RARE Document 1860 Estate Inheritance Slaves Houston Co Georgia Black Americana

Estate Inheritance of 5 Slaves. Houston / Upson County, Georgia. For offer: a very nice piece of Black Americana history!

Fresh from a prominent estate in Upstate NY. Never offered on the market until now. Vintage, Old, Original, Antique, NOT a Reproduction - Guaranteed! This important piece of history came from well-known collector, John B.

Parks, of Savannah, who acquired a large amount of documents in the early 1970s. Houston County, but Upson County written on back as well. Documents for Estate of Drury / Drewry Gilbert, Thomas Gilbert and J.

Five negroes - Dolly, a woman and her children Caroline and Mary, and Martha and her child John, being distribution shares of the negroes of said estate. Ray, Sarah Green, Martha and Amanda Goff, and others.

Signed on reverse by Justice of the Peace B. If you collect 19th century American history, Americana advertisement ad, pre Civil War, African American culture, slavery, State of Ga. This is a treasure you will not see again! Add this to your image or paper / ephemera collection.

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans[3]) are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. [4][5] The term typically refers to descendants of enslaved black people who are from the United States. [6][7] As a compound adjective, the term is usually hyphenated as African-American.

Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States (after White Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans). [10] Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. [11][12] On average, African Americans are of West/Central African and European descent, and some also have Native American ancestry. [13] According to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities (95%).

[14] Immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. African-American history starts in the 16th century, with peoples from West Africa forcibly taken as slaves toish America, and in the 17th century with West African slaves taken to English colonies in North America.

After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, and the last four million black slaves were only liberated after the Civil War in 1865. [15] Due to notions of white supremacy, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. Citizenship to whites only, and only white men of property could vote.

[16][17] These circumstances were changed by Reconstruction, development of the black community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, the elimination of racial segregation, and the civil rights movement which sought political and social freedom. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States.

Main articles: Slavery in the colonial United States and Atlantic slave trade. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded byish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The first recorded Africans in British North America (including most of the future United States) were "20 and odd negroes" who came to Jamestown, Virginia via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants.

[20] As English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia. An indentured servant (who could be white or black) would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery.

[23] They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced John Punch, a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn for running away. One of the Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would later own one of the first black "slaves", John Casor, resulting from the court ruling of a civil case.

The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). All the colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the British. Massachusetts was the first British colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662 Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women (who were of African descent and thus foreigners) took the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as under English common law. This principle was called partus sequitur ventrum. By an act of 1699, the colony ordered all free blacks deported, virtually defining as slaves all people of African descent who remained in the colony. The earliest African-American congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after the English. From the American Revolution to the Civil War. Main article: Slavery in the United States. Crispus Attucks, the first "martyr" of the American Revolution. He was of Native American and African-American descent. During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American independence by defeating the British in the American Revolution. [35] Africans and Englishmen fought side by side and were fully integrated. [36] Blacks played a role in both sides in the American Revolution. Activists in the Patriot cause included James Armistead, Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell. Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the U. Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the 3/5 compromise. Slavery, which by then meant almost exclusively African Americans, was the most important political issue in the antebellum United States, leading to one crisis after another.

Among these were the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Dred Scott decision. Prior to the Civil War, eight serving presidents owned slaves, a practice protected by the U.

[38] By 1860, there were 3.5 to 4.4 million enslaved blacks in the U. Due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 488,000500,000 African Americans lived free (with legislated limits)[39] across the country. [40][41] With legislated limits imposed upon them in addition to "unconquerable prejudice" from whites according to Henry Clay, [42] some blacks who weren't enslaved left the U.

[39] Liberia began as a settlement of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1821, with the abolitionist members of the ACS believing blacks would face better chances for freedom and equality in Africa. The slaves not only constituted a large investment, they produced America's most valuable product and export: cotton. They not only helped build the U. Capitol, they built the White House and other District of Columbia buildings.

Washington was a slave trading center. [43] Similar building projects existed in slaveholding states.

In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory were free.

[44] Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation with Texas being the last state to be emancipated, in 1865. Slavery in Union-held Confederate territory continued, at least on paper, until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. [46] Prior to the Civil War, only white men of property could vote, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. [16][17] The 14th Amendment (1868) gave African-Americans citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave African-American males the right to vote only males could vote in the U. Reconstruction Era and Jim Crow. Main articles: Reconstruction Era and Jim Crow laws.

African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from white control or oversight. While the post-war Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. By the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement.

[47] Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. [48] For those places that were racially mixed, non whites had to wait until all white customers were dealt with. [48] Most African Americans obeyed the Jim Crow laws, in order to avoid racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.

In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States, a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations". These discriminatory acts included racial segregationupheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities. Great migration and civil rights movement.

Main articles: Great Migration and civil rights movement. A group of white men pose for a 1919 photograph as they stand over the black victim Will Brown who had been lynched and had his body mutilated and burned during the Omaha race riot of 1919 in Omaha, Nebraska. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U. The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century which led to a growing African-American community in the Northern United States. [52] The rapid influx of blacks disturbed the racial balance within Northern cities, exacerbating hostility between both black and white Northerners. Urban riotswhites attacking blacksbecame a northern problem. [53] The Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.

As a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919. Overall, blacks in Northern cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility.

Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering". [54] While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as white flight. Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old boy whose lynching mobilized the black community throughout the U. By the 1950s, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum.

A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U. [56] The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury. [57] One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabamaindeed, Parks told Emmett's mother Mamie Till that the photograph of Emmetts disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963, shows civil rights leaders and union leaders. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on Presidents John F.

Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. [59] By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority.

During the postwar period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged relative to other Americans. Average black income stood at 54 percent of that of white workers in 1947, and 55 percent in 1962.

The Sixties saw improvements in the social and economic conditions of many black Americans. From 1965 to 1969, black family income rose from 54 to 60 percent of white family income.

In 1965, 19 percent of black Americans had incomes equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960, the median level of education for blacks had been 10.8 years, and by the late Sixties the figure rose to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for whites. Main article: Postcivil rights era in African-American history. Politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides during the postcivil rights era. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected governor in U.

Clarence Thomas became the second African-American Supreme Court Justice. In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first African-American woman elected to the U. There were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970.

In 2001 there were 484 black mayors. In 2005, the number of Africans immigrating to the United States, in a single year, surpassed the peak number who were involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic Slave Trade. [63] On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected President. At least 95 percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. [64][65] He also received overwhelming support from young and educated whites, a majority of Asians, [66] Hispanics, [66] and Native Americans[67][not in citation given] picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column.

[64][65] Obama lost the overall white vote, although he won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. [68] Obama was reelected for a second and final term, by a similar margin on November 6, 2012. The proportional geographic distribution of African Americans in the United States, 2000. Counties with fewer than 25 black or African-American inhabitants.

Percentage of population self-reported as African-American by state in 2010. Graph showing the percentage of the African-American population living in the American South, 17902010. Note the major declines between 1910 and 1940 and 19401970, and the reverse trend post-1970. Nonetheless, the absolute majority of the African American population has always lived in the American South. Further information: Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States § Black Population as a Percentage of the Total Population by U.

Region and State (17902010), List of U. Communities with African-American majority populations, List of U. Counties with African-American majority populations, and List of U. In 1790, when the first U. Census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000about 19.3% of the population.

In 1860, at the start of the Civil War, the African-American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of the overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as "freemen". By 1900, the black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South. Large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence.

The Great Migration, as it was called,ned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million black people moved north.

