Slavery

Slavery. 

        Beginning my project about this theme I should go into the etymology of this word. What language does it come from? It comes from the German language. Going back several hundred years german people always loved coming to Slavic lands such as Russia, Poland and others in order to take prisoners to German and make them into slaves. So we can see the connection between two English words “Slavic” and “slavish”. The German’s idea was  that Slavic people were slaves. That’s why this word got into the german language and then got into English.

         Speaking about the US we should try to remember when American colonies began. They commenced in 1619. One of the first boats that came from  England to the New World, there would become America, carried some slaves. So there were white people came from England who brought black people with them. The black people were to be servants (people who work for free). That was the beginning. From 1619 till 1808 there were the last of slave ships. Among fifty five million of black people who were put on ships in Africa to be sent to The New World forty million were died on the boats. Because of horrible conditions in which they were  delivered only fifteen million got the final destination.

These slavery began in 1619 and then in 1776 was the US declaration of independence from England written by Thomas Jefferson ( one the US president ).George Washington also participated in it. “All men are created equal ” –was said in this declaration. It sounds great but there was a problem. Black people weren’t considered to be people. White people were people while black people were just property. In fact George Washington( the first president of  the US) himself had slaves. When he was quite young both of his parents died and he inherited ten or fifteen slaves. By the time he was gone he had more than 300 slaves.

  Coming back to Thomas Jefferson ( who later became the President) we should mention that once during his going to France his wife died. Now let’s draw our attention to his wife’s slave girl called Sally Hemmings. She was the stepsister of his wife because his wife’s father had some romans with a female slaves and this Sally was the daughter. She was about fifteen. That was very common. When Thomas Gefferson set off  for France he took Sally with him. Looking at her portrait we can state a fact that she was very beautiful and pretty. Besides she could read and write english. It is naturally because she was growing up as a sister to his wife. So Sally Hemmings started having children. It is easy to guess who the father was. She had quite a few children. Some of the children had dark skin, but not very dark. But some of them were as white as Jefferson. Some of these children moved away to some other cities and lived as white people. There were many stories about this. A lot of people claimed it is not true. However fifteen years ago somewhere around the found the  sentence of Jefferson (a note have come from his family-white people) in which the name of Sally Hemmings was mentioned. Then this was sent to laboratory to test her name and at last they found that all of these black people which had name of Jefferson-Hemmings came from Jefferson’s family. When George got married  he wanted to give freedom to those slaves he had after when he was  the president .

At that time of slavery  there was a system of trade so called “ Triangular trade”. There were a lot of slaves in America who were  producing a lot of products which couldn’t be grown in Europe for instance- tobacco, rice, cotton and  sugar. Those were four main things. Also some kind of metal were mined there as well. But mainly agricultural items. All this stuff was put on a ship which went to England where those goods were taken. The same ship with the tobacco in the form of something that could be smoked, the cotton that turned into cloth, the sugar that made into rum or liqueur and some other things like guns, weapons went down to West Africa. In Africa these considered goods were traded for slaves who were put on a ship and taken back  to America. The people of the ships made huge money with this business. This system continued till 1808 at which time a law was made saying the following: No more slaves may be imported to the United States! That was the end of importation of slaves but not the end of slavery. Slavery in the US was continuing. In some ways it was good news for people who already had slaves the prize of whom increased. It was very convenient for slave owners to have a women who had children to keep all his plantation in order

At that time there was a rule of a drop of black blood .If somebody had one drop of black blood it meant that he was still black man according to the law. Certainly some of those people who had slight dark skin managed to run away and change their names to live as just a white man.

From 1787 to 1804 slavery was illegal in the northern states. A lot of the people from this part were against slavery but the economy of  this area was completely different from the south. There are long winters. They have short agricultural season. It was too expensive for them to have slaves because after 6 months of working on a farm they had to fit slaves for other months when slaves wasn’t going to do anything.

In 1793 there was very important invention called “gin” (ex. cotton gin). This is a machine or something similar operated by hand. The new device was able to make the process of removing seeds from the cotton easier than doing the same by hand. One man could produce about one kilogram per day while this machine made two thousand kilograms of cotton. This made the process cheaper. Of course the plantations became larger because it got possible to treat such amount of cotton. In the space of twenty years the production of cotton grew by eight thousand times. This cotton went to Europe, Africa and other places for clothing production.

Many people were trying to stop the slavery. It  was a big political fight between The North and The South. There was a law about the liberation of slaves that applied only to the North part of the US. So the slaves living in the South were trying to escape to the North where they were considered to be free.

In 1850 in the North a new law was passed called “Fugitive slave act”. According to this law it was illegal to hide fugitive slave from the owner. A big business of catching these slaves appeared. The slaves were valuable then. Converting the rewards for a fugitive slave that was given to today’s money we get to know it was  

about 40 thousand bucks per one. Many people were so called “professional slave hunters” who captured black people and brought them back.  Though slavery was illegal in the north and black people were born free they still had no rights as citizens. Neither in the north nor in the south.

