activism, and fashion a vibrant racial consciousness in antebellum New York. By drawing attention to the African American experience in the rural Mid-Hudson Valley, this book provides new perspectives on slavery and emancipation in New York, black community formation, and the nature of black identity in the Early Republic. “Groth provides a systematic overview focused on the history of African Americans in the Mid-Hudson Valley during the decades before the American Revolution through emancipation and during the national political struggle for abolition and the regional struggle for civil rights.” — Andor Skotnes, author of A New Deal for All? Race and Class Struggle in Depression-Era Baltimore

Discusses worldwide modern slavery and its effects, including the types of modern slavery, its relationship with globalization, and how the world can end slavery.

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (MSHT) are global crimes impacting local communities. Vulnerable people are exploited through labour, sex and forced criminality. Churches and communities are increasingly encountering these victims and survivors, and consequently need to develop more effective engagement. The book will highlight that churches and communities are in a unique position to partner towards slavery-free communities. Beginning with the narratives of survivors who experienced three different forms of MSHT, including labour exploitation, sexual exploitation and domestic exploitation, the book then shows how practitioners and theologians respond to these narratives through exploring theologies of suffering, ecology, missiology, restorative justice, trinitarian theology and liberation theology. Offering faith responses from organisations such The Salvation Army, The Clewer Initiative, BMS World Mission and Rene Cassinhe the volume also includes a final resource section with prayers and liturgy for survivors and victims as well as for church and community responses. The book includes a forward by the Rt Hon Theresa May MP and an opening prayer by the Most Revd Justin Welby

On the eve of the Civil War, most people of color in the United States toiled in bondage. Yet nearly half a million of these individuals, including over 250,000 in the South, were free. In Beyond Slavery's Shadow, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. draws from a wide array of sources to demonstrate that from the colonial period through the Civil War, the growing influence of white supremacy and proslavery extremism created serious challenges for free persons categorized as "negroes," "mulattoes," "mustees," "Indians," or simply "free people of color" in the South. Segregation, exclusion, disfranchisement, and discriminatory punishment were ingrained in their collective experiences. Nevertheless, in the face of attempts to deny them the most basic privileges and rights, free people of color defended their families and established organizations and businesses. These people were both privileged and victimized, both celebrated and despised, in a region characterized by social inconsistency. Milteer's analysis of the way wealth, gender, and occupation intersected with ideas promoting white supremacy and discrimination reveals a wide range of social interactions and life outcomes for the South's free people of color and helps to explain societal contradictions that continue to appear in the modern United States.

Analyzing published and archival oral histories of formerly enslaved African Americans, Libra R. Hilde explores the meanings of manhood and fatherhood during and after the era of slavery, demonstrating that black men and women articulated a surprisingly broad and consistent vision of paternal duty across more than a century. Complicating the tendency among historians to conflate masculinity within slavery with heroic resistance, Hilde emphasizes that, while some enslaved men openly rebelled, many chose subtle forms of resistance in the context of family and local community. She explains how a significant number of enslaved men served as caretakers to their children and shaped their lives and identities. From the standpoint of enslavers, this was particularly threatening--a man who fed his children built up the master's property, but a man who fed them notions of autonomy put cracks in the edifice of slavery. Fatherhood highlighted the agonizing contradictions of the condition of enslavement, and to be an involved father was to face intractable dilemmas, yet many men tried. By telling the story of the often quietly heroic efforts that enslaved men undertook to be fathers, Hilde reveals how formerly enslaved African Americans evaluated their fathers (including white fathers) and envisioned an honorable manhood.

The seven contributions contained in this collection address various forms of manumission throughout the American South as well as the Caribbean. Topics include color, class, and identity on the eve of the Haitian revolution; where free persons of color stood in the hierarchy of wealth in antebellum

Examines the history of slavery in Maryland and discusses the conditions of life of Maryland's slaves and free Blacks.

"None of us is truly free while others remain enslaved. The continuing existence of slavery is one of the greatest tragedies facing our global humanity. Today we finally have the means and increasingly the conviction to end this scourge and to bring millions of slaves to freedom. Read Kevin Bales's practical and inspiring book, and you will discover how our world can be free at last."—Desmond Tutu "Ever since the Emancipation Proclamation, Americans have congratulated themselves on ending slavery once and for all. But did we? Kevin Bales is a powerful and effective voice in pointing out the appalling degree to which servitude, forced labor and outright slavery still exist in today's world, even here. This book is a valuable primer on the persistence of these evils, their intricate links to poverty, corruption and globalization—and what we can do to combat them. He's a modern-day William Lloyd Garrison."—Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves "I know modern slavery from the inside, and since coming to freedom I am committed to end it forever. This book shows us how to make a world where no more childhoods will be stolen and sold as mine was."—Given Kachepa, former U.S. slave, recipient of the Yoshiyama Award "Kevin Bales does not just pontificate from behind a desk. From the charcoal pits of Brazil to the brothels of Thailand, he has seen the victims of modern day slavery. In Ending Slavery, Bales gives us an update on what's happening (and not happening), and a controversial plan to abolish slavery in the 21st century. This is a must read for anyone who wants to learn about the great human rights issue of our times."—Ambassador John Miller, former director of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons