page_title: Racism in the United States
section_title: Steps toward the abolition of slavery
hierarchical_section_title: Racism in the United States / African Americans / Pre-Civil War / Steps toward the abolition of slavery
caption_attribution_description: English: Scars of a whipped slave (April 2, 1863, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA). Original caption: "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer. The very words of poor Peter, taken as he sat for his picture.". This is a different photograph than the other ones, it is not cropped. Français&#160;: Cicatrices de flagellation sur un esclave, (2 avril 1863, Bâton-Rouge, Louisiane, États-Unis). Légende originale&#160;: «&#160;Le contremaître Artayou Carrier m'a fouetté. À la suite de cette flagellation, j'ai eu des escarres pendant deux mois. Mon maître est venu après que j'ai été fouetté&#160;; il a licencié le contremaître. Ce sont les propres paroles du malheureux Peter alors qu'il posait pour la photo.&#160;»
context_page_description: Racism in the United States has existed since the colonial era, and it involved laws, practices and actions that discriminated against various groups or otherwise adversely impacted them based on their race or ethnicity, while most white Americans enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights which were denied to members of other races and minority groups. European Americans—particularly affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants—enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure throughout American history. Groups which were especially impacted by racism included non-Protestant immigrants from Europe, including the Irish, Poles, and Italians, who were often subjected to xenophobic exclusion and other forms of ethnicity-based discrimination in American society until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Historically, Hispanics have experienced continuous racism in the United States despite many having European ancestry.
context_section_description: During the 1820s and 1830s, the solution of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to the presence of free blacks was to persuade them to emigrate to Africa. In 1821, the ACS established the colony of Liberia, and persuaded thousands of former slaves and free black people to move there. Some slaves were manumitted (set free) on condition that they emigrate. The slave states made no secret that they wanted to get rid of free blacks, who they believed threatened their investment, the slaves, encouraging escapes and revolts. The support for the ACS was primarily Southern. The founder of the ACS, Henry Clay of Kentucky, stated that because of "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Thousands of black people were resettled in Liberia, where they were an American English speaking enclave that could not assimilate back into African life and most died from tropical diseases.
  Although the “importation” of slaves into the United States was outlawed by federal law from 1808, the domestic trade in slaves continued to be a major economic activity. Maryland and Virginia, for example, would "export" its surplus slaves to the south. (See Franklin and Armfield Office.) Enslaved family members could be split up (ie., sold off) never to see or hear of each other again. Between 1830 and 1840 nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines. In the 1850s more than 193,000 were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million in total were traded. Slavery itself was abolished in the 1860s.
  The historian Ira Berlin called this forced migration of slaves the "Second Middle Passage", because it reproduced many of the same horrors as the Middle Passage (the name given to the transportation of slaves from Africa to North America). These sales of slaves broke up many families, with Berlin writing that whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people". Individuals lost their connection to families and clans. Added to the earlier colonists combining slaves from different tribes, many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. Most were descended from families who had been in the U.S. for many generations.
caption: Scars of a whipped slave, April 2, 1863, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
exif: {}