Slavery

A look at the history of slavery through the years including the Bible. Did the Bible condome slavery?

Does the Christian faith condone slavery? 1

Slavery’s Roots: War and Economic Domination 9

TRAPPED IN SERVITUDE - ANCIENT GREECE 19

Did Moses Marry a Black Woman? 22

Why Mormons Reacted So Strongly to the Alleged Racist Incident at BYU 27

Tallapoosa Peonage Case 1903 28

Alabama Literacy Test for voting 30

Does the Christian faith condone slavery?

Bible Study on Slavery was a substantial portion of the early APSE activities. Here is a collection of thoughts and articles.

BIBLICAL COMMENTS ON SLAVERY MUST BE PUT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TIME. Something that has frequently been ignored.

Romans 13:1-7 Submission to authorities. Does this legitimize slavery? Racial prejudice? Misogyny? WERE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES SINNERS?

Ephesians 6:5-9 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

(Masters, treat your slaves well. IS THAT POSSIBLE? No matter how good the treatment a slave has NO FREEDOM. That’s what being a slave means,)

1 Peter 2:18 18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, NOT ONLY TO THOSE THAT ARE GOOD AND CONSIDERATE BUT ALSO TO THOSE WHO ARE HARSH.

For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

(WOW! What does this mean? Enjoy the whipping? Or prepare to suffer for Jesus? Does this even refer to “slavery” or does it reference the treatment to expect if being a slave to Christ?) (Regardless, how many slave owners used this reference to justify slavery? You serving me is just like you serving Christ. I’m treating you so well…)

(Or is Paul saying Jesus is coming very soon. Days, weeks, months - but not very long. Ride it out. You will be free soon. Except it didn't happen that way. Why not? Paul said he was getting his info directly from Jesus whom he met. Met in the flesh? Or was in a vision?)

Ephesians and Philemon Christians and Slavery

Using the Bible to justify slavery

Biblical References that support the concept of slavery:

• Abraham, the “father of faith,” and all the patriarchs held slaves without God’s disapproval (Gen. 21:9–10).

• Canaan, Ham’s son, was made a slave to his brothers (Gen. 9:24–27).

• The oldest son of Ham was Cush, brother of Canaan. He is traditionally thought of as the “ancestor of the land of Cush,” an ancient territory along the Red Sea. The kingdom of Kush is ancient Ethiopia (read black - infer “slave“).

• The Ten Commandments mention slavery twice, showing God’s implicit acceptance of it Ex. 20:10 The Sabbath… on it you shall do no work, nor your son or daughter, OR MAIDSERVANT OR MANSERVANT… Ex. 20:17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, OR HIS MANSERVANT OR HIS MAIDSERVANT…

• Slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, and yet Jesus never spoke against it.

• The apostle Paul specifically commanded slaves to obey their masters (Eph. 6:5–8).

• Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master (Philem. 12). (He asked Philemon to accept Onesimus as a “brother,” but never spelled out to set him free.)

Was Slavery a Benefit for Charitable and Evangelistic Reasons?

• Slavery removes people from a culture that “worshiped the devil, practiced witchcraft, and sorcery” and other evils.

• Slavery brings heathens to a Christian land where they can hear the gospel. Christian masters provide religious instruction for their slaves.

• Under slavery, people are treated with kindness, as many northern visitors can attest.

• It is in slaveholders’ own interest to treat their slaves well.

• Slaves are treated more benevolently than are workers in oppressive northern factories.

Was Slavery a Benefit for Social Reasons?

• Just as women are called to play a subordinate role (Eph. 5:22; 1 Tim. 2:11–15), so slaves are stationed by God in their place.

• Slavery is God’s means of protecting and providing for an inferior race (suffering the “curse of Ham” in Gen. 9:25 or even the punishment of Cain in Gen. 4:12).

• Abolition would lead to slave uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. Consider the mob’s “rule of terror” during the French Revolution.

Are There Political Reasons That Justify Slavery?

• Christians are to obey civil authorities, and those authorities permit and protect slavery. (Romans 13:1-7)

• The church should concentrate on spiritual matters, not political ones. (At least when it is convenient?)

• Those who support abolition are, in James H. Thornwell’s words, “atheists, socialists, communists [and] red republicans.”

Is Slavery Biblical?

Ephesians 6:5-8 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. ((OUCH!))

When we think of slavery we think of the evils of the African slave trade – family separation, chains, rape, beatings, murder....

In the Bible slaves were a product of 1) spoils of war. 2) debts – there was no banking system. In OT times there was no currency (QUESTIONABLE - THE SHEKEL CAME OUT PRETTY EARLY). In a bad crop yield year how did you pay debts? Should you be put in prison? Killed? Exiled? Slaves most often, especially in Jesus time, had rights. Some people, including early Christians raising money for the church, sold themselves into slavery for the money. It meant they were indebted to their masters, they owed something to their masters. They could save and buy their way out of slavery. In Roman times slaves were to be freed upon their 30th birthday.

Not to say all slave owners were kind, honest, and respectful, but slavery seen in this context is actually a good thing in its day and progressive given the options. Slavery was often a positive economic arrangement, slave and master living in the same household, almost an extended family arrangement.

At the time of Paul it is estimated 1/3 of all people were some sort of slave and it was NOT based on race. People became slaves through birth, abandonment, parental sale, captive of war, inability to pay a debt, or voluntary enslavement for security. (Still slaves were the dregs of society and life was pretty bad. In fact is was pretty bad for everybody - there wasn’t much of a middle class.)

However …

ODB – Philemon. Although Paul hints he would like Onesimus made a free man and even be free to work with him he does not address slavery as we would have wished. 1) In the ancient world slavery was not the evil that we think of in the modern context. Some were mistreated persons, but many were servants, butlers, etc. of noble people. 2) Slavery was not a product of racism. More the subjugation of conquered territories. 3) Christianity had no power at that point to be any force to radically change the social norms. (would this new religion grow if it disrupted the whole economic and social norms of the day? Maybe it should have!!!) 4) Paul’s concern was more about inward spiritual liberation than outward slave liberation. 5) Paul did say in 1 Corinthians 7:17-24 if slaves have the opportunity to become free persons they should do this. According to history Onesimus was freed and made a leader in the church.