But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed, with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it. The following table of the African-American population in the United States over time shows that the African-American population, as a percentage of the total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then. African Americans in the United States[71].

By 1990, the African-American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the U. Population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South.

In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African-American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin, [10] many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ancestral groups larger than African Americans are the Irish and Germans.

[73] Because many African Americans trace their ancestry to colonial American origins, some simply self-identify as "American". According to the 2010 US Census, nearly 3% of people who self-identified as black had recent ancestors who immigrated from another country. Self-reported non-Hispanic black immigrants from the Caribbean, mostly from Jamaica and Haiti, represented 0.9% of the US population, at 2.6 million. [74] Self-reported black immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa also represented 0.9%, at about 2.8 million. [74] Additionally, self-identified Black Hispanics represented 0.4% of the United States population, at about 1.2 million people, largely found within the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities.

[75] Self-reported black immigrants hailing from other countries in the Americas, such as Brazil and Canada, as well as several European countries, represented less than 0.1% of the population. Mixed-Race Hispanic and non-Hispanic Americans who identified as being part black, represented 0.9% of the population. Of the 12.6% of United States residents who identified as black, around 10.3% were "native black American" or ethnic African Americans, who are direct descendants of West/Central Africans brought to the U. These individuals make up well over 80% of all blacks in the country.

When including people of mixed-race origin, about 13.5% of the US population self-identified as black or "mixed with black". [76] However, according to the U. Instead, they wrote in their own respective ethnic groups in the "Some Other Race" write-in entry.

As a result, the census bureau devised a new, separate "African American" ethnic group category in 2010 for ethnic African Americans. [77] Following lobbying led by the Arab American Institute, a national organization representing Arab Americans, the census bureau also announced in 2014 that it may establish an additional new ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab world. Further information: List of U.

Cities with large African-American populations and List of U. Metropolitan areas with large African-American populations. Almost 58% of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000.

With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000, overall the city has a 28% black population. Chicago has the second largest black population, with almost 1.6 million African Americans in its metropolitan area, representing about 18 percent of the total metropolitan population.

After 100 years of African-Americans leaving the south in large numbers seeking better opportunities in the west and north, a movement known as the Great Migration, there is now a reverse trend, called the New Great Migration. A growing percentage of African-Americans from the west and north are migrating to the southern region of the U. For economic and cultural reasons. New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles have the highest decline in African Americans, while Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston have the highest increase respectively. Among cities of 100,000 or more, Detroit, Michigan had the highest percentage of black residents of any U. City in 2010, with 82%. Other large cities with African-American majorities include Jackson, Mississippi (79.4%), Miami Gardens, Florida (76.3%), Baltimore, Maryland (63%), Birmingham, Alabama (62.5%), Memphis, Tennessee (61%), New Orleans, Louisiana (60%), Montgomery, Alabama (56.6%), Flint, Michigan (56.6%), Savannah, Georgia (55.0%), Augusta, Georgia (54.7%), Atlanta, Georgia (54%, see African Americans in Atlanta), Cleveland, Ohio (53.3%), Newark, New Jersey (52.35%), Washington, D. (50.7%), Richmond, Virginia (50.6%), Mobile, Alabama (50.6%), Baton Rouge, Louisiana (50.4%), and Shreveport, Louisiana (50.4%). [80] Other largely affluent predominately African-American communities include Prince George's County in Maryland (namely Mitchellville, Woodmore, and Upper Marlboro), Dekalb County in Georgia, Charles City County in Virginia, Baldwin Hills in California, Hillcrest and Uniondale in New York, and Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Missouri City in Texas. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than White Americans.

Seatack, Virginia is currently the oldest African-American community in the United States. [82] It survives today with a vibrant and active civic community. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium.

By 2012, African Americans had advanced greatly in education attainment. They still lagged overall compared to white or Asian Americans but surpassed other ethnic minorities, with 19 percent earning bachelor's degrees and 6 percent earning advanced degrees. [84][not in citation given] Between 1995 and 2009, freshmen college enrollment for African Americans increased by 73 percent and only 15 percent for whites. [85] Black women are enrolled in college more than any other race and gender group, leading all with 9.7% enrolled according to the 2011 U. [86][87] Predominantly black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U. By 1972, however, desegregation efforts meant that only 25% of Black students were in schools with more than 90% non-white students. However, since then, a trend towards re-segregation affected communities across the country: by 2011, 2.9 million African-American students were in such overwhelmingly minority schools, including 53% of Black students in school districts that were formerly under desegregation orders. Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which were originally set up when segregated colleges did not admit African Americans, continue to thrive and educate students of all races today. The majority of HBCUs were established in the southeastern United States, Alabama has the most HBCUs of any state. As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans. US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed a high-school education, less than whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged behind whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism. The average high school graduation rate of blacks in the United States has steadily increased to 71% in 2013. [94] Separating this statistic into component parts shows it varies greatly depending upon the state and the school district examined. 38% of black males graduated in the state of New York but in Maine 97% graduated and exceeded the white male graduation rate by 11 percentage points. [95] In much of the southeastern United States and some parts of the southwestern United States the graduation rate of white males was in fact below 70% such as in Florida where a 62% of white males graduated high school. Examining specific school districts paints an even more complex picture. In the Detroit school district the graduation rate of black males was 20% but 7% for white males. In the New York City school district 28% of black males graduate high school compared to 57% of white males. 76% of black males graduated compared to 67% for white males. Further academic improvement has occurred in 2015. Roughly 23% of all blacks have bachelor's degrees. In 1988, 21% of whites had obtained a bachelor's degree versus 11% of blacks. In 2015, 23% of blacks had obtained a bachelor's degree versus 36% of whites.

[96] Foreign born blacks, 9% of the black population, made even greater strides. They exceed native born blacks by 10 percentage points. In Chicago, Marva Collins, an African-American educator, created a low cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low-income African-American children whom the public school system had labeled as being "learning disabled".

[97] One article about Marva Collins' school stated. Working with students having the worst of backgrounds, those who were working far below grade level, and even those who had been labeled as'unteachable,' Marva was able to overcome the obstacles. News of third grade students reading at ninth grade level, four-year-olds learning to read in only a few months, outstanding test scores, disappearance of behavioral problems, second-graders studying Shakespeare, and other incredible reports, astounded the public. The US homeownership rate according to race.

Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the civil rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed.

The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2010, 45% of African Americans owned their homes, compared to 67% of all Americans. [102] The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004, compared to 12.7% for all Americans. This graph shows the real median US household income by race: 1967 to 2011, in 2011 dollars. [105][106] In 2002, African American-owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses.

[107] As of 2011 African American-owned businesses account for approximately 2 million US businesses. [108] Black-owned businesses experienced the largest growth in number of businesses among minorities from 2002 to 2011. In 2004, African-American men had the third-highest earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans and non-Hispanic whites. Twenty-five percent of blacks had white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields) in 2000, compared with 33.6% of Americans overall. [111] Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African-American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity. In 2006, the median earnings of African-American men was more than black and non-black American women overall, and in all educational levels. [112][113][114][115][116] At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African-American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.

[112][115][118] On the other hand, by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African-American women have made significant advances; the median income of African-American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education. The US public sector is the single most important source of employment for African Americans. [120] During 20082010, 21.2% of all Black workers were public employees, compared with 16.3% of non-Black workers. [120] Both before and after the onset of the Great Recession, African Americans were 30% more likely than other workers to be employed in the public sector.

