Encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Slavery and Slave .
Slavery is the social and legal designation of specific persons as property or chattel, for the purpose of providing labor and services for the owner without the right of the slave to refuse, or gain compensation.
Definitions
Where slavery has been a legal practice, slaves were held under the control of another person, group, organization, or state. The legal designation of slavery has become rare in modern times, as most societies now consider slavery to be illegal, and persons held as in such condition are considered by authorities to be victims of unlawful
imprisonment.
A specific form, known as chattel slavery, is defined by the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons by another person or state, including the legal right to buy and sell them just as one would any common object.
The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status or/and condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised..." Therefore, slaves cannot leave an owner, an employer or a territory without explicit permission , and they will be returned if they escape. Therefore a system of slavery — as opposed to the isolated instances found in any society — requires official, legal recognition of ownership, or widespread tacit arrangements with local authorities, by masters who have some influence because of their social and/or economic status.
According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the word
slave comes from the
Latin term
sclavus, which originally referred to the
Slavs of Eastern and Central Europe, as some of these people had been placed into forced servitude by foreign invasion. The current usage of the word
serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery, because serfs are considered to have some rights. In the strictest sense of the word, "slaves" are people who are not only owned, but who have no rights and are also not paid aside from food, water, and sometimes shelter.
The
International Labour Organization defines "forced labor" as "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", albeit with certain exceptions: military service, convicts, emergencies and minor community services. The ILO asserts that child labour amounts to forced labor in which the child's work is exacted from the family as a whole.
In some historical contexts, compulsory labor to repay debts by adults has been regarded as slavery, depending upon the rights held by such individuals.
Mandatory military service in
liberal democracies is a controversial subject occasionally equated with slavery by with those on the political left. By extension, acceptance of conscription is seen as a sign of chauvinist,
ultra-nationalist and/or
fascist ideologies, justified by philosophies such as the
Hegelian notion of nations having rights which supersede those of individuals.
Other uses of the term
Many progressive thinkers have discussed the idea of "wage slavery" or "economic slavery", although it is generally accepted that payment of a wage signifies "free labor", with the quite different disadvantages experienced by such workers.
In some political philosophies such as
anarcho-capitalism , government taxation of citizens is considered a form of slavery.
Some proponents of
animal rights apply the term "slavery" to the condition of some or all non-human animals.
History of Slavery
Slavery is thought to have existed since the first walled town of
Jericho was established around 10,000B.C. The settlers of
Jericho were plagued by roaming hunting and gathering bands, which they kill or capture. It is thought that the ones that were captured were then put to work as slaves who may of eventually become citizens and slave owners themselves. Slavery can be traced to the earliest records, such as the
Code of Hammurabi, which refers to slavery as an already established institution. The exploitation of women in some ancient cultures might also be identified as slaves. Slavery however refers to the systematic exploitation of labor for work .
The history of slavery in the ancient world was closely tied to warfare. Greek and Roman sources are replete with references to slavery in connection with warfare. Captured prisoners of war were frequently impressed into slavery by their captors, often as manual laborers in military, civil engineering, or agricultural projects, though slaves also used as household servants.
In ancient Greco-Roman times, slavery was related to the practice of infanticide. Unwanted infants were
exposed to nature to die; these were then often rescued by slave traders, who raised them as slaves. Justin Martyr, in his , defended the Christian practice of not exposing infant only secondarily because the child might die; first of all,
But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed are brought up to prostitution.
In Africa, slaves were often taken by other Africans by means of capture in warfare, and frequently employed in manual labor. Some slaves were traded for goods or services to other African kingdoms.
The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade is thought to have originated with trans-Saharan slavery, though it soon became centered around settlements and ports in East Africa. It is one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by hundreds of years. Male slaves were employed as servants, soldiers, or laborers by their owners, while female slaves, mostly from Africa, were long traded to Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab, Indian, or Oriental traders, some as female servants, others as sexual slaves. Arab, Indian, and Oriental traders were involved in the capture and transport of slaves northward across the Sahara desert and the Indian Ocean region into Arabia and the Middle East, Persia, and the Indian subcontinent. As many African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean as crossed the Atlantic, perhaps more. Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900, compared to 11.6 million across the Atlantic from 1500 to the late 1860s. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued into the early 1900s.
