From about 1619 until 1865, people of African descent were legally enslaved in the United States. The economic prosperity of early America and the accumulation of wealth by some families was made possible in large part by the free labor afforded by slavery. Over a half million Africans were brought over from Africa during the slave trade, but because laws declared the children of slaves to be slaves, the slave population in the United States grew to 4 million by the 1860 Census.

In the southern states, slaves were an essential part of the economic system (e.g., working on large plantations that produced cotton, tobacco and rice). Slaves were considered “property” and men, women and children were sold or traded, without regard to his/her family.

• slaves with dark skins usually worked in the fields and slaves with lighter skins worked in the homes of the owners

• slaves could own nothing and were forced to live in shacks and eat whatever was given to them by their masters

• slaves received no education and could legally be punished for not following orders or not performing up to the standards of their masters

Slavery was eventually abolished in 1863-65 with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation; it legally ended with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.