The public sector is also a critical source of decent-paying jobs for Black Americans. For both men and women, the median wage earned by Black employees is significantly higher in the public sector than in other industries. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%, [121] while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.

The income gap between black and white families is also significant. In 2005, employed blacks earned 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975. [103] The New York Times reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African-American families exceeded that of white families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true. In 2011, it was reported that 72% of black babies were born to unwed mothers. [123] The poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the respective rates were 26.4% and 6% in poverty. [124] Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004. [125] African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States. [125] African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any minority group in the U.

A large majority of African Americans support the Democratic Party. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African-American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W.

[127] Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African-American organizations have had in domestic policy. Many African Americans were excluded from electoral politics in the decades following the end of Reconstruction. For those that could participate, until the New Deal, African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both right and left were represented equally in both parties.

The African-American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans; Roosevelt's New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African-American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s. In 1960, nearly a third of African Americans voted for Republican Richard Nixon.

Further information: Race and health in the United States § African-Americans. The life expectancy for Black men in 2008 was 70.8 years. [130] Life expectancy for Black women was 77.5 years in 2008.

[130] In 1900, when information on Black life expectancy started being collated, a Black man could expect to live to 32.5 years and a Black woman 33.5 years. [130] In 1900, White men lived an average of 46.3 years and White women lived an average of 48.3 years. [130] African-American life expectancy at birth is persistently five to seven years lower than European Americans.

Black people have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension than the US average. [130] For adult Black men, the rate of obesity was 31.6% in 2010. [132] For adult Black women, the rate of obesity was 41.2% in 2010.

[132] African Americans have higher rates of mortality than does any other racial or ethnic group for 8 of the top 10 causes of death. [134] Violence has an impact upon African-American life expectancy. A report from the U. Department of Justice states "In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites".

[135] The report also found that 94% of black victims were killed by blacks. AIDS is one of the top three causes of death for African-American men aged 2554 and for African-American women aged 3544 years. In the United States, African Americans make up about 48% of the total HIV-positive population and make up more than half of new HIV cases. The main route of transmission for women is through unprotected heterosexual sex. African-American women are 19 times more likely to contract HIV than other women. Has the nation's highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection, at 3%. This rate is comparable to what is seen in West Africa, and is considered a severe epidemic.

Ray Martins, Chief Medical Officer at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, the largest provider of HIV care in Washington D. Estimated that the actual underlying percent with HIV/AIDS in the city is "closer to five percent". According to a Gallup survey, 4.6% of Black or African-Americans self-identified as LGBT in 2016, [138] while the total portion of American adults in all ethnic groups identifying as LGBT was 4.1% in 2016. [138] The disproportionately high incidence of HIV/AIDS among African-Americans has been attributed to homophobic attitudes.

Genetic clustering of 128 African Americans, by Zakharaia et al. [140] Each vertical bar represents an individual. Recent surveys of African Americans using a genetic testing service have found varied ancestries which show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors. These studies found that on average, African Americans have 73.2-82.1% West African, 16.7%-24% European, and 0.81.2% Native American genetic ancestry, with large variation between individuals. According to a genome-wide study by Bryc et al.

(2009), the overall ancestry of African Americans was formed through historic admixture between West/Central Africans (more frequently females) and Europeans (more frequently males). Consequently, the 365 African Americans in their sample have a genome-wide average of 78.1% West African ancestry and 18.5% European ancestry, with large variation among individuals (ranging from 99% to 1% West African ancestry).

The West African ancestral component in African Americans is most similar to that in present-day speakers from the non-Bantu branches of the Niger-Congo (Niger-Kordofanian) family. (2014) observed that around 50% of the overall ancestry of African Americans traces back to the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin, reflecting the centrality of this West Africa region in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The next most frequent ancestral component found among African Americans was derived from Great Britain, in keeping with historical records. It constitutes a little over 10% of their overall ancestry, and is most similar to the Northwest European ancestral component also carried by Barbadians.

(2009) found a similar proportion of Yoruba associated ancestry in their African-American samples, with a minority also drawn from Mandenka and Bantu populations. Additionally, the researchers observed an average European ancestry of 21.9%, again with significant variation between individuals. (2009) note that populations from other parts of the continent may also constitute adequate proxies for the ancestors of some African-American individuals; namely, ancestral populations from Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone in West Africa and Angola in Southern Africa. Altogether, genetic studies suggest that African Americans are a multiracial people.

According to DNA analysis led in 2006 by Penn State geneticist Mark D. Shriver, around 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry (equivalent to one European great-grandparent and his/her forebears), 19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25% European ancestry (equivalent to one European grandparent and his/her forebears), and 1 percent of African Americans have at least 50% European ancestry (equivalent to one European parent and his/her forebears). [13][147] According to Shriver, around 5 percent of African Americans also have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry (equivalent to one Native American great-grandparent and his/her forebears).

According to a Y-DNA study by Sims et al. (2007), the majority (60%) of African Americans belong to various subclades of the E3a (E1b1a) paternal haplogroup. This is the most common genetic paternal lineage found today among West/Central African males, and is also a signature of the historical Bantu migrations. The next most frequent Y-DNA haplogroup observed among African Americans is the R1b clade, which around 15% of African Americans carry. This lineage is most common today among Northwestern European males.

The remaining African Americans mainly belong to the paternal haplogroup I (7%), which is also frequent in Northwestern Europe. According to an mtDNA study by Salas et al.

(2005), the maternal lineages of African Americans are most similar to haplogroups that are today especially common in West Africa (>55%), followed closely by West-Central Africa and Southwestern Africa (<41%). The characteristic West African haplogroups L1b, L2b, c, d, and L3b, d and West-Central African haplogroups L1c and L3e in particular occur at high frequencies among African Americans.

As with the paternal DNA of African Americans, contributions from other parts of the continent to their maternal gene pool are insignificant. See also: Income inequality in the United States. African Americans have improved their social and economic standing significantly since the civil rights movement and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African-American middle class across the United States.

Unprecedented access to higher education and employment in addition to representation in the highest levels of American government has been gained by African Americans in the postcivil rights era. See also: Poverty in the United States and Income inequality in the United States. One of the most serious and long-standing issues within African-American communities is poverty. Poverty is associated with higher rates of marital stress and dissolution, physical and mental health problems, disability, cognitive deficits, low educational attainment, and crime. [153] In 2004, almost 25% of African-American families lived below the poverty level.

[154] Forty percent of prison inmates are African American. [155] African Americans experience a higher rate of unemployment than the general population. [156] African American males are more likely to be killed by police. [157] This is one of the factors that led to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement.

African Americans have a long and diverse history of business ownership. Although the first African-American business is unknown, slaves captured from West Africa are believed to have established commercial enterprises as peddlers and skilled craftspeople as far back as the 17th century. Washington became the most famous proponent of African American businesses. His critic and rival W. DuBois also commended business as a vehicle for African American advancement.

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(April 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, their daughters Malia and Sasha, and Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson at White House Easter Egg Roll.

After over 50 years, marriage rates for all Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed. [160] These changes have been greatest among African Americans.

After more than 70 years of racial parity black marriage rates began to fall behind whites. [160] Single-parent households have become common, and according to US census figures released in January 2010, only 38 percent of black children live with both their parents. In 2008, Democrats overwhelmingly voted 70% against California Proposition 8, African Americans voted 58% in favor of it while 42% voted against Proposition 8. [162] On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama, the first black president, became the first US president to support same-sex marriage.