The European or Transatlantic slave trade originated around 1500, during the early period of European discovery and settlement in West Africa and the Atlantic. Slaves were often captured in raids or purchased outright from other African kingdoms. Many slaves were originally captured as prisoners of war. A large number of slaves were transported from what is now Guinea, the Congo, and Angola. Over 11 million men and women were transported in ships across the Atlantic to various ports in the New World. Far from docilely accepting their imprisonment, many transported Africans actively resisted the brutality of their captors. African slaves are known to have engaged in at least 250 shipboard rebellions during the period of the translantic crossings.
How people become slaves
Historically, slaves were captured. Warfare often resulted in slavery for prisoners if no one paid ransom. It originally may have been more humane than executing those who would return to fight if they were freed, but the effect led to widespread enslavement of those of other groups; these sometimes differed in ethnicity, nationality,
religion, or
race, but often were the same. The dominant group in an area might take slaves with little fear of suffering the like fate, but the possibility might be present from reversals of fortune, as when Seneca warns, at the height of the Roman Empire,
And as often as you reflect how much power you have over a slave, remember that your master has just as much power over you. "But I have no master," you say. You are still young; perhaps you will have one. Do you not know at what age Hecuba entered captivity, or Croesus, or the mother of Darius, or Plato, or Diogenes?
and when various powerful nations fought among themselves, as for the
Atlantic slave trade, anyone might find himself enslaved. The actual amount of force needed to kidnap individual people for slaves could lead to enslavement of those secure from warfare, as brief raids or kidnapping sufficed.
St. Patrick recounts in his
Confession having been kidnapped by pirates, and the
Biblical figure Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.
Societies characterized by
poverty, population pressures, and cultural and technological lag are frequently exporters of slaves to more developed nations. Today most slaves are rural people forced to move to cities, or those purchased in rural areas and sold into slavery in cities. These moves take place due to loss of subsistence agriculture, thefts of land, and
population increases.
In many cultures, persons convicted of serious crimes could be sold into slavery. The proceeds from this sale were often used to compensate the victims , and as a consequence, the criminal might be sold only if he lacked the property to make the compensation. Other laws and other crimes might enslave the criminal regardless of his property; some called for the criminal and all his property to be handed over to his victim.
Also, persons have been sold into slavery so that the money could be used to pay off debts. This could range from a king ordering a debtor sold with all his family, to the poor selling off their own children. In times of dire need such as famine, people have offered themselves into slavery not for a purchase price, but merely so that their new master would feed them.
In most institutions of slavery, the children of slaves are themselves the property of the master. Laws varied as to whether the status of the mother or of the father determined the fate of the child.
Most common types of work
The most common types of slave work are domestic service, agriculture, mineral extraction, army make-up, industry, and commerce. In the 21st century, domestic services are required in a wealthier household and may include up to four female slaves and their children on its staff. The chattels are expected to cook, clean, sometimes carry water from an outdoor pump into the house, and grind cereal.
Many slaves have been used in
agriculture and cultivation. The strong, young men are forced to work long days in the fields, with little or no breaks for rehydration or food. There have been efforts by developed countries to discourage trade with countries where such servitude is legal, however.
In mineral extraction, the majority of the work is done by the men. They provide the salt that is used during extensive trade, not as much in this day and time, but this was especially true in the 19th century.
Many of the men that are bought into chattel slavery are trained to fight in their nation’s army and other military services. This is where a great deal of slave trading amongst wealthy officers takes place. Different military leaders can see the strength of a young slave, and make trades to get the young chattel on his side.
Chattel slaves are trained in artisan workshops for industry and commerce. The men are in metalworking, while the females are in the textile ones. They are sometimes employed as agents and assistants in commerce, even though they go without benefits or breaks. The majority of the time, the slave owners do not pay the chattels for their services.
Female slaves, mostly from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab traders, and sold into sexual slavery.
Effects of slavery
Slavery has had a role in the economic development of the United States. Slaves helped build the roads upon which they were transported. The
cotton,
tobacco, and
sugar cane harvested by slaves became important exports for the USA and the Caribbean countries.
Slavery in the United States had important political implications. During the westward expansion of slavery during the early and mid-1800's, many Northerners feared that the South would gain control of Congress if the Western territories entered the Union as slave states. Attempts by the North to exclude slavery from these territories angered the South and helped bring on the
American Civil War in 1861.
