ARIZONA, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The kids ran circles around the old brick chimney, yelling “You’re it,” at one another until they tired and headed back to the front porch of the crumbling mansion—but if the children had known the truth about the chimney in the middle of that Claiborne Parish field, would they have used it as the base in their game of tag?
And if you learn the truth about that old chimney, will it change the way you feel about a major source of human trafficking?
The truth is that child labor existed in northwest Louisiana long before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, arriving in the region well before the late 1800s when the first known factory in north Louisiana was built in Arizona.
That’s Arizona, Louisiana, for those who aren’t familiar with Claiborne Parish history.
But the history of rural Claiborne Parish is further proof that human trafficking is nothing new to any region of Louisiana.
“In 1900, 25,000 of the nearly 100,000 textile workers in the South were children under 16. By 1904, overall employment of children had increased to 50,000, with 20,000 children under 12 employed,” according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (USBLS). “As one mill owner remarked, working 12-hour days, 6 days a week left children ‘no time to spend in idleness or various amusements.’”
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