Author and former Sudanese slave Francis Bok will discuss his personal experience and efforts to raise awareness about slavery around the world during a Liberal Arts Forum lecture at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 20 in the Koury Center, located on the Elon University campus. Bok’s lecture is free and open to the public.
Bok is the author of “Escape from Slavery: The True Story of my Ten Years in Captivity—and my Journey to Freedom in America,” Elon’s 2005-2006 common reading. Bok was 7 years old when he was captured and enslaved during an Arab militia raid on the Sudanese village of Mymlal in 1986. For ten years, he served as a slave to an Arab family and received daily beatings while being forced to eat rotten food and sleep with cattle. He eventually escaped and resettled in the United States in 1999 with the help of the United Nations.
Bok was the first escaped slave to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in September 2000 and was invited to the White House for the Sudan Peace Act signing ceremony in 2002. He chaired a panel on slavery at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has spoken at numerous colleges and universities.
His story has been told by national media outlets, including National Public Radio, Black Entertainment Television (BET), The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Boston, where he is an associate at the American Anti-Slavery Group. He was honored as a “Hero Among Us” by the Boston Celtics and carried the Olympic torch in 2001 on its journey across the United States before the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
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