1 The Antislavery Usable Past History’s Lessons for How We End Slavery Today Edited by Kevin Bales & Zoe Trodd The Rights Lab University of Nottingham, UK Highfield House, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD Copyright © 2020 by The Rights Lab Publication Data: Names: Bales, Kevin; Trodd, Zoe, Editors Title: The Antislavery Usable Past: History’s Lessons for How We End Slavery Today Description: Nottingham: The Rights Lab, 2020 Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-9161929-0-4 (e-book) Cover and book design by Gill Williamson. Images on cover courtesy of Community Mural by Joel Bergner and partners. This publication was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Antislavery Usable Past project (AH/ M004430/1 and AH/M004430/2). “It is not light we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” “The past is the mirror in which we may discern the dim outlines of the future…” – Frederick Douglass, 1852 and 1884 Contents Foreword – Burnout, Kevin Bales ................................8 Introduction to Part I – Looking, Zoe Trodd ..........27 Chapter 1 – “I am not for sale, I AM PRICELESS”: Antislavery Visual Protest Then and Now, Hannah Jeffery ........................................................................30 Chapter 2 – “Present in Every Picture”: Photography in the Modern Antislavery Movement, Emily Brady ....56 Chapter 3 – Picturing and Voicing Enslavement: Language and Representation, Katarina Schwarz ...........78 Introduction to Part II – Listening, Minh Dang ....96 Chapter 4 – The Legacy and Application of Survivor Narratives, Andrea Nicholson ................................................99 Chapter 5 – Proving the Point: Antislavery Material Culture Persuasion, Promotion and Providing Evidence, Rebecca Nelson....................................................115 Chapter 6 – After Enslavement Ends: Ensuring Redress for Victims, Katarina Schwarz ..........133 Introduction to Part III – Antislavery Tools, John Oldfield and Mary Wills .........................................157 Chapter 7 – Antislavery Opinion Building, John Oldfield .........................................................................160 Chapter 8 – Our Own Tools: Historical Antislavery Techniques for the Contemporary Movement to End Slavery, Zoe Trodd and Charlotte James .................................177 Chapter 9 – The Role of Military Intervention in Antislavery Campaigns, Mary Wills .............................200 Introduction to Part IV – Voices from the Field, Jean Allain ....................................................................215 Chapter 10 – Identifying a Case of Slavery, Jean Allain............................................................................217 Chapter 11 – Antislavery Organisational Culture, Garry Kishere .......................................................................230 Chapter 12 – The Impact of the Past on Child Sexual Exploitation, Sarah Colley and Emma Stephens ....................250 Conclusion: The Toolbox Today, Zoe Trodd and Kevin Bales ..................................................................269 Appendix 1: Twelve Practice Points for Understanding Slavery, Jean Allain .......................274 Appendix 2: Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery ..............................276 Author Biographies ...............................................289 Acknowledgments .................................................294 Notes .........................................................................296 8 Foreword – Burnout Kevin Bales The black militants of today are standing upon the shoulders of the New Negro radicals of my day, the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. We stood upon the shoulders of the civil rights fighters of the Reconstruction era, and they stood upon the shoulders of the black abolitionists. These are the interconnections of history. — A. Philip Randolph, 1969 Cold sweats suddenly come upon Me. — Thomas Clarkson, 1793 Welcome to the Antislavery Usable Past Reader. You’ll find this is not your normal history book. Every chapter has been written by someone who knows a good deal about the antislavery movements of the past, the antislavery movements of the present, or more likely, both. Our aim is for this book to be a useful resource in the truest sense: that you will find in it suggestions, perhaps even answers, to the challenges you face in your antislavery work – whether you work in a charity, a campaigning non-governmental organization, in local, regional, or national government, or just as a citizen committed to the antislavery cause. Thousands of abolitionists and human rights workers have gone before us, but we are rarely aware of their existence, much less the lessons they learned through hard work and experience. We hope to help them speak to us in the present – so that their ideas and struggles, FOREWORD – BURNOUT 9 challenges, failures and triumphs might inspire and guide us. It can be argued that the world is now embarked upon the fourth major antislavery movement in human history1. Each of these movements has pursued the common goal of liberation for slaves; yet each of them has been also been hindered and delayed by, for example, fights over how slaves are to be counted and how slavery or other forms of unfree labour should be defined. Fights between different wings of each of these movements have slowed progress and squandered energy. Prejudices of the day, such as the refusal to seat women delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, wasted talent. All four antislavery movements have struggled to find the best role for survivors of slavery within the movement. In all four movements, antislavery has been (and is today) exploited as a stalking horse or ventriloquist’s dummy for other political or ideological goals. While these movements achieved great things, each had their energy and resources misused in schism and duplication, with schisms often breaking along the same lines as had previous movements decades before. All have needed a greater understanding of the recurring problems that have stymied previous social reform movements, whatever their aims. One simple and personal anecdote will illustrate the folly of not knowing the history of our own movement(s), and the benefit of even a partial knowledge of the past. In early 2000 I met with four other people to explore the shared idea of establishing an antislavery organization in the United States. At that time there were very few non-governmental organizations focused on slavery, very little public recognition that 10 THE ANTISLAVERY USABLE PAST there was such a problem, virtually no acceptance by government or law enforcement that such a crime might exist, and next to no resources available to support antislavery work. The five of us had been testing the waters in different parts of America and felt that an organization that focused its work on the liberation of slaves, and on their rehabilitation and reintegration, was needed to complement the often sensationalist awareness-raising work that a handful of groups were doing. As we laid our plans and allocated jobs, I was assigned the task of being the public spokesperson, the ‘voice’ of the new organization. The idea, the challenge, of starting a brand new group addressing an issue that had virtually no public recognition, was daunting. So, over the next few weeks, in hopes of learning how it could be done, I found and read histories of the previous antislavery movements2 – from the launch of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, through the American abolitionist movement preceding the US Civil War, to the Congo Reform campaign of the early twentieth century, and even the ‘white slavery’ campaigns of the late nineteenth century. There was a great deal to learn from these stories, but one trend surprised me – almost every person who had taken on the role in past movements that I had just assumed in the present movement had had some sort of breakdown. Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, William Lloyd Garrison, E.D. Morel, and others – they all cracked up about ten years into their job. All recovered (though it might be said Roger Casement, an important researcher and campaigner in the early twentieth century, did not) but several had to retire from antislavery work for months or years. FOREWORD – BURNOUT 11 I was no stranger to burnout and breakdown; I had seen it before. In my twenties, working for an American anti-death penalty organization that fought legal cases to stop executions and bring cases against the torture of prison inmates, I’d watched my colleagues break down under the intensive and soul-crushing workload. Faced with the knowledge that someone was going to be executed on a certain day and time, it was no surprise that workers would sacrifice everything – sleep, food, health, family, friendships – to stop that execution from happening. And when the inmate was put to death in spite of every last-ditch and heroic effort, the sense of failure was devastating. That anti-death penalty organization had, after watching a number of workers go to pieces, instituted a mandatory week at a beach house for anyone who seemed on the edge of collapse. It worked for some, but marriages, mental and physical health, and valuable personnel were still regularly lost. Bringing the other founders of our little organization together, I explained what I had learned. The others had also seen burnout in voluntary groups,