Last week we talked with a woman who championed a law that requires sites like Backpage.com to obtain documentation proving that the escorts they advertise are at least 18. But in addition to these laws, what else should be done to protect children from the world of sex trafficking? Nicholas Kristof, columnist for our partner The New York Times, has delved extensively into this question.

While most Americans believe their connection to slavery ended with the emancipation proclamation, the unfortunate reality is that it exists to this day — and the evidence is on everyone's dinner plates. A new investigative report reveals that laborers on fishing ships are frequently forced to work up to 52 hours straight under dangerous conditions, and are paid only $260 a month for unlimited hours. Because many companies won't disclose where they get their seafood from, avoiding purchasing slave-fished products is difficult to impossible for consumers.

Two conversations this week on the sensitivity of certain subjects in the classroom produced lots of reaction from listeners. A ban on ethnic studies in Tuscon Arizona, and a resistance to teaching Climate Change as an accepted body of knowledge in certain school districts around the country raises a broader question. Are there pieces of history and science that are simply too hot to handle in a classroom where active debate may get away from the truth and consensus on what to teach may be hard to find?

The uneasy embrace of slavery in colonial America produced an economic boom, rendered the founder's debates over freedom from kings and despots questionable distortions of truth and logic, slavery enshrined rascism in the U.S. Constitution and made the Civil War inevitable. The War itself created an identity for the United States from which there was no escape, even though it seems from time to time that the Civil War blinks out in relevance. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates says this narrative has to change. In a piece in this month's Atlantic, Coates says more black Americans need to study the war and their role in it in order to understand their place in history.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The road to America’s bloodiest conflict was certainly a long one. But the spark that set the war in motion began on October 16th, 1859. That night, a fierce abolitionist named John Brown staged a bloody raid on the armory at Harper's Ferry. Historians have long cited John Brown's raid as the beginning of the end for slavery in the United States. But little has been known about the man himself, until now.

A new report by the State Department says 27 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide. Though the report names Libya, Iran, Myanmar, and Sudan as the worst offenders when it comes to human trafficking, the United States is not immune to the problem. Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked in the U.S., and most of them are women and children. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has advocated for a solution to this problem, saying world leaders need to do more to combat it. But our guests say it's not just up to law enforcement and border control to prevent trafficking—hospitality and travel workers can be the first line of defense.

 

Many Americans are related to people who fought and died in the Civil War. But imagine that you’re related not just to one figure we associate with the Civil War and aftermath, but two. This is the case for Kenneth Morris. Not only is he the great-great-great grandson of abolitionist and Lincoln adviser Frederick Douglass, he’s also the great-great grandson of Booker T. Washington, the post-Civil War educator and activist. On top of that, Morris is the Founder president of the Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, which aims to eradicate modern-day slavery.

The history of slavery is interwoven with the history of America, but what most of us learn about in school is the history of white settlers. And even in that white history, there are particular characters — mostly Dutch and Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Not Catholics, and certainly not Jews. But that may be about to change. A new novel called “Song of Slaves in the Desert” centers on a slave family and its owners, who are Jewish. It’s written by Alan Cheuse, the novelist and George Mason University professor who you might know as the books reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered.

Some of us learned about the Amistad revolt in our school history classes. Some of us only know about it because of the 1997 movie starring Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins. But many of us still know little or nothing about those involved in the 1839 slave ship revolt that became a symbol for the abolitionist movement. In his new book, “Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels,” Kevin Young attempts to change this.

The U.S. slave trade took many things from the Africans who were forced into it: family, name, homeland, and, of course, freedom. But within that system of brutality, there were certain things that couldn’t be stolen from the slaves, including their taste memories, cooking techniques and agricultural practices. It’s through these food memories and techniques that Africans transformed the way Americans eat. Food historian Jessica Harris explores this part of the American story, and the people involved in it, in her new book “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America.”

The historic slave trade from Africa to the Americas was so widespread and so horrific as to remain difficult to entirely grasp. A new book, “Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade," aims to turn historic data from the period into a more coherent view, through maps and data. The book uncovers information that may soon have us all reconsidering not only America's history, but many of our own personal stories. 

We frequently hear the term “values” discussed with regard to American politics, culture and life. But what are "American values?" All week, we’re delving into this question. Yesterday we discussed home ownership. Today we wrap up our series with a look at freedom. How did freedom come to be an American Value? If we value freedom so much, why have we spent so much of our nation’s history enslaving our own people, or oppressing those in other nations? And what does Freedom mean to Americans today?

Officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, have spent $2 million to acquire and maintain a two-story colonial home and log cabin formerly believed to be the residence of Josiah Henson, the model for the protagonist in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." As it turns out, officials had it wrong and Henson never lived in that cabin. We talk with David Rotenstein, who served on the county's Historic Preservation Commission at the time of the purchase.

Today our partner WGBH Radio begins an investigative series about the growing national and international criminal enterprise of human and sexual trafficking, and examines how nail salons in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are being used to hide and legitimize illegal activities. Women are being trafficked to work in salons during the day and then pulled into prostitution at night, and because a salon is a cash-based business, it is a perfect place to launder the money brought in through prostitution. 

A black-hulled, two-masted replica of a 19^th century slave-carrying schooner called the “Amistad” will sail into Havana harbor today flying both the U.S. and Cuban flags. The ship sails as part of the United Nations commemoration of March 25^th as the global Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Atlantic slave trade.

 

 

150 years after the Civil War, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to apologize for the nation's ignominious history of slavery. The resolution passed unanimously. But who does the resolution really help: African Americans—or senators? For his thoughts on this late apology, we turn to a friend of The Takeaway, David Wall Rice, an assistant professor of psychology at Morehouse College.