Black America: historie og kamp for lighed

The first black people came to America as slaves. They were brought there from American colonies or bought of local chieftains that had captured them as enemies.

In the beginning they worked on plantations or as servants in houses and even their children became slaves once they grew up.

The slavery gradually disappeared in the Northern states but it continued in the South until the Civil war. After that the black people began to have more rights but they were still parted from the white people and they couldn’t vote. They couldn’t even go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, walk in the same parks, or drink at the same drinking fountains as the white people. The Southern whites continued not to accept black people as their equals. Some whites even created organizations like the Ku Klux Klan only meant to terrorize black people.

Up in the sixties black people began to be treated more as equals to the white people. They demonstrated a lot and their leader Martin Luther King insisted that it had to be non-violent. He was later shot in 1968.

Gradually and after huge protests the laws and constitutions were changed so black people had the same rights as the white people.