Child slavery refers to the slavery of children below the age of majority. Many children have been sold into slavery in the past for their family to repay debts or crimes or earn some money if the family were short of cash.
These children were often considered to be the property of the slave owner and were often subjected to the same treatment as other slaves on the plantation. Many of these children were born into slavery and had no legal rights, as they were not recognized as the legitimate children of their fathers.
The risk of sale in the international slave trade peaked between the ages of fifteen and twenty five, but the vulnerability of being sold began as early as age eight and certainly by the age of ten, when enslaved children could work competently on the fields.
It is estimated that most trafficking cases occur in Asia, particularly across the Greater Mekong region of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
Dec 18, 1865 CE: Slavery is Abolished. On December 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment was adopted as part of the United States Constitution. The amendment officially abolished slavery, and immediately freed more than 100,000 enslaved people, from Kentucky to Delaware.
Slave children received harsh punishments, not dissimilar from those meted out to adults. They might be whipped or even required to swallow worms they failed to pick off of cotton or tobacco plants. During adolescence, a majority of slave youth were sold or hired away.
Daniel Smith, who was believed to be the last surviving child of an enslaved person, and who over a long and eventful life witnessed firsthand many of the central moments of the African American experience, died on Oct. 19 in Washington.
About 8 percent of Chinese children between 10 and 15-years old work as child laborers. Children from rural areas are more likely to be child laborers. Farms need laborers and children are inexpensive to employ. A child laborer in China is any employee under 16 years.
Slave children, under their parents and masters, lived in fear of punishment and isolation. Though circumstances widely varied, they often worked in fields with adults, tended animals, cleaned and served in their owners' houses, and took care of younger children while their parents were working.
1 in 4 of all victims of trafficking are children involved in forced labor. As many as 1.2 million children are being trafficked every year. The children who are trafficked often work as slaves on farms, mines and at industrial factories.
Weekly food rations -- usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour -- were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves' cabins.
Historical studies suggest that child work was widespread in Europe and North America in the 19th century, but declined very rapidly at the turn of the 20th century.
When Washington's father Augustine died in 1743, George Washington inherited enslaved people at the early age of eleven. In his will, Augustine left his son the 280-acre family farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia. In addition, Washington was willed ten enslaved people.
However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 enslaved African ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista.
This National Public Radio article reports on the life and success of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964), an American author, educator, prominent scholar, and one of the first black women to earn a doctoral degree in United States history.
Whipping, a common form of slave punishment, demanded the removal of clothing. For the female slave, this generally meant disrobing down to the waist. Although her state of half dress allowed the woman some modesty, it also exposed her naked breasts to all eyes.
Enslaved people were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, rape, and imprisonment.
During the winter, slaves toiled for around eight hours each day, while in the summer the workday might have been as long as fourteen hours.
Slavery was finally abolished in 1848 in french colonies.
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
12 Years a Slave, American dramatic film, released in 2013, that impressed critics and audiences with its harrowing depiction of slavery in the antebellum South.