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Modern-Day Slavery in America
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21239 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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2 / 2001 |
2,282 Words |
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Emma Dorothy Reinhardt
Emma Dorothy Reinhardt is managing director of the American
Anti-Slavery Group, based in Boston. The president of the
group, Charles Jacobs, wrote the article "Slavery: Worldwide
Evil," which appeared in the April 1996 issue of The World &
I. |
Upon arrival in the United States, however, Beatrice found herself enslaved: locked in a suburban home, working for up to 20 hours a day, and denied education. Regularly, she was forced to hold her hands above her head and kneel on the floor for long periods while being beaten. In 1998, after she had been beaten for over an hour, her screams alarmed the neighbors. The police were called, and Beatrice was discovered.
She had been held captive in the United States for nine years.
Beatrice is from Nigeria and was enslaved in 1989 in New York by a child-welfare worker and her husband. But Dora is from Ghana; Vasantha from Sri Lanka; Chanti from India; Yua Hao from China. They were all enslaved here over the last two decades. Discovered in Washington, D.C., Boston, Berkeley, California, and Bryant, Arkansas, respectively, these victims were enslaved by a World Bank employee, a Boston University student, a landlord, and a television executive.
Incredibly, slavery has returned to our shores. Forced to work for no pay under the threat of violence, a slave is a human being whose time and body are owned by another. Though legally abolished in 1865 in the United States, slavery has not ended here.
Thousands of Beatrices, Doras, Vasanthas, Chantis, and Yua Haos suffer today in America.
Over 27 million people are slaves in the world. In the United States alone, 50,000 women and children are trafficked every year. Thousands of men also suffer as slaves here, but
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