[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. ____________________