The African American Experience
The black experience is unique among American ethnic groups. No other group entered the society so completely as involuntary immigrants, and no other group was subjected to such fully institutionalized degradation. More than a century after the abolition of slavery, the aftereffects of slavery continue to influence the patterns of black-white relations and the place of blacks in the social hierarchy, and imposed inequalities continue to weigh upon many of the more than 33 million African Americans living in the US.

Experience as Slaves
TTie process of assimilation in the US has been much more successful for white ethnic groups than for nonwhite ethnic groups. Of the nonwhite ethnic groups, Americans of African descent have had the greatest difficulty in becoming assimilated into the largie culture. Afiican - Americans were brought to the US against their will to be sold as slaves. Between 1619 and 1860 some 400,000 blacks were transported from Africa to what is now the United States. This was not a large number as compared with the total Atlantic slave trade, which carried around 9.5 million from Africa to the New World, most of them to the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean. Tom from their families and villages, marched to the coast, confined in cages to await a passing ship, then crammed below decks more than two months, they were finally brou^it ashore to be auctioned off. How many enslaved blacks perished in Africa it is impossible to say, but on average between 6 and 16% died during the voyage and perhaps as many again during the subsequent period of seasoning. The abolition of the slave trade of the US in 1807 did not bring about a decline in slave numbers. The great westward advance of the cotton empire of the early 19th century depended on ever-increasing numbers of American-born slaves.

By the time of the Civil War, die ordinal 400,000 black slaves transported to North America had increased ten-fold to more than 4 million.

One consequence of the natural increase of slaves in America was that among them little in the way of specific Afncan practices, institutions, customs or beliefs survived. Except in the very early years, blacks bom in Africa were always outnumbered by the Amcrican-bom; and probably less than one in a hundred of the slaves emancipated by Lincoln had actually seen Africa.

For the blacks bom in Africa, as for the native-born, their ability to communicate with one another was strictly limited，and the only common language and institutions available were those provided by their white masters.

The enslavement of African-Amcricans in the US was a complete contradiction of such traditional basic American values as freedom and equality of opportunity. Abraham Lincoln, like other white in the North insisted that slavery and freedom could not exist together in a democratic and free country and demanded that slavery be abolished，even if this meant war with the South. The black slavery ended in the US after the Civil War of 1861-65，however, Airican-Americans were not readily assimilated into the larger American culture.

A former slave displays the telltale crisscross, keloid scars from being bullwhipped

Racial Discrimination
Jim Crow measures were designed to separate whites and blacks in almost all areas of social life: housing, work, education, health care, transportation, leisure, and religion. Most remained in the South， where they were not allowed to vote and were legally segregated from whites. Black children were not allowed to attend white public schools, and many received an inferior education that did not give them an equal opportunity to compete in the white-dominated society.

Racial segregation was maintained by both force and ideology. With the rise of vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, violence and physical intimidation became the order of the day. Lynching was the most extreme technique employed to maintain black subservience and was resorted to with increasing frequency. Ideas of racial superiority and inferiority were now supported by scientific thought and were applied not only to blacks, but also to all non - Anglo -Saxon groups. The negative stereotypes of blacks that emerged from slavery 一 lazy, childish, irresponsible, uncouth 一 became even more potent.

The fact of slavery weighs so heavily on the black experience that its lingering effects continue to make blacks a special group in the American ethnic hierarchy. Blacks arc three times more likely to be poor than are whites. Many former slaves and their families became cau^it in a cycle of poverty and continued for generations. Conditions were worse for the blacks in the segregated South which was Cotorecf waiting room , Georgia, 1943 ravaged, pauperized and bitter in defeat, with its cotton-based economy decimated, but the belief of “white supremacy" survived: even the most degraded poor white trash knew themselves superior to the most elevated “nigger”. Blacks continued to be the victinis of strong racial prejudice in the North as well as in the South.