Timothy Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), has dedicated his life to fighting human trafficking. His new nonfiction book, “Slave Stealers: True Accounts Of Slave Rescues Then and Now,” presents the harrowing stories of several innocent men, women, and children, some from the not-so-distant past and some here in the present, all rescued from wicked enemies.
One of the accounts presented in the book focuses on the plight of Harriet Jacobs, a slave living in the antebellum South. Ballard quotes from her autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” to help explain the horrors she went through. She works under a cruel master who terrorizes her and her daughter and son. After her children are freed by a kind-hearted friend, she manages to escape but is forced to live in a virtual crawlspace for seven years.
Though her life is marked by struggle and hardship, she relies on the kindness of friends, family, and total strangers in order to escape her ordeal and eventually make her way to the Underground Railroad.
Ballard also describes his own journey to founding OUR. Though he had a stable job with the government, he encountered something that changed his life. After meeting a parent who lost his children to human traffickers in 2011 in Haiti, Ballard decided he could no longer sit idly by and just listen to more heartbreaking stories.
He formed the organization OUR to assist in developing strategies for rescues. His team has led operations in South America, Asia, and even in North America, helping dozens of children escape from slavery and return home.
The stories in the book are startling to read, but they are all stories that need to be heard. Ballard tells both the historical and more modern details in a way that grips your heart. From rescue after rescue, the stories are inspirational and well told.
“What (do they) know of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? Of young girls dragged down into moral filth? Of pools of blood around the whipping post? I was resolved that I would foil my master and save my children or I would perish in the attempt.” – Harriet Jacobs, ILSG, 1861
To learn more about OUR, visit their website.