The Joy of Defiance

Born free, as free as the wind blows. As free as the grass grows. Born free to follow your heart.

Remember that song? Here you will find the full lyrics. Andy Williams sang it and made it famous. John Barry wrote the music, Don Black the lyrics. It was written for the movie of the same name (“Born Free”) in 1966.

Pretty powerful, eh? And so very true. The movie is about a lion taken into captivity, and then ultimately released again into the wild, because it was “born free.” And must stay free. The movie could have just as well been about human beings. We, too, are born free, and are supposed to “stay free,” but many times throughout human history we have not been free.

We have in our memory the more common bouts with abject slavery in the United States before 1864, but there has been slavery everywhere in the world throughout time. And it is common knowledge that there are currently more slaves in the world than there were at the height of the intercontinental slave trade of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.