During the 15th century, Africa entered into a unique relationship with Europe which led to the depopulation of Africa but contributed to the wealth of Europe. From then, Europeans began to develop a trade for Africans. Many of these captives would be transported across the Indian Ocean or across the Sahara.
The civil rights movement began during the 1950s and 1960s, for black Americans to gain equal rights under law in America. The civil war officially abolished slavery but this ddint put an end to discrimination. It was led by people like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and many others. In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field. To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they’d made during Reconstruction, “Jim Crows” laws were established in the South. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn’t vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests. Jim Crow laws weren’t enforced in northern states, however Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, colour or national origin. On December 1st 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Rosa Parks had complied. When a white man got on the bus and couldn’t find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Rosa and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Rosa refused and was arrested. She then became the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement"
In 1966 the Black Panther Party (BPP) was created by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton. This was a black power political organization originally made for self-defense and patrolling African American neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality. The organization immediately sought to set itself apart from African American cultural nationalist organizations like Universal Negro Improvement Association.. Eventually, they devolved into a group that called for the joining of all African Americans. In the later 1960s, the organization reached its peak and gained 2000 members and it operated in many major American cities. Despite the passing of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, African Americans still continued to suffer social and economic inequality daily, leaving them with poor living conditions, jobless and lots of violence, which then led to the increase of police violence as a way to control this. Most African American cultural nationalists generally regarded all white people as oppressors, however the Black Panther Party distinguished between racist and nonracist whites and allied themselves with them. The Black Panther Party outlined a Ten Point Program, not unlike those of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, to initiate national African American community survival projects and to forge alliances with white radicals and other organizations of people of colour. The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality, employment for African Americans, and land, housing and justice for all. Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther’s newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded. Conflicts within the party often turned violent too. In 1969, Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley was tortured and murdered by other Black Panthers who thought he was a police informant.
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