Slavery: A way of life
Slavery was a way of life in the US starting in 1661, when it was officially recognized by law in Virginia. The beginning of wealth generation in the US was built on slavery. But by 1804, all northern US states had passed legislation abolishing it. The southern states claimed it was their right to own people as personal property and put them to work without pay.
More enlightened North American people who believed in Christian values believed that owning another human being was immoral. In December 1860, 11 southern states eventually broke away from the US to form the Confederate States of America. That sparked the American Civil War.
Then-president Abraham Lincoln campaigned nonstop for Congress to pass the 13th amendment to the US Constitution to abolish slavery. The amendment was passed in January 1865, and he signed it.
During the years of slavery, brave black men and women escaped slave-owning farms in the southern states and fled to northern ones to relative safety. One of them was the remarkable and courageous Harriet Tubman.
She was born into slavery in 1822, escaped in Dorchester County, Maryland, and fled to Philadelphia. She was 27. She made secret return trips to the South and became a famous “rescuer of slaves.”
She was supported in her rescues by the so-called Underground Railroad, a movement to rescue slaves and help them win freedom. In about 13 secret trips to slave-owning plantations at great personal risk, she rescued and led 70 enslaved people to freedom. She also provided specific instructions that helped and inspired another 50 to 60 more to escape on their own.
During the Civil War, she became a leader of a black contingent of Union soldiers and helped lead the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people. After a lifetime of saving slaves, Tubman died at about 93. Her legacy lives on and her life is dramatized in the Oscar-nominated 2019 film “Harriet.”
In the Philippines, the Senate voted against the renewal of the treaty allowing US bases in the country on Sept. 16, 1991. The final US military ship, the USS Belleau Wood, departed Subic Bay on Nov. 24, 1992. The campaign to free the sex slaves in Olongapo City and close the US bases and convert these into economic freeports started in 1983 by the anti-bases campaign led by the Preda Foundation.
After the bases closed in 1992, an estimated 1,000 women and children were freed from sex slavery in bars and brothels, where many of them were held in debt bondage. Today, 171,653 employees work with dignity at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone.
However, human trafficking persists as a common crime in the Philippines and elsewhere in the world. There is a kind of economic slavery among the 17 million Filipinos who eat only one meal a day. Many are forced to be sex slaves in bars and brothels catering to local and foreign tourists. Slavery is very much still with us today.
The United Nations Children’s Fund reports on child slavery estimate that 12 percent of children in South Asia — over 41 million — are involved in unpaid child labor. Modern-slavery figures are provided by the International Labor Organization and Walk Free Foundation.
In Asia and the Pacific, approximately 29.3 million people live in slavery as of 2021. This region alone accounts for nearly 60 percent of the effectively enslaved people in the world./PN
