Cultural Diversity Roster

Dr. Jacobs graduated from Rutgers University and received his Doctorate from Harvard in 1989. As a teenager, Dr. Jacobs was active in the civil rights movement, and attended Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963.

In 1993, Jacobs learned about the continuing existence of traditional slavery in North Africa and, with a group of African human rights activists, formed the American Anti-Slavery Group, which monitors and combats modern-day human bondage around the globe.

In 1994, Jacobs’s article in The New York Times broke the story of chattel slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. Since then, with help from volunteers across the United States, Jacobs has built a “new abolitionist” movement – among religious groups, on college campuses and in high schools. His work has been featured in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and The Boston Globe. He has also appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and CBS’s This Morning.

In 1996 and 1999, Dr. Jacobs testified before the House of Representatives on slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. In September of 1999, Dr. Jacobs met with Secretary of State Madeline Albright and encouraged her to end the Clinton Administration’s silence on the genocide, ethnic cleansing and slavery in Sudan.

In May 2000, Dr. Jacobs was appointed Director of The Sudan Campaign, a coalition of activist and rights groups calling for an end to slavery and slaughter in Africa’s largest nation. In September, he testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee alongside three survivors of slavery from around the world.

On September 18, 2000, the City of Boston and Coretta Scott King presented Dr. Jacobs with the Boston Freedom Award, recognizing his commitment to advancing Boston’s legacy of fighting for liberty. “Dr. Jacobs, I am personally inspired by your tireless dedication to alleviate the oppression of chattel slavery,” King stated. “Your efforts have given a powerful voice and new hope to the victims of this festering injustice.”

In April of 2001, Dr. Jacobs joined a slave redemption mission in Sudan that helped liberate over 2,900 enslaved women and children.

FRANCIS BOK

Francis Bok is a 22 year-old native of Southern Sudan. At the age of seven, he was captured and enslaved during an Arab militia raid on the village of Nymlal (outside Aweil) on May 15, 1986. Bok saw adults and children brutalized and killed all around him. He was strapped to a donkey and taken north to Kirio.

For ten years, he lived as the family slave to Giema Abdullah, forced to sleep with cattle, endure daily beatings and eat terrible food. Always called “abeed” (black slave), Bok was given an Arabic name – Dut Giema Abdullah – and forced to perform Islamic prayers.

In December of 1996, Bok escaped to the nearby town of Matari, where he was enslaved by local policemen for two months. But an Arab truck driver helped Bok escape and eventually to reach Khartoum, the capital. In Khartoum, Bok was arrested by the security forces and jailed for seven months.

After being released, Bok escaped to Cairo. In 1999, the United Nations resettled him in North Dakota. Bok is now an Associate at the American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston.

On May 23, 2000, Bok spoke out for the first time at a Capitol Hill ceremony with Senators and Congressmen, sharing his message: “We cannot rest until my people are free.” On September 18, 2000, Bok spoke alongside Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Boston Freedom Award ceremony.

On September 28, 2000, Bok became the first escaped slave to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in hearings on Sudan that were broadcast live on C-Span. Later that day, Bok met with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and urged her to take action against slavery. On December 4, 2000, he headlined a panel discussion on slavery at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Bok has been featured in The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor and dozens of other newspapers, and has appeared on numerous radio and TV shows, including Black Entertainment Television.