Kenneth Morris Jr. was busy running a successful marketing and entertainment company when he happened to see a magazine article about modern-day slavery that led him to make a major life change.
Morris is not only the great-great-great-grandson of abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass but also the great-great grandson of early civil rights pioneer Booker T. Washington. Both men were born into slavery.
It was Morris’ maternal grandmother, Nettie Hancock Washington, the granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, who formed the ancestral link between the two families when she married Frederick Douglass III.
Ever since Morris could read about their stories in books, he said, both Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington cast “huge shadows” over his life like giant mythical figures.
For years, Morris said, the knowledge of his roots “just sort of hung in the background” while he devoted his days to building up his business, C&A Marketing in Orange County.
It took the article about human trafficking and modern-day slavery he read in the National Geographic in 2003 to stir up a long-simmering obligation he says he had always felt toward his formidable forefathers but had never acted on.
“The headline on that article was, ‘Twenty-first Century Slaves,’ and I’m just shocked by what I read — that slavery still exists everywhere around world, including here in United States,” Morris said in an interview last week at California State University Channel Islands.
“If you look at human trafficking enforcement today, the focus is always about reacting after the crime has been committed, after somebody has been victimized: rescue, restore, rehabilitation. We certainly believe there’s a need to do that, but there has been very little focus on preventing this from happening in the first place,” the 54-year-old Orange County resident said before speaking to CSUCI students Nov. 18.
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