1. Choose a minority group in the US, and discuss its history, current situation, and possible future. Your own opinion may be included at the end.
African Americans.
It all began in 1517 when the Spaniards imported black slaves from Africa to do the work on their plantations. They used to have native Indians but they all had died from the abuse and the diseases that the Spaniards brought with them. The Africans were first sent to the West Indies and then to the mainland, where the sugar industry was promising. The first African slaves in North America arrived at the English colony of Virginia aboard a Dutch ship in 1619. In 1681 there were about 2,000 slaves in Virginia, but by the mid 19th century, the slave population in America had risen to more than 4,000,000. The slaves were part of the 'triangle trade'. The ships sailed in a triangle from America to Europe with goods such as sugar and tobacco.
English: Photograph of Rosa Parks with Dr. Martin ...
Crowds surrounding the Reflecting Pool, during the...
English: Dr. Martin Luther King giving his "I Have...From Europe they sailed to Africa with silver and guns and from Africa to America with slaves.
The civil war begins in South Carolina, as the Confederates open fire on Fort Sumter in 1861. With President Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Civil War became a war to save the union and to abolish slavery.
Approximately 180,000 African Americans served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African Americans served in the Union Navy. Both free Africans-Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight.
African-Americans after the Civil War enjoyed many privileges that their predecessors could only dream of. They could vote, hold office and attend school. But they didn't have it all that easy. After decades of silently enduring second-class citizenship, blacks in the late 1940s and early 1950s...