After Obama's endorsement there is a rapid growth in support for same-sex marriage among African Americans. Now 59% of African Americans support same-sex marriage, which is higher than support among the national average (53%) and white Americans (50%). Polls in North Carolina, [164] Pennsylvania, [165] Missouri, [166] Maryland, [167] Ohio, [168] Florida, [169] and Nevada[170] have also shown an increase in support for same sex marriage among African Americans.

On November 6, 2012, Maryland, Maine, and Washington all voted for approve of same-sex marriage, along with Minnesota rejecting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Exit polls in Maryland show about 50% of African Americans voted for same-sex marriage, showing a vast evolution among African Americans on the issue and was crucial in helping pass same-sex marriage in Maryland. Blacks hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole. Remains the most prominent political leader in the American civil rights movement and perhaps the most influential African-American political figure in general. African Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.

The gains made by African Americans in the civil rights movement and in the Black Power movement not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow laws.

They were often the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post World War II era, African Americans became increasingly discontented with their long-standing inequality. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal... The civil rights movement marked an enormous change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent demonstrations and marches, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; and disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties.

Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, de jure racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, the women's movement, Native Americans, and migrant workers. See also: Representation of African Americans in media and African-American newspapers. Some activists and academics contend that news media coverage of African-American news concerns or dilemmas is inadequate[176][177][178] or the news media present distorted images of African Americans.

[179] To combat this, Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television, a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States. Most programming on the network consists of rap and R&B music videos and urban-oriented movies and series. The channel also shows syndicated television series, original programs, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET broadcasts a lineup of network-produced Christian programming; other, non-affiliated Christian programs are also shown during the early morning hours daily. BET is now a global network that reaches 90 million households in the United States, Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In addition to BET there is BET Her, which is a spin-off cable television channel of BET, created originally as BET on Jazz to showcase jazz music-related programming, especially that of black jazz musicians. Programming has been expanded to include a block of urban programs as well as some R&B, soul, and world music. TV One is another African-American-oriented network and a direct competitor to BET, targeting African-American adults with a broad range of programming. The network airs original lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion and music programming, as well as classic series such as 227, Good Times, Martin, Boston Public and It's Showtime at the Apollo.

The network primarily owned by Radio One. Founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes, it is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African-American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States. Other African-American networks scheduled to launch in 2009 are the Black Television News Channel founded by former Congressman J.

Watts and Better Black Television founded by Percy Miller. [183][184] In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio[185] in partnership with the production team that created the black documentary film Meeting David Wilson.

It is the first African-American video news site that focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History. A traditional soul food dinner consisting of fried chicken with macaroni and cheese, collard greens, breaded fried okra and cornbread.

From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have significantly contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, cuisine, clothing styles, music, language, and social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States, such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to West African and African-American influences. Notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 products from pecans; and George Crum, a local legend associates him with the creation of the potato chip in 1853.

[187][188] Soul food is a variety of cuisine popular among African Americans. It is closely related to the cuisine of the Southern United States. The descriptive terminology may have originated in the mid-1960s, when soul was a common definer used to describe African-American culture (for example, soul music). African Americans were the first peoples in the United States to make fried chicken, along with Scottish immigrants to the South.

Although the Scottish had been frying chicken before they emigrated, they lacked the spices and flavor that African Americans had used when preparing the meal. The Scottish American settlers therefore adopted the African-American method of seasoning chicken. [189] However, fried chicken was generally a rare meal in the African-American community, and was usually reserved for special events or celebrations. African American English is a variety (dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect) of American English, commonly spoken by urban working-class and largely bi-dialectal middle-class African Americans.

[191] Non-linguists sometimes call it Ebonics (a term that also has other meanings and connotations). African-American English evolved during the antebellum period through interaction between speakers of 16th and 17th century English of Great Britain and Ireland and various West African languages.

As a result, the variety shares parts of its grammar and phonology with the Southern American English dialect. Where African American English differs from Standard American English (SAE) is in certain pronunciation characteristics, tense usage and grammatical structures that were derived from West African languages, particularly those belonging to the Niger-Congo family. Virtually all habitual speakers of African American English can understand and communicate in Standard American English. As with all linguistic forms, AAVE's usage is influenced by various factors, including geographical, educational and socioeconomic background, as well as formality of setting. [192] Additionally, there are many literary uses of this variety of English, particularly in African-American literature. African-American names are part of the cultural traditions of African Americans. Prior to the 1950s and 1960s, most African-American names closely resembled those used within European American culture. [193] Babies of that era were generally given a few common names, with children using nicknames to distinguish the various people with the same name. With the rise of 1960s civil rights movement, there was a dramatic increase in names of various origins. By the 1970s and 1980s, it had become common among African Americans to invent new names for themselves, although many of these invented names took elements from popular existing names.

Prefixes such as La/Le, Da/De, Ra/Re and Ja/Je, and suffixes like -ique/iqua, -isha and -aun/-awn are common, as are inventive spellings for common names. The book Baby Names Now: From Classic to Cool--The Very Last Word on First Names places the origins of "La" names in African-American culture in New Orleans. Even with the rise of inventive names, it is still common for African Americans to use biblical, historical, or traditional European names.

Daniel, Christopher, Michael, David, James, Joseph, and Matthew were thus among the most frequent names for African-American boys in 2013. The name LaKeisha is typically considered American in origin, but has elements of it that were drawn from both French and West/Central African roots. Other names like LaTanisha, JaMarcus, DeAndre, and Shaniqua were created in the same way. Punctuation marks are seen more often within African-American names than other American names, such as the names Mo'nique and D'Andre. Main articles: Black church, African-American Muslims, and Black Hebrew Israelites. Religious affiliation of African Americans. Mount Zion United Methodist Church is the oldest African-American congregation in Washington, D. Masjid Malcolm Shabazz in Harlem, New York City.

The majority of African Americans are Protestant, many of whom follow the historically black churches. [198] The term Black church refers to churches which minister to predominantly African-American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished more African Americans were allowed to create a unique form of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African spiritual traditions. According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African-American population are part of the historically black churches.

[200] The largest Protestant denomination among African Americans are the Baptists, [201] distributed mainly in four denominations, the largest being the National Baptist Convention, USA and the National Baptist Convention of America. [202] The second largest are the Methodists, [203] the largest denominations are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Pentecostals are distributed among several different religious bodies, with the Church of God in Christ as the largest among them by far. [202] About 16% of African-American Christians are members of white Protestant communions, [203] these denominations (which include the United Church of Christ) mostly have a 2 to 3% African-American membership.

[205] There are also large numbers of Roman Catholics, constituting 5% of the African-American population. [200] Of the total number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are black.

Some African Americans follow Islam. Historically, between 15 and 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during the era of American slavery. [206] During the twentieth century, some African Americans converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; including the Moorish Science Temple of America, and the largest organization, the Nation of Islam, founded in the 1930s, which attracted at least 20,000 people by 1963, [207][208] prominent members included activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali. Malcolm X is considered the first person to start the movement among African Americans towards mainstream Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

[210] In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad took control of the Nation after his father's death and guided the majority of its members to orthodox Islam. [211] However, a few members rejected these changes, in particular Louis Farrakhan, who revived the Nation of Islam in 1978 based on its original teachings. African-American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U. Muslim population, [212] the majority are Sunni or orthodox Muslims, some of these identify under the community of W.

