Slavery was a legal institution in America from the era of revolution in 1776 until its abolishment in 1865 after the definition of the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery and the slave trade in the United States mostly affected and oppressed the African and African American communities. It was introduced by Britain during the colonization period. The declaration of independence in the United States stated that all men are equal. However, this slogan did not apply to slaves as they were treated poorly and denied most human rights. Slaves were seen as commodities and part of the American economy, especially in the South. Slaves were mostly used as laborers in farms such as the tobacco and rice fields in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
Most American leaders, including Tomas Jefferson, supported and participated in the enslavement of African Americans. Eight out of the first twelve American presidents were slave owners. Slave abolition laws were introduced in the North shortly after the American Revolution in 1778. This was a gradual process, and some slave owners actually freed their slaves. In 1807, the congress banned slave importation. This was not well received, hence, it led to the increased cases of slave smuggling. By this time, the slaves comprised thirteen percent of the American population. In the south slave trade was encouraged by the growth of the cotton industry and the introduction of the cotton gin. This demand increased slave trade in the South, causing division in the United States, with the North being slave free and the South being a slave territory. The Southerners also tried to recruit some Western States, such as New Mexico, to be slave tolerant zones. However, after President Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, he was determined to abolish slave trade and slavery. He made changes and regulations prohibiting slavery, and this caused seven states to break from the confederacy. This was one of the main reasons that caused the civil war. The civil war in 1863 evidently ended slavery, and it was declared illegal in the United States following the introduction of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 (Foner, 2017) .
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
After the end of slavery, some systems experienced a gradual change. After the abolition of slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment, there came a period of Reconstruction. This era saw the introduction of the Fourteenth Amendment, which allowed former slaves to acquire American citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which allowed African American males the right to vote. The end of slavery also saw the rise of racism and the notion of white supremacists. It was around this time that the white supremacists' terror group Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was formed, and they terrorized African American leaders for over a decade (Pegram,2018) . The white citizens could not imagine having equal rights to African Americans and former slaves. The war against racism begun in 1871.
Discrimination and racism became rampant after the abolition of the slave trade. In one of Martin Luther King's speeches, Negros are not moving too fast, 1864, he stated that African Americans struggle and exist in poverty and misery. This is due to discrimination according to their color and race. They struggle to get employment opportunities, education security, and even basic amenities such as education and quality healthcare. In his I have a dream speech, Martin Luther King stated that after a hundred years of freedom. The Negro still lives with the chains of slavery, from generation to generation. It is essential to understand these systems of oppression in order to point out issues concerning modern-day slavery in America. It is also important to understand them so as to devise various strategies to curb racism and discrimination.
References
Foner, E. (2017). Abraham Lincoln, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the problem of freedom. Geo. JL & Pub. Pol'y , 15 , 59.
Pegram, T. R. (2018). The Ku Klux Klan, Labor, and the White Working Class during the 1920s. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , 17 (2), 373.