(Be sure to read below. Jesus’ take on the economic conditions and social justice as FAR DIFFERENT than those of Paul, perhaps a result of Jesus growing up as a poor Jew and Paul being a ROMAN CITIZEN as well as being a Jew. Paul’s viewpoint is drastically different than that of Jesus. Reading the gospels closely one can see Jesus is deeply concerned with the oppressed. He would NEVER be an advocate for slavery and NEVER state the positions that Paul has put forth.)

BOTTOM LINE: THERE IS NOTHING SCRIPTURAL TO JUSTIFY OR RATIONALIZE ANY CONDONING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE, THE PRACTICE OF AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, OR THE RACIAL HATRED SEEN IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY. AND YET…

Never is the U.S. more segregated than Sunday morning church services.

90% of all churches in the U.S. are either 90% white or 90% black.

Whatever the dividing walls in your community, it is the church that should knock them down and bring people together.

In fact, look at Deuteronomy 23:15 Here is a law the Confederacy didn’t bother to teach in their churches: If a slave has taken refuge with you, DO NOT HAND HIM OVER TO HIS MASTER. Let him live among you wherever he likes in whatever town he chooses. DO NOT OPPRESS HIM!

AND… really the verses on slavery refer to our relationship to God as our master, and that slave master DOES NOT treat his slaves poorly. In fact he gave his son to save us from sin. Harsh treatment does not come from the master but from others who persecute you for following the master. Stand tall and reflect on the power of God.

Abraham had 2 sons (Genesis 20-23), Ishmael, born to the SLAVE Hagar, and Isaac, born to the FREE woman Sarah. Ishmael associated with Arabs, darker, slaves of the Israelites. Isaac, the Jew, a bit paler, the owners of the slaves.

Read the lesson on Noah’s sons, the curse of Ham

Then again… Titus 2:9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.

(Religion was very important to the slaves in the South. And they got to sit and listen to this stuff...)

From: Jesus and His Times

The concentration of wealth in Jesus’ time was extreme. The aristocracy, a few upper and middle class, but mostly poor. Even the Pharisees had to work day jobs to support families.

Tradesmen had steady work but were heavily taxed to fund the building they did. Day laborers lived just that way - day to day. Some professions were nasty. Weavers were in the least desirable neighborhood - near the Dung Gate where refuse was dumped. Trade guilds were developed to provide a bit of help to these workers.

Copper smelting, tanner, or dung collector were atrocious jobs. A wife was PERMITTED to divorce her husband if he had one of these occupations as his smell would be unbearable. She could even divorce him if she had known he had one of these occupations before marriage and still married him as the stench could not be foreseen. (Tanners and dung collectors were linked - the dung was used in the tanning process.)

Unemployables were in desperate straits. Crippled, diseased, blind, insane. Lepers had to stay out of the city gates to fend for themselves. There was no hospital, no aid, no hope. The Jewish tradition of haves sharing with the have-nots was over. All free cash went to taxes.

But the lowest class was the slaves.

Slavery was an old institution in Palestine. There were Jewish laws protecting slaves. Work was limited to 10 hours a day. Slaves did not work on the Sabbath (Saturday). They did not do jobs that interfered with their faith - bath attendants, for example. If a master killed a slave the master was killed as punishment. If a slave was mistreated he was set free. If he fled his master he was not to be returned.

Female slaves were not as well off, but did also have some protections. A female slave, usually a concubine, could always hope her owner might find her desirable enough to make her a wife.

Most slaves in Jerusalem were Gentiles, but some Jewish slaves existed out of the city.

A person may be made a slave as a punishment, for unpaid debts, or one may sell oneself into slavery to provide emergency funds for his family.

Hellenistic influence changed this. By Jesus’ time slaves were objects, not persons - a tool with a voice. ONE MORE reason why this class, as with the others (tradesmen, priests, farmers, vendors), looked longingly for a Messiah. Jesus was the advocate for these people - oppressed free men and oppressed slaves, which many free men became due to DEBT.)

Crossan adds: Sanitizing slavery as a means to “humanely” handle debt is a pipe dream. Just as in the American South, slaves were treated very poorly. Pg 47 …slaves were bought in vast numbers in slave markets… applied marks and brands… treated with a heavy hand, granted the merest of care, food, and clothing… beaten beyond all reason. A way out? Or a mere final last gasp before death. They were EXPENDABLE.

BibleTalk.tv Good ol’ Pastor Mike (Mazzalongo) sees it differently. Slavery in the first century was quite different than the slavery that existed in early American history. Slavery in New Testament times was not based on culture as it was here when innocent Africans were seized and sold into slavery by both African and European traders. In the first century a majority of slaves in the Roman Empire were the spoils of war and all kinds of people, conquered by the Roman military, became slaves. In many cases individuals sold themselves into slavery because of debt - these were called "bond servants." Roman masters usually treated their slaves with a measure of respect and many of these had responsible positions in their owners' households. Slaves could marry, accumulate wealth and purchase their own freedom. Under Roman law slaves were to be set free at the age of 30.

As many as two-thirds of the Empire at that time were slaves but this number decreased rapidly in the first century and continued falling as Christian ideals began to take hold in that pagan society. Of course this brings us to consider the ownership of slaves by Christians in the first century. We know this is the case because Paul provides instructions for both slaves and masters in his letters:

Ephesians 6:5-9

5 Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; 6 not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. 7 With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, 8 knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. 9 And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.