[213][214] The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan has a membership ranging from 20,00050,000 members. There are relatively few African-American Jews; estimates of their number range from 20,000[216] to 200,000. [217] Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include the claim that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites. Confirmed atheists are less than one half of one-percent, similar to numbers for Hispanics. The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921. Chuck Berry is considered a pioneer of rock and roll. African-American music is one of the most pervasive African-American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music. African-American-derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular music genre in the world, including country and techno. African-American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions. African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African-American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African-American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally black fraternities and sororities at universities. Many African-American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. African-American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. By 1913 over 1,000 inventions were patented by black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, [226] and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines. [227] Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems, including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask. Lewis Howard Latimer invented an improvement for the incandescent light bulb. [230] More recent inventors include Frederick McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains. [231] Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb code named the Manhattan Project. [232] Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.

A few other notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, [234] and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones. Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based.

[235][236][237] More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers, [238] and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first black astronaut pilot but the person who redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system. This parade float displayed the word "Afro-American" in 1911.

The term African American carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to describe Americans of African ancestry referred more to skin color than to ancestry, and were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry; people with dark skins were considered inferior in fact and in law. Other terms (such as colored, person of color, or negro) were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of white supremacy and oppression. Michelle Obama was the First Lady of the United States; she and her husband, President Barack Obama, are the first African Americans to hold these positions. In the 1980s, the term African American was advanced on the model of, for example, German-American or Irish-American to give descendants of American slaves and other American blacks who lived through the slavery era a heritage and a cultural base.

[240] The term was popularized in black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience in 1988. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use. Surveys show that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for African American versus Black American, [241] although they have a slight preference for Black American in personal settings and African American in more formal settings.

Many African Americans have expressed a preference for the term African American because it was formed in the same way as the terms for the many other ethnic groups currently living in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker. The term African American embraces pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. Du Bois and George Padmore.

The term Afro-Usonian, and variations of such, are more rarely used. Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government has officially classified black people (revised to black or African American in 1997) as having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. [245] Other federal offices, such as the United States Census Bureau, adhere to the Office of Management and Budget standards on race in its data collection and tabulations efforts. [246] In preparation for the United States 2010 Census, a marketing and outreach plan, called 2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of black people in the United States.

The ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity. [248] The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire black population of the U.

As though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation categorizes black or African-American people as "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.

Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 Office of Management and Budget classification. See also: Miscegenation § United States, Multiracial American, and One-drop rule. Historically, "race mixing" between black and white people was taboo in the United States. So-called anti-miscegenation laws, barring blacks and whites from marrying or having sex, were established in colonial America as early as 1691, [250] and endured in many Southern states until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in Loving v.

The taboo among American whites surrounding white-black relations is a historical consequence of the oppression and racial segregation of African Americans. [251] Historian David Brion Davis notes the racial mixing that occurred during slavery was frequently attributed by the planter class to the "lower-class white males" but Davis concludes that there is abundant evidence that many slaveowners, sons of slaveowners, and overseers took black mistresses or in effect raped the wives and daughters of slave families. [252] A famous example was Thomas Jefferson's mistress, Sally Hemings. Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. Wrote in 2009 that African Americans...

Are a racially mixed or mulatto peopledeeply and overwhelmingly so (see genetics). After the Emancipation Proclamation, Chinese American men married African-American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. [256] There are also increasing intermarriages and offspring between non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics of any race, especially between Puerto Ricans and African Americans (American-born blacks). [257] According to author M. Drymon, many African Americans identify as having Scots-Irish ancestry.

Racially mixed marriages have become increasingly accepted in the United States since the civil rights movement and up to the present day. [259] Approval in national opinion polls have risen from 36% in 1978, to 48% in 1991, 65% in 2002, 77% in 2007.

[260] A Gallup poll conducted in 2013 found that 84% of whites and 96% of blacks approved of interracial marriage, and 87% overall. This section's title may not reflect its contents and was requested to be renamed. A better name might be Terminology Debate, contents does not appear to coherently describe what could be defined as an experience, rather it has two paragraphs on naming semantics followed by one [non sequitur]. You can help by thinking of a more appropriate title and renaming the section. This may require further changes like splitting the section's contents. (March 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). In her book The End of Blackness, as well as in an essay on the liberal website Salon, [262] author Debra Dickerson has argued that the term black should refer strictly to the descendants of Africans who were brought to America as slaves, and not to the sons and daughters of black immigrants who lack that ancestry. In her opinion, President Barack Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan immigrant, although technically black, is not African-American. [262][263] She makes the argument that grouping all people of African descent together regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances would inevitably deny the lingering effects of slavery within the American community of slave descendants, in addition to denying black immigrants recognition of their own unique ancestral backgrounds. "Lumping us all together", Dickerson wrote, "erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress". Similar viewpoints have been expressed by Stanley Crouch in a New York Daily News piece, Charles Steele, Jr.

Of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference[264] and African-American columnist David Ehrenstein of the Los Angeles Times, who accused white liberals of flocking to blacks who were Magic Negros, a term that refers to a black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream white (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda. [265] Ehrenstein went on to say He's there to assuage white'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was famously mistaken for a "recent American immigrant" by French President Nicolas Sarkozy), [266] said descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.

She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African Americans and instead prefers the term black or white to denote the African and European U. Terms no longer in common use. Before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies until the abolition of slavery in 1865, an African-American slave was commonly known as a negro. Free negro was the legal status in the territory of an African-American person who was not a slave.

[268] The term colored later also began to be used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when it was considered outmoded and generally gave way again to the exclusive use of negro. By the 1940s, the term was commonly capitalized (Negro); but by the mid-1960s, it was considered disparaging. By the end of the 20th century, negro had come to be considered inappropriate and was rarely used and perceived as a pejorative. [269][270] The term is rarely used by younger black people, but remained in use by many older African Americans who had grown up with the term, particularly in the southern U. [271] The term remains in use in some contexts, such as the United Negro College Fund, an American philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for black students and general scholarship funds for 39 private historically black colleges and universities, as well as in Latin America whereish and Portuguese are spoken.

Pronounced slightly differently, it is the word for the color black, and is rarely perceived as a pejorative. There are many other deliberately insulting terms. Many were in common use e. Nigger, but had become unacceptable in normal discourse before the end of the 20th century. One exception is the use, among the black community, of the slur nigger rendered as nigga, representing the pronunciation of the word in African American English.

This usage has been popularized by the rap and hip-hop music cultures and is used as part of an in-group lexicon and speech. It is not necessarily derogatory and, when used among black people, the word is often used to mean "homie" or "friend". Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated, although it has established a foothold among younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger. Mixed-race usage of nigga is still considered taboo, particularly if the speaker is white.

However, trends indicate that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even among white youth due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture. For a more comprehensive list, see Lists of African Americans. This "see also" section may contain an excessive number of suggestions. Please ensure that only the most relevant links are given, that they are not red links, and that any links are not already in this article. (July 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). African-American civil rights movement (18651896).

African-American civil rights movement (18961954). Timeline of the civil rights movement. African American National Biography Project. Military history of African Americans. National Museum of African American History and Culture.

African immigration to the United States. Afro-American peoples of the Americas. Black Indians in the United States. Black Hispanic and Latino Americans. Index of articles related to African Americans. List of historically black colleges and universities. List of topics related to the African diaspora. List of populated places in the United States with African-American plurality populations. Counties with African-American majority populations in 2000. Cities with large African-American populations. Communities with African-American majority populations in 2010. Upson County, in west central Georgia, was established by an act of the state legislature on December 15, 1824. The Treaty of Indian Springs (1821) between the United States and the Creek Indians gave the government the land that extended from the Ocmulgee River to the Flint River through middle Georgia. Upson County was created from Pike and Crawford counties.

