By JUDGE BILL HAWKINS

To more fully recognize the true meaning of Juneteenth and the end of slavery in some of the last reaches of the United States, it is worth knowing the full geographic extent of slavery and how the practice ended.

Slavery was widely practiced in the ancient world in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the Americas and Africa. Most world religions, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches, as well as indigenous peoples around the world have struggled with slavery, capturing and enslaving each other for centuries in the Mediterranean countries, Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, India, the Americas, and Europe.

The Atlantic Slave Trade developed in the 1500s to the 1800s, bringing that form of slavery to the Americas, North and South. The first known country to abolish slavery was Denmark, in 1792. France abolished slavery domestically two years later. Haiti, followed suit in 1804, the same year the practice ended in most of the northern United States.

The United Kingdom outlawed the practice in 1807 domestically, and in its colonies other than India in 1837. The French colonies ended the practice in 1848. India continued the practice until 1861.

Slavery was abolished in the United States by virtue of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the end of the Civil War in 1865. By June 19, 1865 the word finally reached Galveston Bay, Texas, and the 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas were declared free. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect on Dec. 18, 1865, officially abolishing slavery within the United States of America.

Less well known is the fact that slavery continued to exist in Alaska — which did not become a state in 1959 — until 1903. Finally, even though Hawaii also did not become a state until 1959, the Hawaiian Islands had abolished slavery more than a hundred years earlier in 1852.

Brazil continued to operate as a slave state until 1888. In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, abolishing slavery among its member nations. And the last nation to declare slavery abolished was Mauritania in 1981.

Sadly, the practice of human trafficking continues to this day. That term is defined by the United Nations to include domestic servitude, sex trafficking, forced labor, bonded labor, child labor and forced marriage.

So as we celebrate Juneteenth, we can reflect on where we are as a species, how far we have come and how far we still have to go.

Bill Hawkins is an elected Island County District Court judge and the former county prosecutor.