There is a pragmatic tendency to consider the effects of slavery in purely monetary terms, and even then the context is often dropped. There are a broad array of effects arising from the adoption of slavery. In terms of the economics of slavery, slaves provide a cheap source of labor. The reason that slave labor was cheap was because there was much agricultural work to be done, and to hire non-slave workers would have been more expensive. As European managers came to understand the vulnerability of workers in the tropics, they gave more attention to the diets of their slave laborers to reduce the death rate from
scurvy,
malaria, typhoid and
yellow fever, etc. Still in many ways slavery was first and foremost financially based in nature; if agricultural machines had been invented and could have been had at less cost than the equivalent number of slaves per work area, than slavery would have quickly become a thing of the past in the Americas because of the bottom-line economics of the situation. In the end, slavery was abolished not only because it was morally repugnant but because European growers no longer needed cheap slave labor.
The basis of slavery is a slave master and the
serf. While the treatment of slaves varied, its evident that in those cases where slaves were treated better, slaves were accorded more 'humanitarian' lifestyles, in the sense that they were more likely to be productive, trained and efficacious, perhaps taking pride in their work. The alternative 'harsh' treatment has the opposite reaction, reducing morale, lowering productivity, requiring higher levels of supervision, but importantly also removing all incentive for 'slave' workers to find a more productive way of accomplishing the task. Toil is the source of inspiration if you are free to realize the benefits. By implication, slavery was undermining innovation in a second way. For these reasons, America did benefit from slavery in the short term by solving a short term shortage of plantation labor, but in the long term it only undermined the productivity incentive, and thus a nation's capacity to produce wealth. A look at US economic growth during the periods of slavery and after will demonstrate as much.
A further effect of slavery was to relatively denigrate the value of manual labor itself. Hard work became something people did if they were forced to do it, rather than for self-improvement. It created an idle slave owning aristocracy who, while asset rich, were income poor. Although they didn't pay their slaves a wage, they were still responsible for feeding, housing, providing simple medical care, and education for all of the slaves' lives from birth to death. Even if a slave was too old, young or crippled to work, he still had to be supported by someone. If a slave wasn't treated reasonably, he would only do the minimum work necessary.
Slavery caused fear, suspicion and hatred between slave masters and serfs. Often these feelings escalated into uprisings resulting in the destruction of property, murder, rape, incarceration or desertion. These conflicts also increased the cost of business and judicial intervention.
Abolitionist movements
Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through the whole of human history. So, too, have movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
Moses led Israelite slaves from
ancient Egypt according to the
Biblical Book of Exodus - possibly the first detailed account of a movement to free slaves. Later Jewish laws in Halacha would prevent slaves from being sold out of the Land of Israel, and allow a slave to move to Israel if he so desired.
Abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as the slave trade.
Progress came incrementally in most areas of the world. For instance, in 1772, a legal case concerning
James Somersett made it illegal to remove a slave from England against his will. A similar case, that of Joseph Knight, took place in Scotland five years later and further ruled slavery to be contrary to the law of Scotland. At the same time, across the
Atlantic Ocean, slaves in the United States were in a state of
limbo, able to live semi-freely in states where slavery was illegal yet, as the case of
Dred Scott ruled, still considered property.
There were slaves in mainland
France, but the institution was never fully authorized there. However, slavery was vitally important in France's
Caribbean possessions, especially Saint-Domingue. In 1793, unable to repress the massive slave revolt of August 1791 that had become the
Haitian Revolution, the French Revolutionary commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel declared general emancipation. In Paris, on February 4, 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the
Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories.
Napoleon sent troops to the Caribbean in 1802 to try to re-establish slavery. They succeeded in
Guadeloupe, but the ex-slaves of Saint-Domingue defeated the French army and declared independence. The colony became
Haiti, the first black republic, on January 1, 1804.
Following the work of campaigners in the United Kingdom, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by
Parliament on March 25, 1807. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the
slave trade within the whole British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed on August 23, 1833, outlawed slavery itself in the British colonies. On August 1, 1834 all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838.
Around this time, slaves in other parts of the world, aided by abolitionists, also began their struggle for independence. Slaves in the
United States who escaped ownership would often make their way north to the northern part of the country or
Canada through what became known as the "
Underground Railroad". Famously active
abolitionists of the U.S. include
Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner,
Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Following a
civil war, slavery was abolished with the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the United States in 1865.
