Advocates for History-Book Changes: "Slavery Not Over!"

Advocates striving to bring awareness to human trafficking are calling on McGraw-Hill to update the company’s history text books, which report that slavery ended in 1865.

More than 4,500 Americans, backed by anti-trafficking organizations and modern-day slavery survivors, have signed an online petition requesting the textbook giant make changes that more accurately convey that 1865 was the year that slavery was made illegal in the U.S, and that the practice continues to this day.

“Slavery didn’t end in 1865; it was just made illegal,” said Tina Frundt, a human trafficking survivor and the founder of Washington, D.C. shelter Courtney’s House, in a Huffington Post op-ed last week. “Modern-day slavery, now called human trafficking, still exists across America. The U.S. State Department estimates up to 17,000 people are trafficked -- enslaved -- in the U.S. each year.”

Endorsed by Frundt and national nonprofit End Slavery Now, more than 4,500 have signed a petition on Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing platform for social change, calling on McGraw-Hill to update its textbooks so that children will be better informed about -- and protected against -- modern-day slavery.

The petition cites passages in McGraw-Hill textbooks such as “United States: Adventures in Time and Place” (2001) and “Get Ready! for Social Studies: World History” (2002) that mention the “end of slavery” without discussing the fact that human trafficking continues in the United States today. Change.org members are asking McGraw-Hill to update their teaching materials on slavery to include information on modern-day human trafficking.

“This issue matters to me as a person who was enslaved in America long after 1865,” Frundt wrote in the Huffington Post. “I was enslaved by a pimp at age 14, who used the vulnerability an unstable and abusive childhood in foster care had given me as a tool to force me into prostitution. He offered me attention and love, so I ran away from home to be with him. The abuse started almost instantly, and I survived it for over a year before escaping.”

Now, as a mother and the founder of Courtney’s House, a shelter for youth who are survivors of domestic human trafficking, Frundt sees children put at risk because they don’t know slavery exists, she said. She’s now dedicated her life to fighting slavery and in 2010 won the Frederick Douglass award for human trafficking survivors who devote their lives to helping others escape slavery.

“Change.org is proud to be the platform for activism around this important issue,” said Amanda Kloer, Change.org’s Human Trafficking Editor. “Parents, educators and trafficking survivors want to make sure today’s students learn about the dangers of trafficking.”

The campaign is also endorsed by national nonprofit End Slavery Now, which connects people fighting human trafficking with the resources they need to end modern-day slavery.

“End Slavery Now supports this campaign because awareness is the first step in creating change,” said Lauren Taylor, Founder and President of End Slavery Now. “If the collective consciousness of the American people continues to be that we ended slavery in the U.S. -- which is what we learned in school -- there will be no impetus for rooting out and truly abolishing, once and for all, the slavery that exists right here, in our cities, in our neighborhoods, in plain sight, and right next door."

Related resources

Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation: Five Lesson Plans
Global Nomads Group: Classroom Activities on Human Trafficking
Anti-Trafficking Lessons from Association of Albanian Girls and Women

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