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Slavery - 3.Version - Referat
The first Africans, mostly Negro Africans, were shipped from Africa to North America in the 17th century. Their duty was to work hard in the fields as slaves for 16 hours a day. A slave is a person who is sold and bought by a slave owner and who has to work for him. Slavery was permitted by law, because the black population wasn’t protected by law but white men could easily get land for themselves because the farmers weren’t allowed to force them to work. That’s why the Blacks were taken for slaves. They hadn’t real right’s, but sometimes they were supported when they were ill or old, they got religious instructions, they were allowed to be witnesses and often they were allowed to have property, to marry and to have free-time. But there also existed bad things, like that the human rights were disregarded, that the women were raped and the families were splitted. The worst of it is that they got cruel treatment, because they were mutilated, got brands, were laid in chains and sometimes even killed. The punishment of a slave were beats to death, like whipping for beeing late, the cutting of a body part, for example when they eavesdropped an ear could be cut off, or they were branded for running away.
The people who did these bad things weren’t punished.
Their course of the day were always the same: get up by sunrise and go to work on the plantation. After eight or nine hours they got a little bit to eat for the next eight or nine hours. In the dawn they were allowed to return home.
The slaves sang songs to get through their bad life. They sang work songs at work, spirituals and gospel music which based on religious songs and bible texts, and of course the blues when they sang about their sad life.
The Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, was the biggest war in the history of the United Statesof America. It wasa military conflict between the Southern and the Northern states. There were many differences, for example economic, political but at first social ones, between the North and the South. There exist other causes for the war but the most important are these differences, that the South was for his independance and for slavery and the North against slavery and unity between all states.
At the beginning it looks like the North hadn’t any chance, because their troops were scattered in country and the South had a better organisation. So the South won some battles but then there was the turning point: the battle at Gettysburg. The North won that war and the result was a common constitution.
The slavery was abolished but the Afro-American were further suppressed, above all in the South.
The Blacks got civil rights and the right to vote, even there were Blacks in Parlament, but just until the troops leaved the southern states. After they leaved, the Afro-Americans only get bad-payed jobs on farms and they were only allowed to vote when their grandfathers had voted, too. Additional there was the Ku-Klux-Klan, which suppressed the Blacks. The consequence was that there were no political representations of the Blacks.
There were also laws, the Jim Crow laws, of racial segregation, which says that there must be “seperated, but equal” public facilities like hospitals and schools. But there were no checkings so the Blacks always had bad equipment.
The Afro-Americans didn’t know what to do. Some people thought they should accept the differences and they will be equal sometime when they have a good education and technological jobs. There existed organisations, like the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which demanded the political independance of the black people. They managed for example equal equipment in black schools. Later they fought against “seperated, but equal” in general and managed a big success in 1954: now schools could be visite by white and black people, but only schools! The Blacks were pleased about that, but the Whites were against it.
In 1957, people of Little Rock, Arkansas, blocked the way to the Central High School for nine black pupils. The governor wouldn’t help them to get into the school or to protect them. President Eisenhower protected them and brought them into the school on his own.
The beginning of the Civil Rights Movement was when the Afro-Americans boycotted the busses thirteen month (Busboykott of Montgomery), because Rosa Parks (the "mother of the Civil Rights Movement"), a black woman who refused to get up out of her seat on public bus to make room for white passengers, was put under arrest. Additional they sued, because the busses offend against the rights of racial segregation. They won at the 13th November 1956.
After these two events the Blacks got much attention, especially their leader Martin Luther King jr.
The Blacks made peaceful protest without violence, with which they pushed through the abolition of the segregation in the South. These peaceful protests could be sit-ins in restaurants for the Whites. But sometimes white racists maltreat the Blacks. The media reported about these maltreats and showed the violence of white racists so that the government was putted pressure.
With the help of these tactics they cause the abolition of the segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. After that there were long demonstrations on which the police maltreated children. This was the trigger for the support of president Kennedy and big parts of the US-population. Kennedy was elected by most black people, because he promissed to make a civil rights law for the Blacks. To support this law they made the “March on Washington” in the sommer of 1963. Here Martin Luther King jr. made his popular speech “I have a dream”.
In 1964 Martin Luther King got the Nobel prize for his politic without violence. That year was the summit of the Civil Rights Movement and the aim was nearly reached.
But then the movement broke up. There was much violence against it, that the young people want an extrem leader like Malcolm X. With a new leader they began to demand Black Power, with violence and a distance to all other movements and King.
From 1966 King fought against the social discrimination and the poverty of the Blacks. After a time he recognized that it was a problem without an easy aim. The racism wasn’t just a problem in the South but also in the whole USA. King demand a revolution of the american System.
But then in 1968 King was killed by an attempt. After that there weren’t much improvements, there are still social differences between Blacks and Whites.
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