Modern Slavery Museum Is an Eerie Reminder of How Little We've Progressed

The Modern-day Slavery Museum will not poach visitors from Disneyworld, that's for sure. But it will serve as a forceful reminder that slavery is far from extinct.



n textbooks across the country, students are still taught that slavery in the United States ended with the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

But the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) knows better, and its Modern-Day Slavery Museum is traveling throughout Florida to drive that point home -- that slavery persists in the agriculture fields of the state right up through this very day.

The Village Voice recently described the significance of the museum this way: "Though it's unlikely to compete for crowds with Disneyworld, the Modern-Day Slavery Museum may be Florida's most important new attraction."

The bulk of the museum is housed inside of a 24-foot box truck -- a replica of the one used by the Navarrete family in Immokalee to hold twelve farmworkers captive from 2005 to 2007. The workers were beaten, chained and imprisoned inside the truck, and forced to urinate and defecate in the corners. US Attorney Doug Molloy called the operation "slavery, plain and simple."

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