Many settlers were drawn to the area by the lottery system used to settle the acquired lands. The state's fifty-ninth county was named in honor of the noted Georgia lawyer Stephen Upson (1784/5-1824) just four months after his death.

It is also the birthplace of John Brown Gordon, a major general in the Confederate army and a governor of Georgia and Eugene C. Gordon a Confederate major in the Alabama Cavalry who developed Decatur, Alabama. In March 1825 the justices of the inferior court bought land lot 217 in the Tenth District to build the courthouse and the jail.

Around this lot grew Thomaston, the county seat. Incorporated June 11, 1825, the town was named for General Jett Thomas, a hero of the War of 1812 (181215). The majority of the settlers to Upson County came from the eastern counties of Georgia, between the Oconee River and Augusta.

Some were wealthy plantation owners who also owned many slaves. Farming the rich soil of the eastern section of Upson County, around the town of The Rock, Georgia and along the Flint River, they primarily grew cotton.

Other settlers came from North Carolina and South Carolina. The first cotton mill in Upson County, the Waymanville or Franklin Factory, was built on Tobler Creek in 1833, and in 1835 a group of New Englanders arrived to manufacture textiles. Double Bridges being the site where two bridgesned either side of Owen's Island in the middle of the Flint River; a brief Civil War (186165) cavalry skirmish took place there. On April 18, 1865, Union raiders began three days of devastation in Upson County.

Major General James Harrison Wilson's cavalry was headed toward Macon; its task was to destroy the agricultural and industrial facilities in the South. Fifty men of the First Battalion Georgia Cavalry Reserves stood to defend the bridges.

The defenders fired a few scattered shots at the larger Union forces before fleeing. Homes were pillaged and burned, and several factories were destroyed, including the Waymanville cotton mill.

After the war mills continued to be an important part of the county's economy. Thomaston Mills was a major employer in the county from its beginning in 1899 until 2001, before the company moved to Mexico. Goodrich in 1929, and later WesTek in 2008. In the 1920s the peach industry thrived in Upson County, but peaches all but vanished in the county with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, as orchard laborers found work in the mills.

Peach orchards were cut down to make room for timber stands. In 1930 a history of the county, History of Upson County, Georgia, was sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution and coauthored by Evelyn Hanna, a well-known author of romantic fiction. Upson County is home to Southern Crescent Technical College-Flint River Campus, and several sites draw tourism to the area. Sprewell Bluff is a 200-acre (0.81 km2) area of climbing river bluffs formed by the Flint River as it cuts through Oak Mountain.

A three-mile (5 km) trail winds along the bank. The Sprewell Bluff State Park offers 1,372 acres (5.55 km2) for fishing, hiking, picnicking, horseshoes, and volleyball.

Auchumpkee Covered Bridge, located in the southeastern part of the county, is an exact replica of the 1892 bridge that was destroyed in the floods that swept through the state in 1994. Graton to reconstruct the bridge.

Houston County /hastn/ is a county located in the central portion of the U. The estimated 2016 population is 152,122. [1] Its county seat is Perry, although the city of Warner Robins is substantially larger in both area and population. The county was created on May 15, 1821, as one of five counties in the state, and later reduced in size with the formation of Bibb, Crawford, Pike, Macon, and Peach counties. [3] It was named after Georgia governor John Houstoun, with the spelling being a common 19th-century variation that later evolved to "Houston". [4] The pronunciation, however, remains to this day howston. [5] The geographic center of the county was given the name Wattsville, which was later changed to Perry. Houston County is included in the Warner Robins, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in turn is included in the Macon-Warner Robins-Fort Valley Combined Statistical Area. [1] A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will.

Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. Slavery began to exist before written history, in many cultures. While slavery was institutionally recognized by most societies, it has now been outlawed in all recognized countries, [4][5] the last being Mauritania in 2007.

Nevertheless, there are an estimated 45.8 million people subject to some form of modern slavery worldwide. [6] The most common form of the slave trade is now commonly referred to as human trafficking. Chattel slavery is also still practiced by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In other areas, slavery (or unfree labour) continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today, [2] serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage. The English word slave comes from Old French sclave, from the Medieval Latin sclavus, from the Byzantine Greek , which, in turn, comes from the ethnonym Slav, because in some early Medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved.

[8][9] An older interpretation connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo'to strip a slain enemy'. There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, "slave" perpetuates the crime of slavery in language, by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of, according to Andi Cumbo-Floyd, "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were".

Other historians prefer "slave" because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow for. Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan. [12] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. [12] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. [12] It is the most widespread form of slavery today. [2] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. 1840 poster of slaves for sale in New Orleans.

Typically, under the chattel slave system, slave status was imposed on children of the enslaved at birth. [14] Although it dominated many societies in the past, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government. See also: Human trafficking, Child labour, Military use of children, and Sexual slavery.

A Chinese Nationalist soldier, age 10, in 1944. Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to refer to when an individual is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person. [2] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work, and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.

Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children. [2][16][17] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations, " "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.

In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts. Eberle's depiction of child prostitution, 1913. See also: Marriage by abduction and Child marriage. Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery.

Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa. Forced marriages may also occur in immigrant communities in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia.

[23][24][25][26] Ritual servitude where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes is a practice sometimes found in West Africa. [2] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction. "Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.

[28][29] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens. Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market. Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages due to the amount of competition.

[31] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew, but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available. Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale.

This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in The United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that not only assigned every member of the gang to a precise task, but also simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line. Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece and later in Rome was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.

Adam Smith made the argument that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators, or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves. He further argued that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church. Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Adam Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty.

But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues... Slaves can be an attractive investment because the slave-owner only needs to pay for sustenance and enforcement. This is sometimes lower than the wage-cost of free laborers because free workers earn more than sustenance, resulting in slaves having a positive price. When the cost of sustenance and enforcement exceeds the wage rate, slave-owning would no longer be profitable, and owners would simply release their slaves.

Slaves are thus a more attractive investment in high-wage, cheap-enforcement environments, and less attractive in low-wage-rate, expensive-enforcement environments. Free workers also earn compensating differentials, whereby they are paid more for doing unpleasant work. However, since neither sustenance nor enforcement costs rise with the unpleasantness of the work, the cost of slaves do not rise by the same amount.

As such, slaves are more attractive for unpleasant work, and less attractive for pleasant work. Because the unpleasantness of the work is not internalised, being born by the slave rather than the owner, it is a negative externality and leads to over-use of slaves in these situations. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises.

[38] Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves. Wright has developed a model, based on economic conditions, that helps to predict when firms (individuals, companies) will be more likely to use slaves rather than wage workers, indentured servants, family members, or other types of labourers. Sale and inspection of slave. Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to footwear, or rather the lack thereof. This was due to economic reasons, as well as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes. This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot. [41] To quote Brother Riemer (1779): [the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted. As shoes have been considered badges of freedom since biblical times "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet (Luke 15:22)" this aspect has been an informal law wherever slavery existed.

A barefoot person could therefore be clearly identified as a slave upon first sight. In certain societies this rule is valid to this day, as with the Tuareg slavery which is still unofficially practiced, and their slaves have to go barefoot. Main article: History of slavery. Slaves working in a mine, Ancient Greece. Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures.

[3] Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago. In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution.

The Code of Hammurabi c. 1760 BC, for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.

[45] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution. Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society including Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, Carolingian Europe, the Roman Empire, the Hebrew kingdoms of the ancient Levant, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.