However, in both the U.S. and UK there arose the question of what to do with the massive increase in the number of people needing work, housing, and so on. To answer this question,
Sierra Leone and
Liberia were established for former slaves of the British Empire and United States respectively. Supporters of the effort believed the repatriation of slaves to Africa would be the best solution to the problem as well as setting right the injustices done to their ancestors. While these efforts may have been in good faith, and indeed some blacks embraced repatriation, there were other motives as well; for instance,
trade unions did not want the cheap labor of former slaves around, and
racism may have played a role. Regardless of the motives, both efforts were largely unsuccessful.
The 1926 Slavery Convention, an initiative of the
League of Nations, was a turning point in banning global slavery. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, explicitly banned slavery. The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery was convened to outlaw and ban slavery worldwide, including child slavery. In December 1966, the UN General Assembly adopted the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was developed from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 8 of this international treaty bans slavery. The treaty came into force in March 1976 after it had been ratified by 35 nations. As of November 2003, 104 nations had ratified the treaty.
Apologies
In June 1997, Tony Hall, a
Democratic representative for
Dayton, Ohio proposed a national apology by the U.S. government for slavery.
On May 21, 2001, the
French National Assembly voted the Taubira law which recognized slavery as a crime against humanity that the UK Government may issue a "statement of regret" over slavery.
Reparations
As noted above, there have been movements to achieve reparations for those held in involuntary servitude, or sometimes their descendants. There is a growing modern movement to donate funds achieved in reparations efforts not to the descendants of those held as slaves in prior generations, but instead to donate them to those freed from slavery in this generation, in other countries and circumstances.
In general, reparation for being held in slavery is handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since slaves are exactly those people who have no access to the legal process. Systems of fines and reparations paid from fines collected by authorities, rather than in civil courts, have been proposed to alleviate this in some nations.
In the United States, the reparations movement often cites the 40 acres and a mule decree. Recent effort have also targeted businesses that profited from the slave trade and issuing insurance on slaves.
In Africa, the 2
nd World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission was convened in
Ghana in 2000. Its deliberations concluded with a Petition being served in the International Court at the Hague for
US$777 trillion against the United States, Canada, and European Union members for "unlawful removal and destruction of Petitioners' mineral and human resources from the African continent" between 1503 up to the end of the colonialism era in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The contemporary status of slavery
According to the Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world — mainly children — in conditions of slavery, as well as in various forms of servitude which are in many respects similar to slavery." It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude which are not slavery in the narrow legal sense.
In
Sudan UN-peace workers have acknowledged the existence of slavery in the country. Although officially banned, it is still practiced widely, and there is even trading going on at the country by means of slave markets.
In the United States, offenses against the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution were being prosecuted as late as 1947
The economics of contemporary slavery
According to a broader definition used by Kevin Bales of
Free the Slaves, another advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there are 27 million people in slavery today, spread all over the world . This is, also according to that group:
- The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
- The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
- Reducing the price of slaves to as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male laborers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels . This represents the price paid to the person, or parents.
- This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labor terms — while the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time, that represents US$38,000 in today's dollars, thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost only one one-thousandth of their price 150 years ago.
As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave to yield what are called
disposable people — those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or those forced to work in mines.
Human trafficking
Trafficking in human beings, sometimes called
human trafficking, or
sex trafficking is not the same as people smuggling. A smuggler will facilitate illegal entry into a country for a fee, but on arrival at their destination, the smuggled person is free; the trafficking victim is enslaved. Victims do not agree to be trafficked: they are tricked, lured by false promises, or forced into it. Traffickers use coercive tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs of abuse to control their victims. Whilst the majority of victims are women, and sometimes children, forced into
prostitution, other victims include men, women and children forced into manual labor.
Due to the illegal nature of trafficking, the exact extent is unknown. A US Government report published in 2003, estimates that 800,000-900,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.
Potential for total abolition
Those 27 million people produce a gross economic product of US $13 billion annually. This is also a smaller percentage of the world economy than slavery has produced at any prior point in human history. That, plus the universal criminal status of slavery, the lack of moral arguments for it in modern discourse, and the many conventions and agreements to abolish it worldwide, make it likely that it can be eliminated in this generation, according to Free The Slaves. There are no nations whose economies would be substantially affected by the true abolition of slavery.
A first step towards this objective is the Cocoa Protocol, by which the entire
cocoa industry worldwide has accepted full
moral and legal responsibility for the entire comprehensive outcome of their
production processes. Negotiations for this protocol were initiated for
cotton,
sugar and other commodity items in the 19th century — taking about 140 years to complete. Thus it seems that this is also a turning point in history, where all
commodity markets can slowly lever licensing and other requirements to ensure that slavery is eliminated from production, one industry at a time, as a sectoral simultaneous policy that does not cause disadvantages for any one market player.
