"The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865..."
The forced labor and bondage of Africans in America before the Civil War and its lasting impact on African American communities today.
Transatlantic Slave Trade: The forced transportation of enslaved Africans from their homelands to the Americas, which began in the 15th century and lasted until the 19th century.
Middle Passage: The brutal voyage across the Atlantic, during which enslaved Africans were crammed into ships, often in appalling conditions.
Chattel slavery: An extreme type of slavery where individuals are treated as property that can be bought and sold.
Plantation slavery: A type of chattel slavery prevalent in the Southern U.S. where enslaved individuals worked on large agricultural estates.
Abolitionist Movement: A social and political movement to end slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. The movement gained momentum in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Underground Railroad: A network of secret routes and safe houses used by enslaved individuals to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North.
Harriet Tubman: An enslaved individual who escaped slavery and became a conductor on the Underground Railroad. She is celebrated for her courage and selflessness.
Nat Turner: An enslaved individual who led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. The rebellion was put down, and Turner was executed.
Frederick Douglass: An enslaved individual who escaped from slavery and became a prominent abolitionist, journalist, and orator.
Reconstruction: A period of American history after the Civil War during which the federal government attempted to rebuild the South and address issues of racial inequality.
Jim Crow Laws: A collection of state and local laws throughout the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans from the late 19th century to the mid-1960s.
Civil Rights Movement: A social and political movement in the 1950s and 1960s that sought to end racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans.
Emancipation Proclamation: A decree issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 that declared all enslaved individuals in Confederate states to be free.
13th Amendment: An amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery throughout the United States.
Slave Codes: Laws that were enacted by Southern states during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to regulate the treatment of enslaved individuals.
Reparations: A proposed solution to address the effects of slavery on African Americans, involving compensation to descendants of enslaved individuals for the injustices suffered by their ancestors.
Chattel Slavery: This is the most well-known type of slavery where individuals were treated as property to be bought and sold. It was the predominant form of slavery in the United States, where African slaves were imported to work on plantations.
Debt Bondage: This is where individuals were forced to work to pay off a debt owed to their employer. This type of slavery is still prevalent in some parts of the world.
Forced Labor: This is where individuals were coerced into working, often through violence or the threat of violence.
Sexual Slavery: This is where individuals were forced into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, often through deception or coercion.
Child Slavery: This is where children were forced to work in the same way as adults.
Domestic Servitude: This is where individuals were forced to work as domestic servants, often in households where they were treated as property and had few if any rights.
Forced Marriage: This is where individuals were forced into marriage against their will, often in exchange for money or other forms of compensation.
Prison Slavery: This is where prisoners are forced to work, either as part of their sentence or for profit.
Human Trafficking: This is where individuals are transported and sold into slavery, often for the purposes of forced labor or sexual exploitation.
Indentured Servitude: This is where individuals agreed to work for a set period of time, usually for a specific purpose such as paying off a debt, in exchange for certain benefits.
"Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States."
"Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away."
"Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865..."
" ...issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom."
"...many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing."
"By the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry."
"The role of slavery under the United States Constitution (1789) was the most contentious issue during its drafting."
"Although the creators of the Constitution never used the word 'slavery,' the final document, through the three-fifths clause, gave slave owners disproportionate political power by augmenting the congressional representation and the Electoral College votes of slaveholding states."
"The Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution... provided that, if a slave escaped to another state, the other state had to return the slave to his or her master. This clause was implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, passed by Congress."
"All Northern states had abolished slavery in some way by 1805..."
"The rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor."
"The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million."
"The United States became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states."
"When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, seven slave states seceded to form the Confederacy."
"...on April 12, 1861, the Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked the U.S. Army's Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina."
"Due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and the Emancipation Proclamation, the war effectively ended slavery in most places."
"After the Union victory, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on December 6, 1865..."
"...prohibiting 'slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.'"
"...after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing."