- affected by slavery in the 16th-19th century.

The first black slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619. They still had the hope to buy themselves off and be treated like white laborers.

Besides at that time there was no specified law for the slave system. However, the increasing demand of tabaco and rice on the world market effected that the landlords aggravated and legalized the status of slavery. The blacks were forced to lifelong bondage and their children became slaves by birth.

Slaves weren‘t respected as humans.

There were 2 kinds of slaves: the house- and the fieldslaves.

The first ones, the houseslaves, were so-called nobility slaves because they were treated better than fieldslaves.

Fieldslaves lived in cabins of 1 room with 5 or 6 persons. Everything happened in

there: birth, illness, death.

The black children weren’t reared by their mothers simply because they had to work

the whole time. The black children were allowed to play with the white children until their 6th birthday. Then they were forced to work until their death.

And at the slightest mistake they were punished with whips.

At auctions the slaves were asked by interested people about their skills and they had to show their teeth. Some were even undressed and viewed, because, if a slave had whippings for example, he or she was said to be rebellious and was no more interesting for customers.

Often whole families were torne apart there.

After 3 or 4 years most fieldslaves were sorted out because they weren’t fit to work anymore longer.

The owners had the power to decide on their slaves' lives.

Then in 1807 the import of slaves by US citizens became illegally, yet the practice continued because of increasing demands.

Between 1807 and 1868 ca. 300 000 blacks were illegal imported.

In this time the national trade boomed and even more and more nigger breed was practiced.

the nigger breed fits the breed of horses and mules. Further south they breeded niggers both for the market and for personal use. The “planters” ordered their black girls and women, no matter if married or not, to bear children and the women who didn’t bear were sold.

The highest number of slaves, 4 million, was acquired in 1860. Half of this number lived in the South of the US because in the South there were the most plantations, where the fieldslaves had to work.

By the way, the northern and the southern states had different views of the question of slavery. As the slaveholders from the South thought that slavery was the basis of wealth, freedom and economic growth, the northern states were of the opinion that slavery did not correspond with the basic ideals of the republic.

In the northern states slavery was finally abolished, but this process lasted until 1827.

Abraham Lincoln, who was a supporter of the anti-slavery-movement and who became President of the United States in 1860, was one of the reasons why the Confederate States of America began the Civil War (1861-1865). In this war 500,000 people died.

Many Americans wanted to stop slavery step by step, others wanted to do away with slavery without any compromise.

Important statesmen from the development of the United States like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin etc considered slavery as bad and contradictory to the principles of the freedom declaration.

The "Emancipation Proclamation" of Abraham Lincoln was published in 1863 (between the American Civil War) and released all slaves.

The “Emancipation Proclamation” is one of the best-known constitution documents of the USA.

One big success for the civil rights movement was the demolition of Brown for Bread by the Supreme Court. It was one part of a long-term strategy to strike down the Jim Crow segregation. This had the effect that blacks weren’t discriminated against in public education, public transportation, employment and housing. The movement reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as Whitney Young, Roy Wilkens and Martin Luther King, jr.