Slavery, Reparation and Restorative Justice

Research Proposal on Slavery , Reparation and Restorative Justice

Pieces of the Past : Breaking the Unconscious Connection to Violence

1 . Background

Barely two hundred years ago , slavery was common and accepted in the countries of Europe as well as in North America . The hunting ground was in an overwhelming majority of cases , the African continent . White slave traders , sometimes helped by local Africans , plundered the land for men and women , who were taken away in captivity to work on plantations farms and town building projects for white masters in North America , the

Caribbean islands and other European colonies

Slavery and its ' attendant evils rank right at the top of the list on the worst horrors perpetrated by humankind . There are many who believe that the enormity of the crime outweighs the Jewish holocaust and the dropping of the atom bomb . The only comparable evil the world has seen is the persecution of women , the causes of which , however , are very different

The abolition of slavery took place over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries , from most parts of the world . The 1815 Declaration Relative to the Universal Abolition of the Slave Trade 6 (the 1815 Declaration ) was the first international instrument to condemn it . The abolitionist movement began as an effort to stop the Atlantic slave trade and to free slaves in the colonies of European countries and in the United States . A large number of agreements dating from the early nineteenth century , both multilateral and bilateral , contain provisions prohibiting such practices in times of war and peace . It has been estimated that between 1815 and 1957 some 300 international agreements were implemented to suppress slavery . HYPERLINK "http /www .questia .com /PM .qst ?a o d 4 (Weissbrodt Dottridge 2002 ,

. 3

Greater interest has naturally been taken in American slavery for it was far more extensive and lasted longer . There were many thousands of slave holding families in the US at the time of the civil war . The abolition of slavery divided American society right down the middle and culminated in a great civil war in which thousands of Americans lost their lives .Slavery has been defined as the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised ' HYPERLINK "http /www .questia .com /PM .qst ?a o d 5 (Weissbrodt Dottridge , 2002 ,

. 4 . Tragically , this ownership included the prerogative to behave violently with one 's slaves and it can be said with certainty that the history of slavery in the US would not have been so much of a slur on the white people but for the continuous and horrific violence perpetrated upon the slaves by their white masters

Even after the formal abolition of slavery , violence continued and even escalated against African-Americans in the US . Lynching , an extreme form of mob violence which took its ' cue from vigilantism and found easy acceptance , was used with telling effect . From the 1880s mob violence reflected white America 's...