Free Republic

By making explicit or implicit connections between the Underground Railroad and Tubman's trips, and by depicting Tubman as an Underground Railroad superstar, the textbooks imply that the paramount purpose of the Underground Railroad was to launch slave-stealing expeditions. That is false. The Underground Railroad was not in the business of staging raids, and Tubman's excursions were idiosyncrasies at best. (...) The salient points that occur again and again in the textbooks' accounts of Tubman -- such as the claim that she made nineteen trips to liberate slaves, and the claim that slave-owners put a huge price on her head --...

Taxes may be as certain as death, but they've changed a lot. Over the centuries, governments have levied taxes on everything from facial hair to the right to cover up—and officials accepted payments of beers, beds, and even broomsticks. Here, from history, are a few taxes we’re glad to not have to pay anymore: Rome's Toilet Tax Ancient Romans valued urine for its ammonia content. They found the natural enemy of dirt and grease valuable for laundering clothes and even whitening teeth. And like all valuable products, there was a scheme to tax it. Emperor Vespasian (r. A.D. 69-79) earned...

Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.

<p>SAN DIEGO — A handwritten note asking a nurse for help has led to labor trafficking charges against an Iraqi couple who are accused of forcing an Indonesian housekeeper to work without pay in their El Cajon apartment.</p> <p>Her rescue a few days later is the first time in more than five years the woman, referred to in court documents only as W.M., has been free of indentured servitude, authorities said Friday.</p>

During Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign visit to Liberty University, he told the students that our nation was created on racist principles. Students at a Christian-based university, such as Liberty, do not often hear the founders-as-racists argument. But it is featured at many other universities, as well as primary and secondary schools. Most often, the hate-America teachings are centered on the fact that slavery is a part of our history. What is left untaught is: Slavery was a routine part of human history. Blacks were the last people to be enslaved. Plus, our Founding Fathers struggled mightily over the issue of...

Bernie Sanders committed tonight to formally apologizing for slavery on behalf of the United States if he becomes president. Sanders told heavily black audience that Tindley Temple United Methodist Church, 'There's nothing that anybody can do to undo the deaths and misery, how many people we don't even know who died on the way over here in the ships.' But the United States has to make an attempt to 'wipe the slate clean' by acknowledging the truth, he said after an audience member asked him point blank if he'd offer a presidential-level apology and he said, 'Yes.' And while the...

Leonard Pitts is trying. But he just can’t seem to write coherently on the issue of abortion. The reason for his incoherence is that he fails to understand that the issue boils down to two questions: “Is the unborn human?” and “What gives humans value?” Had he properly framed the issue he would not have written such an incoherent defense of abortion rights in a recent nationally syndicated column titled “Can You Be Pro Choice and Anti Abortion?” Pitts uses a tactic employed by many in the pro-choice movement. He denounces the pro-life tactic of displaying pictures of dismembered fetuses...

A Yazidi sex slave who was raped three times a day for over 16 month by various Islamic State fighters detailed in a recent interview how she was bought and sold by eight different jihadis and how the group sold off over 800 Yazidi girls inside a Raqqa "meat market."In an interview with The Daily Mail, 20-year-old Khalida, who was captured by the militant group in Iraq in August 2014, explained how she and her family were attempting to escape from the wrath of IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) when a Muslim neighbor outed them as un-believers when...

Recently, social media was up in arms when Marc Andreessen made an out-of-order comment on his portfolio company's failure to implement FreeBasics in India. The 1B Indian population was "offended" and lashed out in various outbursts. We pride ourselves in being free and open. On another note, we seem to be completely blind to some glaring inside issues in the India IT services industry and how it grinds the brightest of brains into slave-level drudgery. The biggest manifestation of this modern-day slavery is the H1B Visa game played by the large multi-billion dollar firms.On April 1, 2015, the USCIS received...

