African Immigrants in America
In 1619, the first African slaves were sold in the Jamestown colony. Slavery, however, was not new. In 1442, Portuguese ships took some Africans as slaves and the Spanish quickly followed their lead and began to trade slaves as cheap labor to the New World. The British followed suit in 1562 and by 1600 the Dutch and French were involved in buying and selling people.
Slavery was common during the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson had slaves on his plantation. In 1808, the importation of slaves from Africa was outlawed, but trading in slaves within America remained brisk. The South’s agricultural economy was based on slavery and in 1860 there were 3.5 million slaves in America, and their numbers continued to grow.
The end of the Civil War gave African-Americans the first chance to freely move around America. Many migrated to northern cities where industries might offer jobs, but many stayed in the South to farm their own land under the sharecropper system, a system that kept them poor.
Unable to find the social acceptance and financial opportunities that other immigrant groups found in America, African-Americans remained second-class citizens for many years. Unable to vote and often untaught in reading and writing, they were at the bottom of America’s social system.
The civil-rights and black-power movements of the 1950s and 1960s gave African-Americans new rights and a sense of identity. Some took African names of their ancestral lands from which their relatives had been taken as slaves. Some chose to return to Africa.
The racial riots of the 1960s — and, more recently, of 1992 — show that many African-Americans still do not feel they belong, or are wanted, in America. Nevertheless, more African-Americans are running for public office and winning government positions. Listed as America’s fourth largest ethnic group in the 1980 census, African-Americans plan to make a difference.