[3] Such institutions included debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves. Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago, and has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country". [47][48] [49] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century, but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions. Main articles: Slavery in ancient Greece and Slavery in ancient Rome.

Slaves in chains, at Smyrna (present day zmir), 200 AD. Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC;[50] two- to four-fifths of the population were slaves.

[51] As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks, Illyrians, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls, Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement e.

This oppression, by an elite minority, eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society. [52] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars, and varied from region to region.

[53][54] Slaves represented 1525% of Italy's population, [55] mostly captives in war, [55] especially from Gaul[56] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy. [55] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, [57] with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest.

Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives, and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. [58] The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was extraordinarily low: seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females). Slavery was also widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade. 13th century slave market in Yemen.

Main article: Arab slave trade. The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. [62][63] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.

Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs. [65] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves. Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongols invasion of China proper. [66] According to Japanese historian Sugiyama Masaaki and Funada Yoshiyuki , there were also certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that Han Chinese, who were considered people of the bottom of Yuan society by some research, were suffered a particularly cruel abuse.

In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it's inappropriate to call them "slaves", [69] while some scholars describe them as serfs. [70][71] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.

[72] In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated, [73] and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea. Main articles: Slavery in medieval Europe and Barbary slave trade. Adalbert of Prague accuses Jews of the Christian slave trade against Boleslaus II. Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages. [75][76][77] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world. Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at e. The Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland[80] and having no legal standing, and the Council of Armagh (1171). In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (antiquated term referring to Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war. [81] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe by the later Middle Ages, but persisted longer in Eastern Europe. Depiction of socage in feudal England, ca. In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[83] and Bristol[84] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves. [85] The slave trade became illegal in England in 1102, but England went on to become very active in the lucrative Atlantic slave trade from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world. To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. The Empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.

After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet. [89] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr. [90] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into PolandLithuania between 1474 and 1569. Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom. The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slavesthe Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.

[92][93] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania. By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon. [94][95] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americasin the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. Crimean Tatar raiders enslaved more than 1 million Eastern Europeans. In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops.

In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century. Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves.

In a raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves. [99] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco. Main article: Slavery in modern Africa. Arab slave traders and their captives on the Ruvuma River. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region.

Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year. The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 AD near the city of Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.

[107] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq". [108] The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work. [109] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market. In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery.

By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 million to 1¼ million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries. [110][111][112] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period. There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers - about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.

Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe and black people from west Africa. In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation. Such observations, across the late 1500s and early 1600s observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy. This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world.

In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.

[118] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties. [119] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master. Slavery, in historical Africa, was practiced in many different forms: Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. [120] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.

When the Arab slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. However, the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, although it was the largest in volume and intensity.

As Elikia Mbokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique. The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)....

Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean. The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa.

These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire, [122] the kingdom of Dahomey, [123] and the Aro Confederacy. [124] It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships. Further information: Atlantic slave trade, Encomienda, Mita (Inca), Slavery in Brazil, and Slavery in the United States. Slavery in the Americas had a contentious history and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.

The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates. Many Europeans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.

[128] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man, and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman).

It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude, and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants. [129][130][131][132][133].

After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and kept their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v.

Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case. [134] This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life. [135][136][137][138][139][140][141]. Statue of Bussa, who led the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history.

In the very early years (16201640s) the majority of the labour was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindian providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy.

Barbados eventually had one of the world's biggest sugar industries. As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644 the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent.

These English smallholders were eventually bought out and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enlslaved Africans. By 1660 there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666 at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island.

Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680 there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans. Due to the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded.

Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.

Main article: Slavery in Brazil. Slave punishment by Jacques Etienne Arago. Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another. Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries. During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.

[144] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil. Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650.

Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining.

Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.

Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. By the time it was abolished, in 1888, an estimated four million slaves had been imported from Africa to Brazil, 40% of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.

In 1789 theish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers. [147] The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba. [147] But, planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority[147] and an intrusion into their personal lives. The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices.

They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding". [147] The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance. [147] Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.

Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age.

The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three and four hours of sleep. The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.

Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.

But, planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women.

They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of breed stock children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.

Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types.

Women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lay face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies. [151] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages.

The wounds were treated with compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt. Main article: Slavery in Haiti.

Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population. Following the indigenous Taino's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, theish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans.

During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world. Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue. To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. In contrast, by 1763 the white population of French Canada, a vast territory, had numbered 65,000. [153] The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane.

In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.

The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years. [154] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.

[155] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery. As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery.

They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights. Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As of 2015, these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.

The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies. The Caribbean island of Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. Theish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork.

Theiards also introduced the first African slaves. Theish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children. [159] Sexual violence with the Taíno women by theish was also common.

Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000. In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area. In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs. A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died due to disease. This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.

Many Taíno died, particularly due to smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511. [163] Theish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained the courts that they needed manpower to work in the mines, build forts, and work sugar cane plantations. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves.

In 1517, theish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies. African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.

[165] The colonist continued this branding practice for more than 250 years. [166] They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields. They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos.

Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population. The slaves faced heavy discrimination, and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters. Theiards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt.

Many converted to Christianity; were baptized by the Catholic Church and were given their masters' surnames. By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy. [167] With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane.

After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom. [166] Five years later, theish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child. [168] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo.

Some became slave owners themselves. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the "state" in order to pay some compensation. Funeral at slave plantation, Suriname. The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad. Boxer, wrote that man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam. Many slaves escaped the plantations.

With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons. The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities.

These tribes include the Saramaka, Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai. The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids. [174] The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the colonists. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes.

They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy. In 1861-63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States.

It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of the idea and, after 1864, the idea was dropped. The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo. Whipping scars of escaped slave, Gordon, in 1863. Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By the time of the American Revolution (17751783), the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. [177] The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the MasonDixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware. Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual. [178] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty.

Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave. [179] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders, conditions permitting abuses. William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds per day of cotton, while women were required to pick 70 pounds; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short.

The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales. [181] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given. New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation. In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.

The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against blacks increased as they were granted more rights. Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.

[184] The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U. Census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8 percent of all US families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves. [185] One-third of Southern families owned slaves. [186] The south was heavily invested in slavery.

As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederacy. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery not legally ceasing as an institution, until December 1865. See also: History of slavery in Asia. Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today. A contract from the Tang dynasty recording the ogothase of a 15-year-old slave for six bolts of plain silk and five coins. Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[187][188] fully enacted in 1910, [189] although the practice continued until at least 1949.

[191] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India. [192][193][194][195] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration:), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as nucai.

" The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him. [197] However, booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi even had their own servant). Han chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law. [201] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs. [202] Ironically, while free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.

Main article: Slavery in India. Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century.

The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes. Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the most important source of forced labour until the 1660s. Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first thirty years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. Of the 211 manumitted slaves in Batavia between 1646 and 1649, nearly 60 percent came from South Asia, including over 40 percent from Bengal. Slave raids into the Bengal estuaries were conducted by joint forces of Magh pirates, and Portuguese traders (chatins) operating from Chittagong outside the jurisdiction and patronage of the Estado da India, using armed vessels (galias). These raids occurred with the active connivance of the Taung-ngu (Toungoo) rulers of Arakan. The eastward expansion of the Mughal Empire, however, completed with the conquest of Chittagong in 1666, cut off the traditional supplies from Arakan and Bengal. Until the Dutch seizure of the Portuguese settlements on the Malabar coast (165863), large numbers of slaves were also captured and sent from India's west coast to Batavia, Ceylon, and elsewhere. After 1663, however, the stream of forced labour from Cochin dried up to a trickle of about 50100 and 80120 slaves, per year, to Batavia and Ceylon, respectively.