Note the instructions that he gives to masters and slaves:

Sincere obedience

Serve unto the Lord

Serve with the hope of a blessing from God

Masters should treat slaves with sincerity and not violence

Remember that God will judge both slaves and masters

22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. 25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven. - Colossians 3:22-4:1

We notice here that there was a certain consistency as far as the instructions to believing masters and slaves:

Sincere obedience

Serving unto the Lord

Serve with the hope of a blessing from the Lord

Realize that the Lord is serving with you

God will punish slaves who do evil

Masters should judge slaves as they themselves will be judged (justice/fairness)

Masters remember that they too have a master in heaven

In other passages (I Corinthians 7:17-24) Paul urges slaves to accept their present situation but if the opportunity to gain their freedom comes up he says they should take their freedom. Paul's approach to this social evil was not to start a movement or to use violence to attack the established order of things. He worked through the church in providing God's Word and will on this issue.

The early church recognized no difference in status between slave and master since everyone sat together in the assembly. Slaves in the early church were allowed to serve as elders and, unlike pagan gravestones that noted if the deceased was a slave, Christian graves did not make this distinction. According to Ignatius (second century Bishop) church funds were often used to buy the freedom of slaves. Some Christians even surrendered their own freedom in order to ransom and free others (1 Clement AD55). Marriage among slaves was protected, and early Christians urged non-Christians to free their slaves or allow them to purchase their freedom.

Beginning with Paul's teaching on this issue and the equal status given to slaves in the church, the evil of mass slavery eventually died out in the Roman Empire. It is in this historical and social context that Paul wrote the brief epistle to Philemon, a Christian brother, urging him to free a runaway slave.

(Perhaps this is true. APSE Ministries includes this piece, as all other articles, for purpose of study and discussion.)

Slavery’s Roots: War and Economic Domination

6800 B.C. The world’s first city-state emerges in Mesopotamia. Land ownership and the early stages of technology bring war—in which enemies are captured and forced to work: slavery.
2575 B.C. Temple art celebrates the capture of slaves in battle. Egyptians capture slaves by sending special expeditions up the Nile River.
550 B.C. The city-state of Athens uses as many as 30,000 slaves in its silver mines.
120 A.D. Roman military campaigns capture slaves by the thousands. Some estimate the population of Rome is more than half slave.
500 Anglo-Saxons enslave the native Britons after invading England.
1000 Slavery is a normal practice in England’s rural, agricultural economy, as destitute workers place themselves and their families in a form of debt bondage to landowners.
1380 In the aftermath of the Black Plague, Europe’s slave trade thrives in response to a labor shortage. Slaves pour in from all over the continent, the Middle East, and North Africa.
1444 Portuguese traders bring the first large cargo of slaves from West Africa to Europe by sea—establishing the Atlantic slave trade.
1526 Spanish explorers bring the first African slaves to settlements in what would become the United States. These first African-Americans stage the first known slave revolt in the Americas.
1550 Slaves are depicted as objects of conspicuous consumption in much Renaissance art.
1641 Massachusetts becomes the first British colony to legalize slavery.

The Age of Abolition

1781 Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II abolishes serfdom in the Austrian Habsburg dominions.
1787 The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is founded in Britain.

1789 During the French Revolution, the National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man, one of the fundamental charters of human liberties. The first of 17 articles states: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.”
1791 Slaves in Haiti revolt, leading to Haiti’s independence from France in 1804 and the history’s only example of a slave rebellion leading to the creation of an independent nation where slavery was banned
1803 Denmark-Norway becomes the first country in Europe to ban the African slave trade, forbidding trading in slaves and ending the importation of slaves into Danish dominions.
1807 The British Parliament makes it illegal for British ships to transport slaves and for British colonies to import them. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson signs into law the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, forbidding the importation of African slaves into the United States.
1811-1867 Operating off the Atlantic coast of Africa, the British Navy’s Anti-Slavery Squadron liberates 160,000 slaves.
1813 Sweden, a nation that never authorized slave traffic, consents to ban the African slave trade.
1814 The king of the Netherlands officially terminates Dutch participation in the African slave trade. At the Congress of Vienna, the assembled powers proclaim that the slave trade should be abolished as soon as possible but do not stipulate an actual effective date for abolition.
1820 The government of Spain abolishes the slave trade south of the Equator—but it continues in Cuba until 1888.
1833 The Factory Act in Britain establishes a working day in textile manufacture, provides for government inspection of working conditions, bans the employment of children under age 9, and limits the workday of children between 13 and 18 years of age to 12 hours.
1834 The Abolition Act abolishes slavery throughout the British Empire, including British colonies in North America. The bill emancipates slaves in all British colonies and appropriates nearly $100 million in today’s money to compensate slave owners for their losses.

1840 The new British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society calls the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London to mobilize reformers and assist post-emancipation efforts throughout the world. A group of U.S. abolitionists attends, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, as well as several male supporters, leave the meeting in protest when women are excluded from seating on the convention floor.
1845 The British Navy assigns 36 ships to its Anti-Slavery Squadron, making it one of the largest fleets in the world.
1848 The government of France abolishes slavery in all French colonies.
1850 The government of Brazil ends the country’s participation in the slave trade and declares slave traffic to be a form of piracy.
1861 Alexander II emancipates all Russian serfs, numbering about 50 million. His decree begins the Great Reform in Russia and earns him the title “Czar Liberator.”
1863 President Abraham Lincoln issues The Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all U.S. slaves in states that had seceded from the Union, except for those in Confederate areas already controlled by the Union army.
1863 The government of the Netherlands takes official action to abolish slavery in all Dutch colonies.
1865 Congress gives final passage to, and a sufficient number of states ratify, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to outlaw slavery. The amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
1888 The Lei Aurea, or Golden Law, ends slavery in South America when the legislature of Brazil frees the country’s 725,000 slaves.
1865-1920 Following the American Civil War, hundreds of thousands of African Americans are re-enslaved in an abusive manipulation of the legal system called “peonage.” Across the Deep South, African-American men and women are falsely arrested and convicted of crimes, then “leased” to coal and iron mines, brick factories, plantations, and other dangerous workplaces. The formal peonage system slows down after World War I but doesn’t fully end until the 1940s. However, in recent years, activists have noted that the 13 Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not outlaw prison slavery, and that requiring inmates to work in prison industries today constitutes a continuing form of modern slavery.

