Changes in the Lives of African Americans in the Last Three Decades



Changes in the Lives of African Americans in the Last Three Decades

Introduction

An African American is a person of color, who was born in the Americas, and whose ancestors come from sub-Saharan zone Africa, also called “Tropical Africa” which is located south of the Sahara desert. It is composed of 42 countries, of which 6 are island states. They are the world's least developed community, considered as the world's poorest region. Most of the ancestors, who emigrated from this region, were kidnapped by Europeans from the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and taken as slaves to work in mines and plantations. Currently, they constitute about 10% of the population of the Americas. The term “African American” was created in State United and then spread to other territories. In English speaking countries, it refers only to U.S. citizens of African ancestry.

There were many events in the lives of African Americans who brought them, where they are today. These events are important milestones in their struggle to achieve independence, and a separate identity for themselves. This assignment covers important events in their history, reasoning why these occurred and what were there consequences.

Discussion

In 1861, when America was on the brink of civil war, people of African descent, both free and slaves, saw the events with a watchful eye. There was a possibility that a war between North and South could bring joy, destruction of slavery and the introduction of universal freedom (Razack, 1998). When the Confederacy opened fire on Fort Sumter and the war began. President Abraham Lincoln said the root cause was the preservation of the American Union, not ending slavery. Frederick Douglass, the most important black leader, opined that regardless of the intentions, the war would end slavery, that "peculiar institution" of the United States. During the war, four million people of African descent United States were right to Douglass. Slaves and free blacks gathered around the Union flag in the cause of freedom. From the cotton fields and South snuff to small towns and big cities of the North, nearly 200,000 African descents joined the Grand Army of the Republic and took up arms to destroy the Confederacy. They served as recruiters, soldiers, nurses and spies, and suffered unequal treatment massacres and protests in their quest for freedom and equality (Arnaud, 1991).

First African slaves were brought to the British Virginia by English colonists in 1619. As of 1860, 12 million people in 15 U.S. states, where slavery persisted, and 4 million were slaves. Of the 1.5 million families living in those states, over 390 thousand households had slaves. Slave labor was used extensively in the plantation sector, allowing you to receive the American slaveholder's high profits. In the first half of the XIX century, the national wealth of the United States was largely based on the exploitation of slave labor. During the period from the XVI century to the XIX century in the Americas were imported about 12 ...