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“Captive African and their descendants paid with their blood and sweat for the phenomenal expansion of human possibilities in the Atlantic world”(Rice, 62). Among many groups of people that migrated to America are the African Americans. At first it was by choice, but that gradually changed to being captured and forced to migrate to America to work in the plantation fields. African Americans faced racial oppression and prejudice in a land that put in its constitution “all men are created equal.” They were treated with disrespect, hostility, and cruelty and made inferior to their fellow beings. Despite the abolishment of slavery with the thirteenth amendment, African Americans still faced prejudice and racial hostility from all around.

The triangular slave trade came in three stages. The first stage was to gather completed goods from Britain and ship it to Africa. The goods included things such as cloth, tobacco, guns etc. these goods are then traded with the African tribes for slaves. The second stage included shipping the slaves to America. The third stage involves taking the slave-labor induced goods and shipping them back to Europe. The Atlantic slave trade originated with the Portuguese who had major power over the seas during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century. The Portuguese triangular trade lasted from 1502 to 1580. They began by raiding the slaves across the coasts of West Africa in 1441 to buying the slaves from African chief tribes in 1450s. By the late sixteenth century other nations such as Britain, Dutch, and French had joined the slave trade. However, by 1690s, the English were shipping the most slaves. The number of Africans to leaver their continent increased from 5000 a year to 100,000 a year.

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...restricted. They could not enter professional jobs such as medicine, because they were banned from the proper education required for it.

Racism has always been a part of American history. African Americans were forced to leave their homeland and brought to a nation where white men believe that they are superior and born to dominate the orient. They faced oppression from the beginning; their freedom stripped from them and made to depend on white slave owners for their needs. Freedom was scarce for the slaves. When they finally acquire it, they live in fear that that freedom will be stripped from them in the blink of an eye. The enslavement brought both positive and negative outcomes to American history. It helped in boosting the economy of the United States, but the destructive and immoral enslavement of an entire race will always be a dark part of American history.