Abolition Spreads Worldwide

1909 The Congo Reform Association, founded in Britain, ends forced labor in the Congo Free State, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After years of anti-slavery activism, the association’s Red Rubber Campaign stops the brutal system of Belgium’s King Leopold II, whose officials forced local people to produce rubber for sale in Europe and terrorized those who refused, cutting off their hands and burning down their houses.
1910 The International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade, signed in Paris, is the first of its kind, obligating parties to punish anyone who recruits a woman or girl under age into prostitution, even if she consents.
1913 After a public outcry galvanized by media reports and subsequent peoples’ petition, the British Parliament shuts down the Peruvian Amazon Company, a British entity that was torturing and exploiting indigenous Indians in Peru.
1915 The colonial government of Malaya officially abolishes slavery.
1918 The British governor of Hong Kong estimates that the majority of households that could afford it keep a young child as a household slave.
1919 The International Labor Organization (ILO) is founded to establish a code of global labor standards. Headquartered in Geneva, the ILO unites government, labor, and management to make recommendations concerning pay, working conditions, trade union rights, safety, woman and child labor, and social security.
1923 The British colonial government in Hong Kong bans the selling of little girls as domestic slaves.
1926 The League of Nations approves the Slavery Convention, which defines slavery as “status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.” More than 30 governments sign the document, which charges all member nations to work to suppress all forms of slavery.
1926 Burma abolishes legal slavery.
1927 Slavery is legally abolished in Sierra Leone, a country founded as a colony by the British in the 18th century to serve as a homeland for freed slaves.
1930 The U.S. Tariff Act prohibits the importation of products made with “forced or indentured labor.” (In 1997, the Sanders Amendment clarified that this applies to products made with “forced or indentured child labor.”)

1936 The King of Saudi Arabia issues a decree that ends the importation of new slaves, regulates the conditions of existing slaves, and provides for manumission—the act of slave owners freeing their slaves—under some conditions.
1938 The Japanese military establishes “comfort stations”—actually brothels—for Japanese troops. Thousands of Korean and Chinese women are forced into sex slavery during World War II as military “comfort women.”
1939-1945 The German Nazi government uses widespread slave labor in farming and industry. Up to nine million people are forced to work to absolute exhaustion—then they are sent to concentration camps.
1941 The Adoption of Children Ordinance Law in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, requires the registration of all children who are adopted and regular inspections to prevent adopted children from working as slaves.
1948 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created by the United Nations, provides: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
1949 The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others prohibits any person from procuring, enticing, or leading away another person for the purposes of prostitution, even with the other person’s consent. This forms the legal basis for international protections against traffic in people still used today.

Abolition in Recent Times

1950-1989 International anti-slavery work slows during the Cold War, as the Soviet Block argues that slavery can only exist in capitalist societies, and the Western Block argues that all people living under communism are slaves. Both new and traditional forms of slavery in the developing world receive little attention.
1954 China passes the State Regulation on Reform through Labor, allowing prisoners to be used for labor in the laogai prison camps.
1956 The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery regulates practices involving serfdom, debt bondage, the sale of wives, and child servitude.

1962 Slavery is abolished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
1964 The sixth World Muslim Congress, the world’s oldest Muslim organization, pledges global support for all anti-slavery movements.
1973 The U.N. General Assembly adopts the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which outlaws a number of inhuman acts, including forced labor, committed for the purposes of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over another.
1974 Mauritania’s emancipated slaves form the El Hor (“freedom”) movement to oppose slavery, which continues to this day. El Hor leaders insist that emancipation is impossible without realistic means of enforcing anti-slavery laws and giving former slaves the means of achieving economic independence. El Hor demands land reform and encourages the formation of agricultural cooperatives.
1975 The U.N. Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery is founded to collect information and make recommendations on slavery and slavery-like practices around the world.
1976 India passes a law banning bonded labor.
1980 Slavery is abolished for the fourth time in the Islamic republic of Mauritania, but the situation is not fundamentally changed. Although the law decrees that “slavery” no longer exists, the ban does not address how masters are to be compensated or how slaves are to gain property.
1989 The National Islamic Front takes over the government of Sudan and begins to arm Baggara tribesmen to fight the Dinka and Nuer tribes in the south. These new militias raid villages, capturing and enslaving inhabitants.
1989 The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child promotes basic health care, education, and protection for the young from abuse, exploitation, or neglect at home, at work, and in armed conflicts. All countries ratify it except Somalia and the United States.
1990 After adoption by 54 countries in the 1980s, the 19th Conference of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference formally adopts the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which states that “human beings are born free, and no one has the right to enslave, humiliate, oppress, or exploit them.”
1992 The Pakistan National Assembly enacts the Bonded Labor Act, which abolishes indentured servitude and the peshgi, or bonded money, system. However, the government fails to provide for the implementation and enforcement of the law’s provisions.
1995 The U.S. government issues the Model Business Principles, which urges all businesses to adopt and implement voluntary codes of conduct, including the avoidance of child and forced labor, as well as discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, or religious beliefs.

1995 Christian Solidarity International, a Swiss-based charity, begins to liberate slaves in Southern Sudan by buying them back. The policy ignites widespread controversy—many international agencies argue that buying back slaves supports the market in human beings and feeds resources to slaveholders.
1996 The RugMark campaign is established in Germany to ensure that handwoven rugs are not made with slave or child labor. In 2010, RugMark changes its name to GoodWeave.
1996 The World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children is held.
1997 The U.N. establishes a commission of inquiry to investigate reports of the widespread enslavement of people by the Burmese government.
1997 The United States bans imported goods made by child-bonded labor.
1998 The Global March against Child Labor is established to coordinate worldwide demonstrations against child labor and to call for a U.N. Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.
1999 Despite being barred from entering Burma, the U.N. collects sufficient evidence to publicly condemn government-sponsored slavery, including unpaid forced labor and a brutal political system built on the use of force and intimidation to deny democracy and the rule of law.
1999 The ILO passes the Convention Against the Worst Forms of Child Labor, which establishes widely recognized international standards protecting children against forced or indentured labor, child prostitution and pornography, their use in drug trafficking, and other harmful work.
1999 The first global analysis of modern slavery and its role in the global economy, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, estimates that there are 27 million people in slavery worldwide.

Abolition in the 21st Century

2000 Free the Slaves is formed, originally as the sister organization of Anti-Slavery International in the U.K. Today Free the Slaves is an independent organization.
2000 The government of Nepal bans all forms of debt bondage after a lengthy campaign by human rights organizations and freed laborers.
2000 The U.S. Congress passes the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to combat the trafficking of persons as a form of modern slavery. The legislation increases penalties for traffickers, provides social services for trafficking victims, and helps victims remain in the country.
2000 The U.N. passes the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons as part of the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The trafficking protocol is the first global legally binding instrument with an internationally agreed-upon definition on trafficking in persons.
2001 Slavery: A Global Investigation—the first major documentary film about modern slavery—is released in the U.S. and Europe. The film tells the story of slavery and forced child labor in the cocoa and chocolate industry and wins a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards.
2002 The countries of the Economic Community of Western African States agree on an action plan to confront slavery and human trafficking in the region.
2002 The International Cocoa Initiative is established as a joint effort of anti-slavery groups and major chocolate companies—marking the first time an entire industry has banded together to address slavery in its supply chain.
2004 Brazil launches the National Pact for the Eradication of Slave Labor, which combines the efforts of civil organizations, businesses, and the government to get companies to commit to the prevention and eradication of forced labor within their supply chains, as well as to be monitored and placed on a “dirty list” if the products they sell are tainted by slavery.

2004 The U.N. appoints a Special Rapporteur (Reporter) on Human Trafficking.
2005 The U.N. International Labor Organization’s first Global Report on Forced Labor puts the number of slaves worldwide at 12.3 million. The organization’s 2012 update increases the number to 20.9 million people.
2007 Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves is published. Written by Free the Slaves co-founder Kevin Bales, it is the first plan for the global eradication of modern slavery, estimating the total cost of worldwide abolition at $10.8 billion over 25 years. President Bill Clinton highlights the plan at the Clinton Global Initiative. The book receives the 2011 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.
2008 The Special Court for Sierra Leone judges forced marriage “a crime against humanity” and convicts three officers in the Revolutionary United Front of forced marriage—the first convictions of their kind within an international criminal tribunal.
2008 The U.N. International Labor Organization estimates that annual profits generated from trafficking in human beings are as high as $32 billion. In 2014 the organization increases that estimate to $150 billion in the report Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labor.
2010 Free the Slaves publishes Slavery, featuring images of slaves and survivors taken by humanitarian photographer Lisa Kristine and a foreword by South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Kristine receives a 2013 Humanitarian Photographer of the Year Award from the Lucie foundation based in large part on her work with Free the Slaves.
2011 California enacts the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, requiring major manufacturing and retail firms to publicly disclose what efforts, if any, they are taking to eliminate forced labor and human trafficking from their product supply chains.

2012 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission passes the Conflict Minerals Rule, requiring major publicly-held corporations to disclose if their products contain certain metals mined in the eastern Congo or an adjoining country and if payment for these minerals supports armed conflict in the region. The rule was required as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Free the Slaves has documented that slavery is widespread at mining sites covered by this corporate disclosure requirement.
2013 The first Walk Free Global Slavery Index is released with country-by-country estimates for slavery worldwide. The research team estimates that 29.8 million people are enslaved today. The 2014 index increases that estimate to 35.8 million. The 2016 index increases that estimate to 45.8 million.
2015 Free the Slaves marks its 15th birthday by announcing that the organization has reached a historic benchmark—liberating more than 10,000 people from slavery.
2015 The U.N. adopts 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with 169 targets that include an end to slavery: “Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms.”
2017 A research consortium including the U.N. International Labor Organization, the group Walk Free, and the U.N. International Organization for Migration release a combined global study indicating that 40 million people are trapped in modern forms of slavery worldwide: 50 percent in forced labor in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, fishing and other physical-labor industries; 12.5 percent in sex slavery, and 37.5 percent in forced marriage slavery.

BBC History Magazine

ANCIENT GREECE

TRAPPED IN SERVITUDE

Treating other humans as property was part and parcel of Greek life, with enslaved people ‘used’ across virtually all areas of society

Enslaved people were an integral part of society in ancient Greece. Or, rather, the work they were involuntarily charged to undertake was an integral part of society – tasks, duties and jobs that the Greek citizens were broadly loath to carry out themselves.

Servitude was widespread in Greek antiquity. Athens alone was home to an estimated 60,000–80,000 slaves during the fifth and fourth centuries BC, with each household having an average of three or four enslaved people attached to it. Athenian slaves tended to enjoy more freedom than those elsewhere. A typical Athenian slave formed part of his master’s household and was initially welcomed with ceremony, offered nuts and fruits, just as a new bride might be. While denied many of the judicial rights possessed by Athens’ citizens, Athenian slaves enjoyed a few personal liberties: they could follow their own religious customs and they couldn’t be struck by their master.

VARIED FORTUNES

But, as the property of their master, Athenian slaves could still be sold off in the blink of an eye. Even Aristotle, arguably one of Athens’ more progressive thinkers, referred to enslaved people as ktêma empsuchon – a phrase that roughly translates as ‘animate property’, or ‘property that breathes’.

