Traveling Museum Displays Modern-Day Slavery

Updated: 11:08 PM Jul 25, 2010

The Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum brings light to an issue many assume ended in the 1800s. But organizers of the museum, which stopped by the Downtown Mall Sunday, say slavery in Florida still exists in the 21st Century in the agricultural industry.

Posted: 7:13 PM Jul 25, 2010
Reporter: Chris Stover
Email Address: chris.stover@newsplex.com

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July 25, 2010

A group from Florida trekked north to Charlottesville's Downtown Mall Sunday to raise awareness of what they call slavery on American farms.

It's a concept well-known during Thomas Jefferson's area, but not in modern-day America.

"A lot of people thought slavery fell by the wayside hundreds of years ago," Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said.

The Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum told the story of captive farm workers held against their will by employers through threats and the use of violence.

"This kind of oppression cannot be tolerated. we must fight it. that's what this exhibit is all about," Norris said.

Lucas Benitez worked on a farm not long ago. Though he wasn't in a slavery situation, he endured similar conditions, like stagnant wages and verbal and physical abuse from his bosses. Now, he travels with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to present this exhibit.

"It's just a long litany of abuses that happen to workers, even the ones who aren't in the most extreme cases of modern-day slavery," Benitez said through his translator, Julia Perkins.

The goal of the display is to find a solution.

"It's time now to stop this history of exploitation and abuse in the agricultural industry," Benitez said.

Some special visitors stopped by the exhibit Sunday. A group of visitors from Charlottesville's sister city in Ghana explored the grounds. They said they're taken back by what they learned, given their homeland's history with slavery.

"Memories, memories," said Joe Baiden-Amissah, a visitor from Ghana, "and what I have heard about slavery in the olden days."

Regardless of their roots, many visitors are left in shock because of what they learn.

"I wish we could find a solution to this," Baiden-Amissah said. "It is just abominable, and I cannot have ways to describe it."

In the last 12 years, and as recently as 2007, seven federal prosecutions have liberated more than 1,000 farm workers in the United States.

The museum will showcase those cases as it travels over the next three weeks along the East Coast.

Latest Comments

Posted by: TL Location: Charlottesville on Jul 26, 2010 at 11:25 PM

To Observer - You are correct that there is a difference between slave-like conditions and actual slavery. As this museum showed these people were actually slaves. They were being bought and sold as property. A slave trader would round them up from around the world and the US and sell them to the farm owners who needed workers. The workers would get no payment and be threatened with physical harm. That sounds like slavery to me... please educate yourself on the issue. Slavery today is not that different from slavery before...

Posted by: Brandon Location: Charlottesville on Jul 26, 2010 at 12:42 PM

To Observer- I hope you will take the time to learn more about this, most of the things you stated are misconceptions. In fact, some of these workers are rounded up in their home countries and shipped here against their will. They are definitely held here against their will, and there are many lawsuits to prove it. Many are actually here legally with work visas, some are US citizens. And yes, they are whipped maimed and lynched. If you had bothered to attend the exhibit you would have learned all of this. Calling this slavery does not in any way minimize chattel slavery that existed in the US, it merely shows that the practice still exists in very similar ways.

Posted by: Observer on Jul 26, 2010 at 04:44 AM

Calling the immigrant farm workers "slaves" seems quite a stretch. I bet none of them was rounded up in their countries of origin, placed in chains and shipped to this country against their will to be sold into their predicament. Most, if not all of them have come here voluntarily and illegally. I don't mean to excuse what their employers are subjecting them to. The feds should crack down on both the illegals and those who employ them. As bad as their situations may seem today they are not being whipped, maimed or lynched. If they chose to leave the farms where they work they would not be hunted down with dogs and killed. To call this contemporary situation "slavery" minimizes the evil that once was commonplace in our nation.

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