[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 15177]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE ONGOING BATTLE AGAINST SLAVERY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 19, 2006

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to praise the traveling 
exhibition created by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black 
Culture, a branch organization of the New York Public Library, in 
conjunction with the UNESCO Slave Route Project to mark the United 
Nation's General Assembly's resolution proclaiming 2004 as the 
International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its 
Abolition. To reach a wider audience the Schomburg Center has created 
versions in French, Portuguese, Spanish, as well as in English. The 
online version of the exhibition is available on the Schomburg Center 
website. (http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html)
  The exhibition, titled Lest We Forget: The Triumph Over Slavery, is a 
celebration of the extraordinary human capacity to overcome oppression 
and injustice. Its tour through Africa, the Caribbean, Central and 
South America and Europe, is a reminder of a heritage that binds people 
of all races and color, across national and religious boundaries.
  Lest We Forget shows us the images of downtrodden degraded people who 
were stripped of their humanity and culture who were forced to live 
their lives as mindless, agendaless pawns in vicious, all-powerful 
systems of human degradation. The transatlantic slave trade was brutal, 
vicious, denigrating and horrific. It is a representation of one of the 
most consistent assaults on human dignity and self-worth in the history 
of mankind.
  We see a different kind of slavery today. Guest-workers, lured from 
third world countries with false promises, are forced to work in 
hazardous work conditions with very little wages in countries where 
oftentimes they do not even speak the language. They have virtually no 
rights as foreign workers and are sometimes forbidden by law to form 
unions. These modern-day slaves have no recourse but to follow the 
directives of their employers to exploit their helplessness. The United 
Nations defines an enslaved person as one whose movement and decision-
making abilities are curtailed so that he/she does not have the ability 
to choose his employer. With this in mind, it is doubly important for 
us to recall the brutal reality of slavery and systematic degradation 
of human dignity; and take action in order to eliminate this modern-day 
slavery.
  I commend the Schomburg Center for creating this remarkable 
presentation, and the UNESCO for making it accessible across the globe. 
Their cooperation and collaboration has made the exhibition a 
resounding success, and I hope to see this cooperation repeated and 
expanded in finding the resolution to the problem of slavery in today's 
world.

                     Traveling With A Global Appeal

       To mark the United Nations International Year to 
     Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition in 
     2004. UNESCO commissioned the Schomburg Center to create a 
     traveling version of its exhibition Lest We Forget: The 
     Triumph Over Slavery. The exhibition highlighted the 
     extraordinary capacity of human beings to confront and 
     transcend oppression, and to overcome state-sanctioned 
     injustice.
       The traveling version of Lest We Forget has toured in 
     Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Europe. 
     Travelling to countries such as Cameroon, South Africa, Cape 
     Verde, Mali, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, The Bahamas, 
     Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Brazil, Sweden, France, Finland, 
     and Norway. To help ensure that the exhibition did indeed 
     reach a wider audience the Schomburg created versions in 
     English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
       Just as Lest We Forget tells a portion of the story about 
     people of the African Diaspora, so too does In Motion: The 
     African-American Migration Experience, which originally 
     opened at the Schomburg Center in February 2005. In Motion 
     traces 13 different migration patterns of African Americans 
     over 500 years. As part of the Schomburg Center's ever-
     expanding Traveling Exhibition Program, In Motion opened at 
     the Lyric Theater in the historic ``Overtown'' district of 
     Miami, Florida at the beginning of Black History Month.
       Miami Mayor Manny Diaz opened the exhibition with a 
     reception and Schomburg Center Chief Howard Dodson was on 
     hand for the unveiling. The exhibition's Miami host Dr. 
     Dorothy Fields, Founder of the Black Archives, History and 
     Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc, knew In Motion 
     would be perfect for her city. ``Miami is a city of many 
     people from so many different countries. As soon as you walk 
     in the information about the Haitian migration experience is 
     right there, strategically in the center [of the theater],'' 
     said Dr. Fields. ``In Motion: The African-American Migration 
     Experience explains that we are all different branches of the 
     same tree.''
       To guarantee that the exhibition would have a lasting 
     effect, Dr. Fields and her colleagues signed a contract with 
     the county to do a Black History bus tour, which began at the 
     Lyric Theater, this resulted in more than 9,000 visitors in 
     one month. And they even devoted the entire month of May to 
     bring school children to see and learn from the exhibition, 
     and offered two days of teacher workshops with In Motion 
     Project Content Manager Sylviane Diouf, so that educators 
     could prepare their students for the experience ahead of 
     time.
  In Motion is set to run at the Lyric Theater until the end of May, 
Miami's Haitian American Month, but Dr. Fields has confirmed that her 
organization has plans to expand on In Motion, by providing the 
Schomburg Center with primary sources on the African Diaspora in Miami 
to develop another exhibition.
       With traveling exhibitions like Lest We Forget and In 
     Motion, the resources of the Schomburg Center reach far 
     beyond its structure to educate and inspire scores of people 
     around the world.
       Traveling dates: Lest We Forget
       When: May 19-July 19, 2006.
       Where: Esmeraldas International Center for Afro-Amerindian 
     Cultural Diversity and Human Development, Esmeraldas, 
     Ecuador.
       Organizer: UNESCO Quito's Office.
       In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
       When: October 2, 2006-March 9, 2007.
       Where: National Heritage Museum, 33 Marrett Road, 
     Lexington, MA 02421
       For more information about the Traveling Exhibition 
     Program, please visit www.schomburgcenter.org, or contact Mei 
     TeiSing Smith at [email protected], or by calling (212) 491-
     2204.

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