If they fell on hard times, Athenians could become a slave themselves through a practice called debt enslavement. For instance, if they leased land from a landowner but fell behind on the rent payments, they would become ‘enslaved’ to that landowner until the debt had been fully paid off. Many enslaved people were foreigners who had been captured during wars; the sons of defeated enemies might also be forced into slavehood, sometimes ending up serving the clients of male brothels. Or enslaved people were simply born into servitude, resigned to a life of comparative captivity as they inherited the family ‘trade’.

So-called chattel slaves were those owned by a master who viewed them as his possession, while dêmosioi were public slaves owned by the state and who worked for the civic good, whether in non-manual roles, such as clerks, or undertaking more physical work, such as road construction. All, though, were united in being denied civic rights and disqualified from participating in politics.

The most common type of work for enslaved people was within the agricultural sector, although many were otherwise set to task in quarries and mines. Domestic slaves arguably had less physically demanding existences; some would accompany their masters on their travels, perhaps even being becoming informal confidantes. Enslaved people might also work in professional trades, perhaps as artisans or shopkeepers or bankers. These – known as chôris oikountes – didn’t actually live under their masters’ roofs, but did work on their behalf, and paid them a commission. Their lives would, unsurprisingly, not be as harsh as those forced into heavy manual labour every day.

So, just as there was great variety in the nature of the work undertaken, when it came to status, being an enslaved person in ancient Greece was by no means a uniform experience either; there was no neat slave/non-slave binary distinction. Several shades of grey existed. For instance, enslaved people in Sparta were known as helots (pabox, above), a group that, at least in the eyes of the scholar Pollux, occupied a status “between free men and slaves”. In the region of Thessaly, the closest equivalent to helots were penestae who, like their Spartan counterparts, were tied to the land they inhabited. While their status was similar to serfs in later medieval times, the land of Thessaly was notably fertile and uncrowded, ensuring the penestae could comfortably pay the proportion of their produce due to their masters. The third-century BC writer Archemachus even claimed that “many of them are richer than their masters”.

FINDING A WAY OUT

Enslaved people who lived and largely worked independently of their masters were those least likely to feel the iron rod of discipline. Athenian slaves, too, could be physically punished and even tortured, and enslaved people elsewhere were also subject to beatings. As the statesman and intellectual Demosthenes argued, “the body of a slave is made responsible for all his misdeeds, whereas corporal punishment is the last penalty to inflict on a free man”.

While most enslaved people remained in servitude until death, it was possible to be freed by a master – the process of manumission, or enfranchisement. In all but the most benevolent of cases, an enslaved person effectively had to buy their way to freedom for this to happen, paying their master a sum that at least equated to their value were they to be sold off to a new master. If the slave had sufficient savings to be able to do this, their emancipation was likely to be total, meaning they couldn’t be enslaved again at any point in the future.

But if, as was distinctly likely, the enslaved person didn’t have access to sufficient funds, they might request a so-called ‘friendly’ loan from their master. In these circumstances, it was probable that they would still have to fulfill particular obligations to their former master until the loan had been repaid. That is, emancipation would only be partial. Completely escaping the control of a master was an ambition seldom realized.

Did Moses Marry a Black Woman?

By John Piper Article 02.25.2010

Moses, a Jew, apparently married a black African and was approved by God.

We learn in Numbers that “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (Num. 12:1). A Cushite is from Cush, a region south of Ethiopia, where the people are known for their black skin. We know this because of Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian [the same Hebrew word translated “Cushite” in Numbers 12:1] change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” Attention is drawn to the difference of the skin of the Cushite people.

In his book From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race, Daniel Hays writes that Cush “is used regularly to refer to the area south of Egypt, and above the cataracts on the Nile, where a Black African civilization flourished for over two thousand years. Thus it is quite clear that Moses marries a Black African woman” (71).

In response to Miriam’s criticism, God does not get angry at Moses; he gets angry at Miriam. The criticism has to do with Moses’ marriage and Moses’ authority. The most explicit statement relates to the marriage: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” Then God strikes Miriam with leprosy. Why? Consider this possibility. In God’s anger at Miriam, Moses’ sister, God says in effect, “You like being light-skinned Miriam? I’ll make you light-skinned.” So we read, “When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, like snow” (Num. 12:10)

God says not a critical word against Moses for marrying a black Cushite woman. But when Miriam criticizes God’s chosen leader for this marriage God strikes her skin with white leprosy. If you ever thought black was a biblical symbol for uncleanness, be careful; a worse white uncleanness could come upon you.

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

To the opposing views on interracial marriage, I would add my own experience. I was a southern teenage racist (by almost any definition). Since I am a sinner still, I do not doubt that elements of it remain in me—to my dismay. For these lingering attitudes and actions I repent.

Racism is a very difficult reality to define. Our pastoral staff has been working on it for years. Presently, we are most closely committed to the definition given several summers ago at the Presbyterian Church in America annual meeting: “Racism is an explicit or implicit belief or practice that qualitatively distinguishes or values one race over other races.” That is what I mean when I say I was a racist growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. My attitudes and actions were demeaning and disrespectful toward non-whites. And right at the heart of those attitudes was opposition to interracial marriage.

My mother, who washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, “Shut up!” to my sister, would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially. She was, under God, the seed of my salvation in more ways than one. When our church voted in 1963 not to admit blacks, when I was seventeen, my mother ushered the black guests at my sister’s wedding right into the main sanctuary herself because the ushers wouldn’t do it. I was on my way to redemption.

In 1967, Noël and I attended the Urbana Missions Conference. I was a senior at Wheaton. There we heard Warren Webster, a former missionary to Pakistan, answer a student’s question: what if your daughter falls in love with a Pakistani while you’re on the mission field and wants to marry him? With great forcefulness he said, “The Bible would say, Better a Christian Pakistani than a godless white American!” The impact on us was profound.

Four years later, I wrote a paper for Lewis Smedes in an ethics class at seminary called “The Ethics of Interracial Marriage.” For me that was a biblical settling of the matter, and I have not gone back from what I saw there. The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages. And there are circumstances which, together with biblical principles, make interracial marriage in many cases a positive good.

