I am an African American from Little Rock, Arkansas. I am going to tell you a story of my people and how we got to where we are today. African Americans are originally from Africa, a large continent across the Atlantic Ocean. Throughout the years of 1450-1750, there brought about enormous changes to the North American continent and people began traveling looking for new life. European Explorers eventually came to the land of Africa where they began a trans-Atlantic slave trade. This estimated to bring 10 million Africans to America. Unlike other subordinate groups in America today, African Americans came to America unwillingly and in doing so suffered great loss, pain, death and so on. Africans being sold to white people of America eventually brought about new economic status and a new social system. Slave trading deemed a very profitable market for European settlers. Goods were exported from Europe to Africa, Africans were sold across the ocean to America where they were enslaved and worked for landowners/famers, and those goods produced by the American farmers through the work of African slaves were then exported back to Europe.
Shamefully, fear and greed is a large part of why slavery continued and social segregation infected this country for so long. “Not long after the first colonial settlement in 1619, Africans came to Virginia with the Dutch. At first, like their poor English counterparts, the Africans were treated as indentured servants; laborers under contract to work for several years for a payment of housing, food or other necessities.” (Brazos Valley African American Museum: Robin Silva 2007) At first, Africans were promised freedom after several years working for the white man but eventually posed as a threat to wealthy landowners and this is how race based slavery came about. The colony of Massachusetts is where the 1st legally