slavery

Boston has been known as a stop along the Underground Railroad, a place for enslaved people from the South to find safety in free states. A local author’s new bestselling book tells the story of one couple’s incredible escape from Georgia to Beacon Hill. But even she had not been inside the home where they stayed or seen the...

Boston was a known stop along the Underground Railroad, a place for enslaved people from the South to find safety.

It’s a true American love story most of us have not read in our history books: how an enslaved couple escapes Macon, Georgia, and finds freedom in Boston. That’s the story of “Master Slave Husband Wife,” by Cambridge native Ilyon Woo. The historical narrative follows Ellen Craft, whose biological father and first enslaver is white, and William Craft. In...

Ellen and William Craft escaped the South and found freedom in Boston; 175 years later, local author Ilyon Woo is telling their story.

A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window showing a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women has been rediscovered in a Rhode Island church.

Voters in five states went to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to ban slavery and forced prison labor.

Voters approved ballot measures that will change their state constitutions to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime.

Nearly 20 states have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.

A question before Vermont voters this election season may at first sound surprising: should slavery and indentured servitude, in any form, be prohibited?  Technically, the Vermont Constitution from the late 1700s allowed for slavery in certain cases. While the faded, elegant cursive on the document declared all persons “are born equally free,” it also provided exemptions that meant slavery could...

A bronze statue of an enslaved woman from Massachusetts who went to court to win her freedom in 1781 has been unveiled in the Berkshires. The statue of Elizabeth Freeman was unveiled Sunday during a ceremony in Sheffield that was expected to attract about 200 people. Freeman was inspired to sue for her freedom by the words of the Sheffield...

A U.N. investigator says contemporary forms of slavery are widely practiced around the world, including forced labor for China’s Uyghur minority.

Public schools in Texas would describe slavery to second graders as “involuntary relocation” under new social studies standards proposed to the state’s education board.

A Connecticut woman who says she’s descended from enslaved people portrayed in widely-published, historical photos owned by Harvard can sue the Ivy League university for emotional distress, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Thursday. The state’s Supreme Judicial Court partly vacated a lower court ruling that dismissed a complaint from Tamara Lanier over photos she says depict her enslaved ancestors. The...

As we celebrate Juneteenth this weekend, commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S., activists in Vermont say there is still more work to do. The Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and Vermont Interfaith Action launched a campaign Friday which asks voters to approve an amendment to the state constitution. The amendment would formally abolish all forms of slavery — by…

Harvard University still has the remains of at least 19 people who were likely enslaved and nearly 7,000 Native Americans, according to the school’s newspaper.

Harvard University is vowing to spend $100 million to research and atone for its extensive ties with slavery, the school’s president announced Tuesday, with plans to identify and support the descendants of enslaved people who labored at the Ivy League campus. President Lawrence Bacow announced the funding as Harvard released a new report detailing many ways the college benefited from…

Historians estimate about 1,000 slave ships wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean during the slave trade, but fewer than 10 of the wrecks have been found and documented. “There is just a whole part of our history…that is missing. I think that those stories deserve to be told,” says Tara Roberts. She and the group Diving With a Purpose go looking...

For African Americans, attempts to trace ancestral lines through the slave trade can lead to dead ends and heartbreak. However, with the help of an African Ancestry DNA test, NBCLX’s Brittney Williams was able to discover her roots in Africa — and find a new sense of community and self.