Timeline of the abolition of slavery
Below is a list of countries and the year in which they formally abolished slavery:
>| Country | Date | Notes |
| Upper Canada | 1793 | Abolished slavery in 1793 under Sir John Graves Simcoe, but did not free all the existing slaves until 1810 |
| France | 1794, 1848 | See article on abolitionism |
| United Kingdom | 1834 | See section above and article on abolitionism |
| United States | 1865 | 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution |
| Cuba | 1886 | Cuba was then still a Spanish colony |
| Brazil | 1888 | The last country to do so in the Americas |
| Saudi Arabia | 1962 | See Human rights in Saudi Arabia |
| Mauritania | 1981 | However slavery still exists in a de-facto capacity |
|
See also:
National abolition dates Religion and Slavery
Many have accused the
Bible, particuraly the Old Testament, of condoning slavery.. And there are arguments to the other side.
Bibliography
- Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, vol. III: The Perspective of the World
- Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823
- Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
- Finkelman, Paul. Encyclopedia of Slavery
- Lal, K. S. Muslim Slave System in Medieval India ISBN 81-85689-67-9
- Nieboer, H. J.
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery
Primary sources
- - a scholarly source for primary literature on US slavery, with some contemporary slavery accounts.
- The Slavery Reader, ed. by Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Routledge 2003
- Mintz, S. Slavery Facts and Myths
USA
- Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America , most important recent survey
- Boles, John. Black Southerners: 1619-1869 brief survey
-
- Genovese Eugene D. Roll, Jordan Roll , classic study
- Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", American Quarterly 29 , 117-31, a critique of Genovese
-
-
- Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime , southern white perspective
- Phillips, Ulrich B. Life and Labor in the Old South
- Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama .
- Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi * Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South , a rebuttal of U B Philipps
-
- Weinstein, Allen , Frank O. Gatell, and Lewis Sarasohn, eds., American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader, third ed.
- Mintz, S. Digital History Slavery, Facts & Myths
Slavery today
- Kevin Bales, Disposable People. New Slavery in the Global Economy, Revised Edition, University of California Press 2004, ISBN 0-520-24384-6
- Kevin Bales , Understanding Global Slavery Today. A Reader, University of California Press 2005, ISBN 0-520-24507-5
References
See also
Famous slaves and former slaves
From the list of famous slaves:
- Miguel de Cervantes, was a slave in the Barbary states, wrote later Don Quixote de la Mancha
- Bilal ibn Ribah, slave during the 6th century who was freed and converted to a Muslim in early days of Islam. He was a Sahaba and was chosen by Prophet Muhammad to be his muezzin.
- Saint Patrick, abducted from Britain, enslaved in Ireland, escaped to Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary
- John Brown, escaped and wrote of conditions in Deep South
- Olaudah Equiano also sometimes called Gustavus Vassa, prominent African/British author and figure in the abolitionist cause
- Ann Plato , free black schoolmistress and writer, member of the Talcott Street Congregational Church, Hartford CT and the first African American woman to publish a book of essays
- Frederick Douglass, abolitionist writer and speaker
- Enrique, the slave of Ferdinand Magellan, who became the first man to go around the globe.
- Juan Francisco Manzano, Cuban slave and poet.
- Malinche, famous translator during the Spanish conquest of Mexico
- Onesimus, owned by Philemon mentioned in the Bible
- Aesop, Greek author, famous for his fables
- Spartacus, led the Servile Revolt
- Toussaint L'Ouverture, led the independence of Haiti slave revolt after being freed.
- Harriet Tubman, nicknamed Moses because of her efforts in helping other slaves escape through the Underground Railway.
- Nat Turner, escaped and led revolt in Southampton County, Virginia
- Zumbi, in colonial Brazil, escaped and joined the Quilombo dos Palmares – the largest ever settlement of escaped slaves in Brazil – later becoming its last and most famous leader.
- Mende Nazer, a woman who was an alleged slave in Sudan and transferred to London to serve a diplomat's family there
- Terence, Roman comic poet who wrote before and possibly after his freedom.
- Granny Nanny, famous female leader of Jamaican Maroons
- Dred Scott, a slave who attempted to sue for his freedom in Scott v. Sandford.
- William and Ellen Craft, slaves who wrote a tale describing their flight from slavery in America in the 1800s.
- Phillis Wheatley, Colonial American poet
Various
