Every European colonizer engaged in the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of North America. In 1619, the first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia marking the beginning of 246 years of the institution of slavery in America.
WHY DID IT CONTINUE FOR SO LONG?
Millions of African men, women, and children were kidnapped, sent on slave ships with inhumane conditions, and enslaved in American colonies/states from 1619-1865. Enslavers became wealthy from their labor and the buying and selling of enslaved people. Merchants, traders, and bankers also profited.
HOW DID PEOPLE RESIST?
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” - Frederick Douglass
Every one of the 13 colonies in America engaged in slavery, although it became particularly entrenched in the Southern colonies. As Northern states began to outlaw slavery after independence, the Southern states held on. This lead to the Civil War in 1861.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ABOLISH IT?
“All persons held as slaves within any States . . . shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. - Abraham Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
The U.S. created laws that protected, institutionalized, and continued the practice of slavery for almost 250 years. It is rooted in the false and racist idea of white supremacy. It was a method of denying rights to people based on race and ensured that white Christian men remained in positions of power.
VIRGINIA SLAVE CODES
Enslaved people fought for their freedom and resisted their enslavers by way of armed rebellions, organizing and writing, and running away on the Underground Railroad. Quakers and other white abolitionists also organized and called for an end to or abolition of slavery.
11 states seceded from the United States to create the Confederacy, which would continue the practice of slavery. The Northern army fought to maintain the union. The South was defeated in 1865. The 13th amendment was passed, formally outlawing slavery.