A group of students who are passionately committed to ending modern-day slavery is hosting the Seventh Annual Abolitionist Fair: The Struggle for Freedom at the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC)’s Metropolitan Learning Center (MLC) on Wednesday, April 4. MLC students will be joined by other activists and students from anti-slavery groups such as the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and Free the Slaves, the largest anti-slavery organization in the United States. The event will run from 9:00 a.m. to noon and will feature James Brewer Stewart, the founder of Historians Against Slavery. Mr. Stewart will speak to the students at 11:00 am about his work to end human trafficking.

The Abolitionist Fair began at MLC eight years ago when a group of 9th grade U.S. History students were studying Connecticut’s complicity in slavery in the 1800s. After criticizing Northerners for tacitly supporting Southern slavery at that time, the students read an article about how our society is unwittingly complicit in modern-day slavery.

“Students were horrified to learn that slavery still exists and furthermore that their buying habits often support it,” explained Wendy Nelson-Kauffman, a teacher a MLC and the program’s advisor. The students decided to fight this modern injustice by creating a group called SASS – Student Abolitionists Stopping Slavery.

The Abolitionist Fair has been extremely successful for six years running, and this year’s fair will prove no exception. Approximately 100 students have prepared multimedia displays, interactive games, dance routines and other projects to educate students from around the community about the horrors of modern-day slavery and what they can do to end it. Some of the interactive games include “The Price is Right” with slave-made products, “Are You Smarter than a SASS member,” “Wheel of Fortune” and a human board game in which participants walk the path to free a slave. Throughout the fair, students in costume will roam as past and current slaves as a stark reminder of the harsh and widespread reality of slavery.

“I am constantly humbled and inspired by the dedication of these teens to make our world a better place,” Nelson Kauffman says of the group.

The SASS students meet weekly after classes to discuss this topic and how to raise awareness. In the past eight years, SASS members have presented their work against slavery to countless local high schools and churches, as well as at international conferences such as the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade conference at Yale University, the iEARN conference in Senegal, Africa, the Conference on Criminal Trafficking and Slavery at the University of Illinois, and at a United Nations subcommittee meeting in New York.

Last Year's SASS members