A long time ago, when the United States of America was starting to grow, the people that had come over from Europe decided that they needed help to grow bigger and bigger.

Sadly, the European Americans, did not want to pay for that help. Instead, they brought slaves from Africa to work in their fields. A slave means that you work for someone without being paid.

Slaves lived in very bad houses, were fed little food, and were often given new names and separated from their families as they were bought and sold to different land owners who wanted the slaves to work for them.

Slavery went on for over 200 years. Oppression was worse in some parts of the United States, and better in others. There were secret people who helped the African slaves get up North where they could be free. This was called the underground railroad.

This is Harriett Tubman. She helped save 70 enslaved people through the underground railroad. Remember, they had no cars, phones, or google maps to tell them where to go.

In the year 1863, 136 years ago, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclimation. This was after the Civil War where the North and South fought each other over whether or not to keep slavery. The war lasted 3 years until the Emancipation Procilmation.

The Emancipation Prolimation was a law that made all slaves free men, in both the North and South of the United States. That was 4 million people!

Even though slavery was over, oppression still existed. The European Americans still thought that they were better than the African Americans, and treated them very poorly. African Americans lived in bad homes, had bad jobs, and struggled to survive in America. In the South, the oppression was very bad. There were laws put in place after the Emancipation Proclimation called the Jim Crow Laws.

Jim Crow laws were laws that kept African and European Americans from going to the same schools, eating at the same restaurants, living in the same neighborhoods, and even using the same water fountain. The White people justified this discrimination using the phrase "separate but equal". Meaning, the two races were separate, but had the same things.