Coromandel remained the centre of a sporadic slave trade throughout the seventeenth century. In various short-lived expansions accompanying natural and human-induced calamities, the Dutch exported thousands of slaves from the east coast of India.

A prolonged period of drought followed by famine conditions in 161820 saw the first large-scale export of slaves from the Coromandel coast in the seventeenth century. Company officials on the coast declared that 2,000 more could have been bought if they had the funds.

An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam.

Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. And, in 169496, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon. The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 1530 percent of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades. [209] According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841.

About 15 percent of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was abolished in British India by the Indian Slavery Act V. The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians". [210] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale". [211] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.

[212] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s. [213][214] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese.

Sebastian of Portugal feared that this was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571. [217] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where some of them not only ended up being enslaved to Portuguese, but as slaves to other slaves, with the Portuguese owning Malay and African slaves, who in turn owned Japanese slaves of their own. [220][221][222] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result. Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (159298). [225][226] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he himself was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.

Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black. [229][230][231][232][233]. The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves like Chinese and Japanese, much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa". [234][235] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves which is why they favoured them. The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 188687 and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894, but traces remained until 1930. [243] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.

[244] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775, [49] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801. [244] In addition, population growth, [49] numerous escaped slaves, [47] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858. [245] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 188687, [47][245] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.

[47][246] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule. During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery. [47][247] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".

In South Korea, slavery remains such a controversial topic that it is North Korean historians who have accounted for it more fairly. For instance, the Koryo Museum in the North Korean city of Kaesong is the only museum in Korea that covers the topic of medieval slavery. See also: Crimean-Nogai raids into East Slavic lands.

In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves. [249] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries. By 1475 most of the slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages. [250] It has been estimated that some 200,000 slavesmainly Circassianswere imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.

[251] A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva. [252] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.

Kaiser wrote, Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved. Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, [90] exporting about 2 million slaves from Poland-Lithuania and Russia over the period 15001700. During the Second World War (19391945) Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of countries they conquered, with the avowed intention of treating these untermenschen as a permanent slave class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died but who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.

Main articles: Zanj, Arab slave trade, Barbary slave trade, and Devshirme. Persian slave in the Khanate of Khiva, 19th century. The Ottoman Empire owned and traded slaves on a massive scale. In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. Theish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour.

Theish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola see Atlantic slave trade. Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar andish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves and towards the importation of African Blacks as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 15121513). Further information: Slavery in the Ottoman Empire, Arab slave trade, and Slavery on the Barbary Coast.

Ottoman wars in Europe resulted in many captive Europeans being carried deep into Ottoman territory. There was an extensive trade in Christian slaves in the Black Sea region for several centuries until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783. [258] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen. The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.

[260] As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000. [261] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery only in 1962. [262] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj), [263] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians), [264] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Saqaliba).

Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century. [266][267] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD. [3][268] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5000 made it to Egypt.. See also: Slavery in Mauritania, Contemporary slavery, Child slavery, Trafficking of children, and Illegal immigration § Slavery.

Modern incidence of slavery, as a percentage of the population, by country. [271][272][273] Child migrants also suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya. In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that or 20 percent of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers.

[276] [277][278] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007. [279] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007. [280] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012, only one slave-owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.

Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million. [282][283][284] Several estimates of the number of slaves in the world have been provided. [285] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.

[286] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers. [287] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). [38] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009. According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts. A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013, [290] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest of proportion of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal. State Department released a report on slavery. It placed Russia, China, Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were also at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries. A world map showing countries by prevalence of female trafficking.

Trafficking in human beings (also called human trafficking) is one method of obtaining slaves. [296] Victims are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs of abuse to control their victims. [297] Annually, according to U.

Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors, reports the U. State Department in a 2008 study. While the majority of trafficking victims are women, and sometimes children, who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour.

[299] Due to the illegal nature of human trafficking, its exact extent is unknown. Government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally. [299] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims. See also: Abolition of slavery timeline.

The painting of the 1840 Anti-Slavery Society Convention at Exeter Hall. Slavery has existed, in one form or another, through recorded human historyas have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire from 269232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery. [301] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom.

However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown. [302] Slavery was again abolished, by Wang Mang, in China in 17 C. E but was reinstituted after his assassination. Theish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans.

A prominent critic of slavery in theish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and later also of Africans in America. One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688. [304] One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England.

This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England. [305] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery. [304] France abolished slavery in 1794. [304] All the Northern states abolished slavery; New Jersey in 1804 was the last to act.

None of the Southern or border states abolished slavery before the American Civil War. Olaudah Equiano, His autobiography, published in 1789, helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which ended the African slave trade for Britain and its colonies.

Joseph Jenkins Roberts, born in Virginia, was the first president of Liberia, which was founded in 1822 for freed American slaves. Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery.

Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Thomas Clarkson.

Wilberforce was also urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own, and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire, [307] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.

[308] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries. [310] There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society. In the United States, abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation.

After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, [311] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U. Were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad.

Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 18541861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.

[312] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country. In the case of freed slaves of the United States, many became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity due to Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further. In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa. On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by the year 2020. [315] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mt Amtnandamay, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nht Hnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery. Monument to slaves in Zanzibar. On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity.

Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals. [316] Indeed, as already mentioned in this article, slavery persists in several areas of West Africa until the present day. There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade.

African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans. Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade.

In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin (formerly the Kingdom of Dahomey) issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade. [319] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it. [320] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin. [320] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade. The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by a number of entities across the world.

For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action Plan. In September 2006, it was reported that the UK government might issue a "statement of regret" over slavery. [321] This was followed by a "public statement of sorrow" from Tony Blair on November 27, 2006, [322] and a formal apology on March 14, 2007. On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery.

Unique and the first of its kind in the U. The apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, where the first slaves were imported into North America in 1619.

On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London, United Kingdom, apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery, " he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks. Jesse Jackson praised Livingstone, and added that reparations should be made, one of his common arguments.

[325] The City of Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999. On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.

[326] In June 2009, the US Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery". [327] The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first President of African descent. [328] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners. Main article: Reparations for slavery. There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves, or sometimes their descendants.

Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this civil court problem.. Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired. Other uses of the term.

The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts, and other forms of coerced government labour. [331][332] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.

"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients due to there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness, yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of his/her psychiatrist. Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave. Thomas Szasz wrote a book titled "Psychiatric Slavery", [334] published in 1998 and a book titled "Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry", [335] published in 2003. Proponents of animal rights apply the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.

Main articles: Labour economics § Wage slavery, and Wage labour. The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour. [337][338][339][340][341][342] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels. Main article: List of films featuring slavery.

Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world. [344] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as Birth of a Nation (1915)[345] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. The last favourable treatment was Song of the South from Disney in 1946.

In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slaverythe film does not know what to do with slavery. [346] The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes. [347] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.

Poster for the film Spartacus. Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War.

It failed and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film. [349] The Last Supper (La última cena inish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speakish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere. Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.

Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom. [351][352] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.

The item "RARE Document 1860 Estate Inheritance Slaves Houston Co Georgia Black Americana" is in sale since Wednesday, April 04, 2018. This item is in the category "Collectibles\Cultures & Ethnicities\Black Americana\Paper".

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