I Must Abolish All Forms of Involuntary Servitude.

(from Amazon.com)
Reviews
The author, Samuel Cotton,
January 26, 1999
Black American' Journey into African slavery today.

Hello:

My name is Samuel Cotton, and I am the author of Silent Terror. I am writing to thank you, as those suffering in the wretchedness of slavery thank you, for showing an interest in the plight of today's black slave.

The publishing of Silent Terror has been long awaited by the enslaved Africans of Mauritania--an Islamic Republic located in Northwest Africa. Long awaited, for it will mark the first time, that the slaves of Mauritania will have a voice in contemporary literature.

Silent Terror exposes the centuries old practice of buying, selling and breeding of black Africans by Arab-Berbers in a country that is 100% Muslim. It it, therefore, a story of how racial hatred supercedes religious brotherhood.

It is also my story, the story of an African-American's struggle to come to grips with the legacy of slavery and the brutal revelation that slavery continues to thrive in Africa today.

The work examines the problems encountered when an activist attempts to bring this terrible knowledge of contemporary slavery to the American public.

The story began for me as an investigative journalist working on a piece for the City Sun, a weekly black newspaper based in New York City. As I research my subject I stumbled across a research piece by Human Rights Watch/Africa which stated:

"The institution of slavery continues today in Mauritania, especially in the countryside.Tens of thousands of blacks are considered the property of their masters and are subjected entirely to their masters will.

They work long hours for no remuneration. They are denied access to education and do not enjoy the freedom to marry or to associate freely with other blacks. They escape servitude, not by exercising their "legal" rights, but mainly through escape. Ignorance of their rights, fear of recapture and the torture that often follows, and the lack of marketable skills in an impoverished country discourage a substantial number of slaves from trying to escape."

This data and a wealth of other credible sources of information would spur me on to write a series of essays and news articles that would create a controversy in the black community.
When the essays were published, they would anger the Nation of Islam and trigger a series of debates on radio and television with that organization. The NOI under Minister Louis Farrakhan stated that there was no slavery in Africa and that it was all a lie. The black Muslims stated that the charge of African slavery by Arab Moors was simply a Jewish plot to separate and divide the black and Arab community and stop the growth of Islam, particularly, in the black community.

To answer these charges I would travel to Africa and work undercover for 28 days conducting ethnographic research and creating a film and audio record of contemporary African slavery under the Arabs of Mauritania.

There in Mauritania, I would be transported back into the past. I would interview slaves, runaway slaves, anti-slavery leaders and free African abolitionists. I would be forced to come to grips with my African past, not in some nostalgic fantasy, but in all of stark and brutal reality.
Silent Terror captures, with interviews and photographs, that painful journey to Africa and the important events that transpired after my return to the United States.

Samuel Cotton

http://www.theblacklist.net/Slavery2day.htm