Africans w/ Estela

African Americans first arrived in America during the 17th century. Unlike other immigrants, African Americans were brought to America against their own will. They were caught up in a brutal system of human exploitation. When they first stepped foot onto North America they found themselves in the midst of a thriving slave society. African Americans endured a treatment of harshness seldom. 

African American slaves could be found all over the country to put their hands on all kinds of labor. They tended the wheat fields and fruit orchards of New York and New Jersey; they traveled underground to mine iron and lead in the Ohio Valley; they piloted fishing boats and worked the docks in New England; they operated printing presses in New York City, dairies in Delaware, and managed households from Florida to Maine. After, when African American Americans were given their freedom with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, many tens of thousands began traveling throughout the South in search of long-lost family members, searches that often took years. Then returned to their homelands.

During most of the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery was the law in all of the 13 colonies, North and South. It was employed by its most prominent citizens, including many of the founders of the new United States. The importation of slaves was provided for in the U.S. Constitution, and continued to take place on a large scale even after it was made illegal in 1808. Due to these laws every African American that was brought into America was auctioned off, made a slave, and did lots of labor. 

African American immigrants were received by the current citizens of the United States as slaves. They were put up for auction and declared each to be private property. They used them for their own benefit. In the eyes of the law and of most non-African Americans, they had no authority to make decisions about their own lives. They could be bought, sold, tortured, rewarded, educated, or killed at a slaveholder's will.

Assimilation was not a part of the African Americans' lives in America. They did not see themselves as part of a larger national family at all. They were mistreated in America in a variety of ways. African Americans were seen as property and nothing more; only accepted as slaves.



While in America, African Americans were slaves. Based on their owner they either didn't get payed at all or got payed very little. Some African Americans were able to save up and buy their own freedom and try to start a better life with what they had. Other slaves were had no choice and had to do labor for free and when freed or escaped were left with nothing. The slaves never had lots of many, barely any to support themselves or their families.

The African Americans traditions were not respected. They had to change when they were in the United States. African Americans had a completely way of doing things than they did in the U.S. They had to learn American ways because they were not in their homelands.