GUEST Penguin Egg said, in part:

The point I am making is that slavery was 400 years ago

Not so. Slavery is going on MANY places in the world, today. Not just "way off in Africa and Asia", but in the "Western World" (like the US, the UK, France, and elsewhere). The UN occasionally gets spastic about it, but little or nothing is done.

And yes, Mr. Hawkins's famous forbear was 400 years ago, but that was not the beginning and certainly not the end of slavery. Sir John Hawkins was a mere incident along the way.

If you care to modify your comment to "State-sanctioned slavery in Europe and the United States was ended about 150 years ago" you'd be close to right. Even then, there are governments today that claim to oppose slavery but turn a blind eye to slavery going on in their own countries.

Dave Oesterreich