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03/03/2015

Historical Report on African American

Who are we, where did we come from, what has been our experience since we landed on United States soil? The migration of Africans has been very significant in the making of African Americans history and culture. Today's 35 million African Americans are heirs to all the migrations that have formed and transformed African America, the United States, and the Western Hemisphere (The New York Public Library, n.d.). African American history starts in the 1500s with the first Africans coming from Mexico and the Caribbean to the Spanish territories of Florida, Texas, and other parts of the South (The New York Public Library, n.d.). Although we are most familiar with the documented 1619 arrival, in which Africans were brought to the United States aboard a Dutch ship to Jamestown, Virginia for the purpose of slavery.

In the 17th century, the United States nation began to grow and white European settlers need more laborers for the production of crops, like cotton and tobacco. In 1793 the cotton industry began to grow. Cheap labor was needed for the tedious task of removing seeds from cotton, which had to be done by hand. Africans were kidnapped from their native land and sold to share croppers for forced labor. The idea of Africans as slaves was embraced and spread rapidly through the North American colonies; making the modern western slavery, known as indentured slavery, which consisted of mostly poor white Europeans, nonexistent. This was the beginning of the oppression of Blacks. By the 18th century, many northern states had abolished slavery. Still in the south the institution of slavery was needed as Blacks were a minority of the population and the need for cheap labor was still plentiful. Even though the import of new slaves was outlawed in 1808, the