Now I am a pastor. One quick walk through my church’s pictorial directory gives me a rough count of over two hundred non-Anglos. I am sure I missed some. And I am sure the definition of Anglo is so vague that someone will be bothered that I even tried to count. But the point is this: dozens and dozens of them are children and teenagers and single young men and women. This means very simply that my church needs a clear place to stand on interracial marriage. Church is the most natural and proper place to find a spouse. And they will find each other across racial lines.

THE CHALLENGES AND BLESSINGS OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

Opposition to interracial marriage is one of the deepest roots of racial distance, disrespect, and hostility. Show me one place in the world where interracial or interethnic marriage is frowned upon and yet the two groups still have equal respect and honor and opportunity. I don’t think it exists. It won’t happen. Why? Because the supposed specter of interracial marriage demands that barrier after barrier must be put up to keep young people from knowing each other and falling in love. They can’t fellowship in church youth groups. They can’t go to the same schools. They can’t belong to the same clubs. They can’t live in the same neighborhoods. Everybody knows deep down what is at stake here. Intermarriage is at stake.

And as long as we disapprove of it, we will be pushing our children, and therefore ourselves, away from each other. The effect of that is not harmony, not respect, and not equality of opportunity. Where racial intermarriage is disapproved, the culture with money and power will always dominate and always oppress. They will see to it that those who will not make desirable spouses stay in their place and do not have access to what they have access to. If your kids don’t make desirable spouses, you don’t make desirable neighbors.

And here is a great and sad irony. The very situation of separation and suspicion and distrust and dislike that is brought about (among other things) by the fear of intermarriage, is used to justify the opposition to intermarriage. “It will make life hard for the couple and hard for the kids.” “They’ll be called half-breeds.” It’s a catch-22. It’s like the army being defeated because there aren’t enough troops, and the troops won’t sign up because the army’s being defeated. Oppose interracial marriage, and you will help create a situation of racial disrespect. And then, since there is a situation of disrespect, it will be prudent to oppose interracial marriage.

Here is where Christ makes the difference. Christ does not call us to a prudent life, but to a God-centered, Christ-exalting, justice-advancing, counter-cultural, risk-taking life of love and courage. Will it be harder to be married to another race, and will it be harder for the kids? Maybe. Maybe not. But since when is that the way a Christian thinks? Life is hard. And the more you love the harder it gets.

It’s hard to take a child to the mission field. The risks are huge. It’s hard to take a child and move into a mixed neighborhood where he may be teased or ridiculed. It’s hard to help a child be a Christian in a secular world where his beliefs are mocked. It’s hard to bring children up with standards: “you will not dress like that, and you will not be out that late.” It’s hard to raise children when dad or mom dies or divorces. And that’s a real risk in any marriage. Whoever said that marrying and having children was to be trouble free? It’s one of the hardest things in the world. It just happens to be right and rewarding.

Christians are people who move toward need and truth and justice, not toward comfort and security. Life is hard. But God is good. And Christ is strong to help.

There is so much more to say about the challenges and blessings of interracial marriage. Suffice it to say now by way of practical conclusion: At my church, we will not underestimate the challenges of interracial marriage or transracial adoption (they go closely together). We will celebrate the beauty, and we will embrace the burden. Both will be good for us and good for the world and good for the glory of God.

Why Mormons Reacted So Strongly to the

Alleged Racist Incident at BYU

A visiting volleyball player heard a racist heckler. LDS history sets this story apart.

SEPTEMBER 3 2022 9:55 AM

Yet this is not the whole story of race and the LDS church. Before Brigham Young established the racist policies of the church, Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith Jr. promoted a more universal, inclusive message. Race was not God’s design, Smith taught. It was the result of human failing.

Race entered into human history when the supposed ancient forefathers of people of African descent, Cain and Ham, sinned against the human family. And for these sins God cursed these biblical villains with dark skin.

Smith taught that Black people and other nonwhite people could, by converting to Mormonism, rejoin the original, “White” (as in nonraced) human family, and achieve the highest levels of heaven.

Today, the assertion that spiritual redemption comes only through acquiring whiteness makes us wince. But Smith’s view that race wasn’t a fixed, immutable category was a radical departure from the racial politics and religious theologies that dominated antebellum America and that were used to justify Indian removal and chattel slavery.

Tallapoosa Peonage Case 1903

Statements by lead prosecutor Warren Reese U.S District Attorney:

There have been flagrant abuses and violations on the part of wealthy and influential men. These violations have not been confined to one or two periodical and independent instances but it has developed into a miserable business and custom to catch up ignorant and helpless Negro men and women upon the flimsiest and most baseless of charges and carry them before a Justice of the Peace. The Justice of the Peace is usually a paid hireling of these wealthy dealers. The victim is found guilty and a fine is assessed which in the beginning cannot be paid by the victim at which point one of these slave dealers steps up, pretends to be the friend of the Negro telling him he will pay his fine if he will sign a contract to work for him on his farm. The Negro readily agrees rather than go to the mines as he is informed he will have to do. This fine is paid, the contract is signed, and the Negro is taken to the farm or the mine or the mill or the quarry of the employer, placed into a condition of involuntary servitude, he is locked up at night in a cell, worked under guards during the day from 3 o’clock in the morning til 7 or 8 o’clock at night. Whipped in a most cruel manner, he is insufficiently fed or poorly clad. In fact, evidence in nearly all the cases investigated reveals that the Negro men are worked nearly naked while the women are worked in a nearly equal disgraceful manner.

Brutal things have transpired and sometimes death has resulted from the infliction of corporal punishment. If they run away dogs are placed upon their track and they are invariably retaken and subjected to more cruel punishment and treatment. When the time of the good working Negro is nearing an end he is rearrested upon some trumped up charge and again carried before some bribed Justice and resentenced to an additional time.