In 1860 Lincoln was elected president. He was against slavery and thought it should be illegal . Soon after he was elected eleven south states claimed they were breaking away. They were aiming to become separate part. The led to The Civil War. In 1863 Lincoln signed some order that said – “ All slaves are free. There is no more slavery”. That was very clever political thing gained a lot of slaves to join northern army. In case  they won those slaves would be free. The was lasted for more than five years and ended in 1865. During the war the northern side had two principles. The first was that America can’t be divided and the second  said that slavery must be finished. After the finishing of the war the south was really destroyed.  All infrastructure was damaged, factory were brought down and so on. A lot of those plantations that had given much money were abandoned. According to new American constitution slavery was illegal so it was forbidden to make black people to rebuild those areas. But we shouldn’t forget that black people still didn’t have equal right as white people. According to “ Black code” weren’t to vote, they  couldn’t sit on the jury and if they went to the court they couldn’t give evidence against white people. It is terrible to imagine but in case a white man killed three black ones there were nobody who could witness against him. Black people also had no rights to buy or rent farm land. They had to be  employed. This way when a chief of police saw a black guy walking alone he asked him whether he was employed or not and in case of negative answer the black guy was to be arrested. One year in jail for not having a job. Then the chief rented the black guy for very low prize to the plantation owners. When the period of serving finished the farmer said to the slave:  “You can continue working for me or I am going to tell the chief of police and you will spend another year in the jail.” From this example we see that slavery itself didn’t disappear it just wasn’t called slavery but it continued in substance .

In 1866 “ The civil rights act” was created but it wasn’t passed until 1870. It said that black people could vote and enjoyed equal protection under the law. In the south as usual decided to cheat. The passed the law according to which any man could go to vote if his grandfather had rights to vote. Moreover in the south black people were offered to do an English test. Almost no one could pass it. White people also got the test but it was much easier. This way black people were kept from voting for a long time.

Segregation.

We should note that rights of all people were equal but they were separate. It applied to schools, parks( parks for white people were forbidden by law for black guys), cemeteries, transportation, prison, the military, restaurants, hospitals, public toilets, public water so called “ drinking fountains” ( at school, at beaches and etc.)

In 1914-1918 (World War One) about 400 thousand of black people were served in the army during  the War. Mostly they were carrying heavy things, cleaning and  
 

carried out other hard work. This way they served the country . It was naturally they should get some rights for it.

The period of great depression( 20^th-30^th  in 20 century).Many people even highly educated ones lost their works. It was hard time for black people as well. Only dirty, unpleasant work (ex. cleaning toilet) left for them. Many black-skinned people, reading communist propaganda that offered equal rights for all people, decided to become communists. Some of them even came to the Soviet Union welcomed by Stalin. That showed the whole world the difference between the Soviet Union equal rights and the imitation of that in the US. Those black people got the finest education and had children in USSR. Some of them got married to russian.

When World war two broke out a lot of factories, producing weapons, ammunitions, tanks and many other staff for war, appeared. Black people were welcomed to work in these dangerous places. About 500 thousand of them were served in the military in Europe where they also served in black units with black sergeants, black officers. But the commander was always white man.

In 1955 The Supreme Court came to a new conclusion that claimed: “Separate is never equal”. This law was against segregation in every way. So a black child got the opportunity of going to school according to the territory where he lived but not because of the colour of his skin. However this law wasn’t held in all schools.

About 500 thousand of black people served in the military during the World War two. It was the period of reign of Eisenhower. Understanding the benefit of black people he ordered to escort black children coming to school and coming back home.

In 1955 one more significant thing happened in Alabama. A women called Rosa Parks (who became very famous. She was forty two years old. She had children but had no husband. Her occupation was something like cleaning lady. Being very  tired she sat on a seat in a white section of a bus instead of taking a seat in the back side for black people. As the result she was arrested for breaking the law . Sometimes buses wouldn’t stop at a bus stop seeing that there was just a black women and continued going. It was an awful situation in such a small town because there wasn’t other alternatives to go for a long distance. Eventually black people decided to give up using buses at all. They started using bicycle or something similar. They did that for the whole year. Ultimately the bus system became bankrupt. After that black people were allowed to sit in any parts of the bus at last.

In 1960 there was an event happened in Mississippi when two black guys being rejected by the local university went to the court and finally got permission to study there. Their joy didn’t last for a long and in quite a short time they were sent to the army. Basketball team that had black guys didn’t allow them to live in the same hotel we white ones lived.

Until  1967 in every southern state was a law said that white people and no-white people were forbidden to get married. 
 

In 1968 Martin Luther King ( the main defender of black people’s rights) got killed.

In 1965 the president Johnson passed a new civil act that put an end to all discrimination against black people.

Nowadays Barack Hussein Obama is at the helm of the US. It was impossible even to imagine in 1965 let alone earlier. Black people didn’t get any kind of reparation because all slave owners were died at the time when a black-skinned person began to live as a full member of society. But exactly today in 2010 the first person of the country is a black guy.