Ethnic Groups and Discrimination - African American

Ethnic Groups and Discrimination - African American

Ethnic groups and Discrimination

Ethnic groups and Discrimination
Yolanda Sellers
ETH/125
August 8, 2010
Ellen Kang

Ethnic groups and Discrimination 2

The ethnic group I belong to is African American. Black history in America begins with the first arrival of Africans on American shores in the form of slavery. The enslavement of Africans began in the Americas in the early 1500s, with slaves arriving on Caribbean shores in the hands of Portuguese and Spanish slave traders. However, slaves did not come to North America until 1619, when a Dutch ship carrying 20 African slaves from the Caribbean landed in Jamestown, Virginia (Ciment, 2001). The 20 slaves were quickly sold off to local tobacco farmers, although it is unclear whether their status remained as slaves or if they were a type of indentured servant with the possibility of future freedom. The African population in the colony remained quite small for the next 50 years as the laws and regulations regarding slavery were put into place. But by 1700, the population of enslaved Africans in Virginia had ballooned to about 20,000 (ibid). Slaves were beaten badly by their masters. Slavery lasted about 40 years or more. As casualties mounted in the first year of the war, public opinion began to sway toward the side of abolitionism, and on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the historic Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in Confederate-held territories forever free as of January 1, 1863 (Foner, 2005). While the proclamation actually freed very few slaves, it forever changed the meaning of the war toward a mission to abolish slavery.
Did we face prejudice, segregation, and racism? For many years we faced these discriminations. In most states this still exist. Most of these issues occur because of skin color. The South was ruled by a series of laws called the Jim Crow laws that mandated...

Similar Essays