Harvard University is retiring the official shield of its law school following complaints over its ties to an 18th-century slaveholder. […] The shield was approved in 1937 and depicts three bundles of wheat. It’s modeled after the family crest of slaveholder Isaac Royall Jr., who donated his estate to create the first law professorship at Harvard. Royall inherited his estate and many slaves from his father, a slaveholder who was known for his cruelty. …

DENVER -- Denver is one of seven finalists for the country’s first ever “Smart City” and a $50 million prize. The “Smart City” challenge will choose one city to define what it means to be a “Smart City” and become the country’s first city to fully integrate innovative technologies – self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors – into their transportation network. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced Denver along with Austin, Texas, Columbus, Ohio, Kansas City, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco as the finalists. The U.S. Department of Transportation has pledged up to $40 million and...

On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dred Scott case, which had a direct impact on the coming of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s presidency four years later. The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford was one of the most controversial decisions in the court’s history. At the time, the Supreme Court’s majority came from pro-slavery states or had connections to pro-slavery presidents. The case had been in the court system for more than a decade. Scott had been born into slavery in 1795. In subsequent years, he lived in two parts of...

In Courtland Milloy's "Washington's birthday got spotlight right: On his slaves," the intrepid race-scribbler fails to practice the ancient wisdom in the Latin phrase De mortuis nihil nisi bonum – "of the dead [say] nothing but good." Last Monday, on what would have been George Washington's 284th birthday, Milloy visited our first president's home, Mount Vernon.  And unlike the rest of us, who embrace the everyday tolerances of the 21st century such as generations of accepted interracial marriage – and newly established gay nuptials – only Mr. Milloy is surprised that the slaves' contributions are honored with a special...

President Barack Obama signed a bill Wednesday that includes a provision banning U.S. imports of fish caught by slaves in Southeast Asia, gold mined by children in Africa and garments sewn by abused women in Bangladesh, closing a loophole in an 85-year-old tariff law that has failed to keep products of forced and child labor out of America. An expose by The Associated Press last year found Thai companies ship seafood to the U.S. that was caught and processed by trapped and enslaved workers. As a result of the reports, more than 2,000 trapped fishermen have been rescued, more than...

We can ascend into freedom. But we must engage in local politics. Get involved and hold on--fiercely In the 1600s David Hitchborn migrated to America and spent his life in servitude. Within four generations, the family became free property holders, business owners and respected burghers. By 1734, David’s great-great grandson, patriot Paul Revere was born into the influential Boston family. This is the classic American saga of the rise from serfdom to freedom. Yet today, American freedom is in reverse. The choices bred from our forebears’ sacrifices are swirling down a cultural cesspit of renewed servitude. From Wilson’s progressivism and...

In May, the History Channel will air its remake of Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of An American Family. Unsurprisingly, the advertising for the broadcast fails to mention that Roots is a fake, and a fake of the first order. First of all, the book upon which the successful mini-series was based was actually authored by Murray Fisher, Alex Haley's editor from Playboy magazine. Secondly, Roots wasn't just ghost-written: it was plagiarized: In 1978, Judge Robert Ward concluded that Haley had stolen the idea for Roots from Harry Courlander, the white man who authored The African. Courlander charged Haley with...

Scott Killerud was about to throw away a mailing about the 2016 enrollment period for MNsure last November when something caught his eye. "Just as I was going to drop it in the trash, I was like - wait a second. What did I just read?" the Pine County farmer said.

By global standards, the poor of the U.S. are fantastically rich, yet they die sooner than the poor of other lands. Again, look at the poorest part of Baltimore. In 2010 the median household income here was $17,000, whereas the median in India was $5,150 after adjusting for purchasing power. Yet men in this part of Baltimore have a shorter life expectancy--63 years--than the Indian average of just more than 65 years. These Americans have more than triple the median purchasing power of Indians and yet have nearly two years less to live. The U.S. problem is not limited to...

There are more slaves today than at any time in human history, reported Benjamin Skinner, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. An estimated 27 million people in the world are forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence, in forced marriages, in sex-trafficking and prostitution.

A US judge ordered the Qatar military officer and his wife to be expelled immediately after he heard how the two servants were forced to live in squalor while they enjoyed the lap of luxury in their upscale San Antonio home. Hassan al-Homoud, 46, who received military training at San Antonio's Camp Bullis, and his wife, Zainab al-Hosani, a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, pleaded guilty to federal charges in December. District Judge Orlando Garcia said he had hoped to hand down a harsher sentence than deportation in the case, since engaging in forced labour is a crime punishable...