Labor History Posters: Slavery, pg 4/4
for the social studies and literature classrooms, homeschoolers, & office decor.

Slavery, a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others. Slaves, who are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, are deprived of

the right to leave,

the right to refuse to work, or

to receive compensation, like wages.

Slavery, which has existed in one form or another through all of recorded human history:

• ancient Greece - Aesop was a slave.
• as reported in the Biblical Book of Exodus with Moses leading the Israelite slaves out of ancient Egypt,
• ancient Rome,
• Medieval Europe,
• enslavement of indignious people to mine silver in South America
• the transatlantic slave trade, beginning in the mid-1400s, when Europeans began to capture people from Africa's western and southern lands. These traders then hearded them onto ships bound for the Americas. No one is sure how many Africans were involved in the slave trade – estimates range from 10 million to 28 million.
• Today - Slavery in Mauritania is an entrenched phenomenon that the national government has repeatedly tried to abolish, banning the practice in 1905, 1981, and August 2007.

The Slave Trade, 1440 to 1800s - “Africa, like many other parts of the world, had a long tradition of slavery. But the story changed significantly in the mid-1400s, when Europeans began to capture people from Africa's western and southern lands. These traders then hearded them onto ships bound for the Americas. No one is sure how many Africans were involved in the slave trade – estimates range from 10 million to 28 million. This trade continued even after Europe and the U.S. both banned the importation of African slaves. Some say the slave trade really only stopped at the end of the 19th century.” ...

• Black History posters

• “If these slaves had only any future, anything to hope for, to strive for, to live for, any prospect before them, then I should not deplore their lot but nothing, nothing.” ~ Fredrika Bremer, Homes of the New World
• “The duty I owe to the slave, to truth, and to God, demands that I should use my pen and tongue so long as life and health are vouchsafed to me to employ them, or until the last chain shall fall from the limbs of the last slave in America and the world.” ~ William Wells Brown
• “I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.” Joseph Campbell
• “I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.” ~ Charles Darwin
• “To be one's 'deliberate self’ is to rise above the impulse to ‘become the slaves of our passions’ and instead to act with ‘courageous devotion’ to a moral cause.” ~ Will Durant
• “If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.” ~ Jupiter Hammond
• “We produce in a panic, consume like crazy, waste blindly, and man is degraded to a consumption machine. Nuclear energy is probably meant to reinforce this most dangerous of all enslavements.” ~ Friedensreich Hundertwasser
• “In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.” ~ Ivan Illich
• “I have no idea of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. ~ Lucretia Mott
• “From whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: “I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• “A great fortune is a great slavery.” ~ Seneca
• “Work without love is slavery.” ~ Mother Teresa
• “I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all.” ~ Sojourner Truth
• “I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified, and if John Brown had really succeeded in arousing such revolts throughout the South, it would have been much preferable to losing 600,000 lives in the Civil War, where the makers of the war — unlike slave rebels — would not have as their first priority the plight of the black slaves, as shown by the betrayal of black interests after the war. Again, the Zapatista uprising seems justified to me, but some armed struggles that start for a good cause get out of hand and the ensuing violence becomes indiscriminate. Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.” ~ Howard Zinn