In this way Negroes have been known to have worked in these places and in this situation for years and years and years. They can get no word to friends nor is word allowed to reach them from the outside world. They are held in abject slavery without any knowledge of what goes on in the outside world.

Indictments found so far are based upon some 25 Negro men and women who have been the subjects of these violations. These are some of the most severe instances, but it has been discovered that there are hundreds of other cases.

Comments: A few hundred cases? That’s not many. But… in the years after the Civil War over 800,000 people were caught up in this “slavery” scheme. Of the 4 million black slaves freed not by the emancipation proclamation, but by the 13th Amendment, fully 20% (800,000) were reenslaved under the convict and “debt peon” system. There WAS legislation against debt peonage because it was practiced in the territory (New Mexico) that was “acquired” from Mexico. But SLAVERY WAS NOT ILLEGAL. The 13th amendment says “ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In other words, trump up a crime, convict by an all-white jury, place a fine that the black man cannot pay, buy him as a debt peon. Illegal? Yes. But the owner called him a SLAVE and slavery wasn’t illegal! It says so right in the 13th amendment. And they won.

But the blacks were criminals, right? Yes. Of Black codes. Sunday laws. Meaning these laws were for black people only.

The crimes? Walking along a railroad track - in a day when there were few roads. Riding without a ticket was a crime, but so was walking along the track. Trespassing.

Unemployment. If a Negro left a job and the employer did not give him “walking papers,” the Negro was unemployed and convicted as a vagrant. So one dare not leave his or her job, no matter how bad the job or treatment was, if the employer would not sign walking papers. Obviously there was no incentive for the employer to sign, so many did not.

Rolling dice. Making moonshine. Selling a chicken on a Sunday. (Sunday laws. Another term for “laws for blacks only.) All were crimes demanding a payment the Negro didn’t have.

Hence, bought into slavery by the payer of the fine. And the new owner could charge for food and clothing at a high enough rate that the Negro could NEVER go free. They could NEVER earn more than their keep.

And the keep didn’t even have to sustain life! A Negro slave BEFORE the Civil War and the 13th amendment cost a slaveowner about $900. Under this new system of “Neoslavery” a slave could be bought for $12. If the slave died, you just ponied up $12 and bought another one.

The system was so rigged in the beginning of the 1900’s the most common crime used to convict a black person was “UNNAMED.” The crime supposedly committed by the Negro was not even entered in the court. The Negro knew he or she was going to be convicted and the longer the trial went on the higher the court costs and the less chance of earning one’s freedom - which was already a longshot. So the Negro pled guilty to an “UNNAMED OFFENSE.”

Why would a Negro sign a document of slave-like servitude agreeing to be locked up at night, agreeing to pay the costs of capture if escaped, living in filth with little food and/or clothing? Simple. They couldn’t read. And what the white Justice or new white owner read them sure wasn’t what was on the paper. Counsel was not mandated for a “criminal” until 1964.

When was the last CHATTEL SLAVE freed in the United States? 1942. Alfred Irving, 42, a negro farmhand of A.L. Skrobarcek and his daughter Susie, was freed when charges were brought against them on October 2, 1942 for harboring a slave. Why? Because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

How could President Roosevelt speak of the atrocities of the Japanese against the Chinese and Koreans in Asia when we treated our black population the same or worse?

What should we do now? The same as was done in 1883? After the Civil War white on black crime was essentially unpunished. To address this the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed to give blacks the same protection under the law as whites. It was challenged in Civil Rights Cases in 1883 that made its way to the Supreme Court.

Here is the majority opinion of in that case: “When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficient legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.”

(In other words: It’s been almost 20 years since the Civil War ended. So what if blacks were bred like animals, if a traditional family structure had never been experienced, if education was outlawed. Shouldn’t 20 years be long enough to allow blacks to assimilate into the society that we DON'T WANT THEM IN?)

(Is there a comparison to the ending in 2013 of a portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the case of Shelby vs. Holder? Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. The formula that was used in determining if racial targeting was used in the voting process in a state was outdated and, hence, unconstitutional. Federal oversight of an election in a state no longer existed.

Justice Roberts essentially said: “Hey, it’s been 50 years. We’re over it. The decades of targeted practices of depressing the vote due to discrimination is done - we’ve solved discrimination.”

Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, in dissent, stated: “Throwing away preclearance to ensure the right to vote when it has worked for 50 years is like throwing away an umbrella in a rainstorm because you aren’t getting wet.”

Do we have any evidence of voter suppression today?)

Alabama Literacy Test for voting

Alabama: Jim Crow Literacy Test – Can You Pass?

These questions are from an actual literacy test Alabama used in 1965 to keep Black Americans from registering to vote. The white elections officer administering and reviewing the test might have chosen any or all questions for you to answer.

1. Which of the following is a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights?

Please select response Public Education Voting Employment Trial by Jury

2. The federal census of population is taken each five years.

Please select response True False

3. If a person is indicted for a crime, name two rights which he has.

4. A person appointed to the U.S. Supreme court is appointed for a term of

5. To serve as President of the United States, a person must have attained:

Please select response 25 35 40 45 years

6. A U.S. senator is elected for a term of _________ years.

7. If no candidate for President receives a majority of the electoral vote, who decides who will become President?

8. If election of the President becomes the duty of the U.S. House of Representatives and it fails to act, who becomes President and when?

9. If an effort to impeach the President of the U.S. is made, who presides at the trial?

10. If the two houses of Congress cannot agree on adjournment, who sets the time?

11. After the presidential electors have voted, to whom do they send the count of their votes?

12. If it were proposed to join Alabama and Mississippi to form one state, what groups would have to vote approval in order for this to be done?

13. How many votes must a person receive in order to become President if the election is decided by the U.S. House of Representatives?

14. The only laws which can be passed to apply to an area in a federal arsenal are those passed by ______ provided consent for the purchase of the land is given by the ________ .

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