A series of failures for Americans began with the emergence of slavery in the USA. The transatlantic slave trade started due to the expansion of Europe’s colonies worldwide and a shortage of labor. Aboriginals died from diseases imported from the Old World; colonizers died from local ailments. On the other hand, Africans were ideally suited: they were resistant to tropical diseases and accustomed to the climate of these latitudes, had experience in agricultural work, and were physically strong. In the southern states of the United States, blacks fell into slave conditions. They worked on plantations and mines, extracting coal, molasses, cotton, sugar, tobacco, and producing rum.
On September 22, 1862, US President Abraham Lincoln issued a Declaration of Emancipation, which stated that blacks living on Confederate lands were freed from slavery. This decision changed the nature of the Civil War, making its main goal the complete abolition of slavery in America (Thomas, Casper, 2019). But by the mid-1870s, outright racists from the Democratic Party came to power in many states, especially in the south. They were helped by the stock market crash of 1873, which the ruling Republicans badly handled (Craemer, 2018). The new authorities of the southern states adopted laws to consolidate racial segregation, which created economic, social, political, and educational problems for blacks.
Currently, blacks in the United States formally have the same rights as whites. The triumph of this right is the election in 2008 of US President Barack Obama, the first black man in this post. However, it is impossible to talk about the complete eradication of racism in the country. In 2006, in his report for the Civil Rights Project, Harvard University professor Harry Garfield noted that the level of racial segregation in society had returned to the level of the 1960s (Beckert, 2021). To protect their rights, African Americans are creating new social movements. The most famous of them is Black Lives Matter. The campaign does not have a clear hierarchy and acts situationally but has become one of the most influential organizations to protect the rights of African Americans.
References
Beckert, S. (2021). Revisiting Europe and slavery. Slavery & Abolition, 42(1), 165-178. Web.
Craemer, T. (2018). International reparations for slavery and the slave trade. Journal of Black Studies, 49(7), 694-713. Web.
Thomas, S. B., & Casper, E. (2019). The burdens of race and history on black people’s health 400 Years after Jamestown. Web.