С.Е.П.У.Г.С.

Васил Антевски-Дрен

Проектна задача

The Afro-American fight for rights in post slavery

USA with a special focus on Martin Luther King Jr.

Ментор Изработил/а

Проф. Ирена Стрејкиќ Ирина Ставровска

 Introduction
Slavery is when a person, called a slave, is treated as the property of another person, called a
master. It often means that slaves are forced to work, or else they will be punished by the law (if
slavery is legal in that place) or by their master. There is evidence that even before there was
writing, there was slavery. There have been different types of slavery, and they have been in
almost all cultures and continents. Some societies had laws about slavery, or they had an
economy that was built on it. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome had many slaves.

During the 20th century almost all countries made laws forbidding slavery. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights says that slavery is wrong. Slavery is now banned by international
law. Nevertheless, there are still different forms of slavery in some countries.

The English word "slave" comes from the medieval word for the Slavic peoples of Central
Europe and Eastern Europe, because these were the last ethnic group to be captured and enslaved
in Central Europe. According to Adam Smith and Auguste Comte, a slave was mainly defined as
a captive or prisoner of war. Slave-holders used to buy slaves at slave auctions. In many cases
slaves are not allowed rights.

Slavery in Early civilizations

In one form or another, slavery has been practiced since the earliest civilizations. Early hunter-
gatherers had no use for slaves. They did everything for themselves. Having another pair of
hands to help them meant another mouth to feed. Slavery or owning another person made no
sense to these people. Once men gathered in cities and towns and there was more than enough
food, having a cheap supply of labor made sense. This is when the earliest forms of slavery
appeared. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (c.
1760 BC). This refers to it as an established institution.

In the Ancient Near East, captives obtained through warfare often became slaves. This was seen
by the laws in the Bible book of Deuteronomy as a legal form of slavery. But the Israelites were
not allowed to enslave other Israelites. The Deuteronomic Code calls for the death penalty for the
crime of kidnapping Israelites to enslave them.

In Ancient Egypt, slaves were mainly prisoners of war. Other ways people could become slaves
was by inheriting the status from their parents who were slaves. Someone could become a slave
if he could not pay his debts. People also sold themselves into slavery because they were poor
peasants and needed food and shelter. The lives of slaves were normally better than that of
peasants. Young slaves could not be put to hard work, and had to be brought up by the mistress
of the household. Not all slaves went to houses. Some also sold themselves to temples, or were
assigned to temples by the king. Slave trading was not very popular until later in Ancient Egypt.
Afterwards, slave trades sprang up all over Egypt.

In many places, citizens were partly or fully protected from being enslaved, so most slaves were
foreigners.

Slavery in ancient Rome

Roman slaves played an important role in society and the economy. Besides manual labor, slaves
performed many domestic services. They could work at highly skilled jobs and professions.
Teachers, accountants, and physicians were often slaves. Greek slaves were often highly
educated. Unskilled slaves, or those sentenced to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in
mines, and at mills. Their living conditions were brutal, and their lives short.

Slaves were considered property under Roman law and had no legal personhood. Unlike Roman
citizens, they could be subjected to corporal punishment, sexual exploitation (prostitutes were
often slaves), torture, and summary execution. The testimony of a slave could not be accepted in
a court of law unless the slave was tortured—a practice based on the belief that slaves in a
position to be privy to their masters' affairs would be too virtuously loyal to reveal damaging
evidence unless coerced. Over time, however, slaves gained increased legal protection, including
the right to file complaints against their masters. Attitudes changed in part because of the
influence among the educated elite of the Stoics, whose egalitarian views of humanity extended
to slaves.

Roman slaves could hold property which, even though it belonged to their masters, they were
allowed to use as if it were their own. Skilled or educated slaves were allowed to earn their own
money. With enough money they could buy their freedom.

After the Roman Empire broke up, slavery gradually changed into serfdom.

The Slave Trades

Arab Slave Trade
Historians estimate that between 650 AD and the 1960s, 10 to 18 million people were enslaved
by Arab slave traders. They were taken from Europe, Asia and Africa across the Red Sea, Indian
Ocean, and Sahara desert. Male slaves were often employed as servants, soldiers, or workers by
their owners. Most male slaves were castrated. It is estimated that as many as 6 out of every 10
boys bled to death during the process.But the high price of Eunuchs made it worthwhile. Woman
and children taken as slaves were mainly used as servants and concubines. While the later
Atlantic slave trade concentrated on men for labor, the Arab slave trade started with men and
boys, but shifted over time to concentrate more on woman and young girls for sexual purposes.

The Atlantic slave trade

For four centuries, beginning in the late 15th century, millions of Africans were taken as slaves
by Europeans. The Europeans were not the first to exploit Africa for manpower. Beginning in
about 650 AD, Arab slave traders began taking slaves from Africa. They dealt mainly in
castrated male slaves (eunuchs). According to Ronald Segal, author of Islam’s Black Slaves: The
Other Black Diaspora (2002), "The calipha in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th Century had
7,000 black eunuchs and 4,000 white eunuchs in his palace”.By the 1900s, Arab slave traders
had taken between 10 and 20 million slaves out of Africa. It is not certain that European slave
traders obtained black slaves from the Arab slave traders. The Arabs concentrated mainly on
supplying their own needs. Europeans began exporting Africans to the New World as a source of
cheap labor on colonial plantations.

Between 1452 and 1455, Pope Nicolas V issued a series of papal bulls authorizing the
Portuguese to take African slaves. At first slave traders raided coastal areas and carried black
people off. But the mines and fields of the colonies needed more and more slaves. In the early
16th century Spain began to issue licenses and contracts to supply slaves. By the 1750s large
slaving companies were established. Most of Europe at the time was involved in the slave trade. Commented [I1]: This entire section is irrelevant. You should
write about the post slavery period in America, not about the
slavery around the world. Remove this section

Slavery in the Americas

Many Europeans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under
contract as indentured servants. The change from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual
process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640. This is where a
negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery for attempting to run away. This case also
marked the disparate treatment of Africans as held by the Virginia County Court, where two
white runaways received far lesser sentences. After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration
of indentured contracts. They kept their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the
case Johnson v. Parker. The court ruled that John Casor, an indentured servant, be returned to
Johnson who claimed that Casor belonged to him for his life. According to the 1860 U. S.
census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US families, owned 3,950,528 slaves.
One-third of Southern families owned slaves. Slavery in United States was legally abolished by
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.

Slavery Today
Millions of people are still slaves in some parts of the world, mostly in South Asia and Africa. It
is less common in the developed world because of better law enforcement, but it still happens
there as well. The ways in which it is done have changed. Today, slaves may work because of
things like a high debt (for example, slaves have to work to pay off a debt). Many victims are
told that their families will be harmed if they report the slave owners. Many slaves are forced to
be domestic servants. In some cases, their families sell them to the slave owners. Some slaves
have been trafficked from one part of the world to another. These people are illegally in their
host country, and therefore do not report the abuse. Forced prostitution is a type of slavery.
Another form of slavery still happening today is forced child labor. Some children have to work
in mines or in plantations, or they have to fight wars as child soldiers, for no pay. One study says
that there are 27 million people (but others say there could be as many as 200 million) in slavery
today. Other terms that describe the recruitement of laborers, and that may have similarities to
slavery are Blackbirding, Impressment and Shanghaiing.

Countries that still have Slavery

Some of the countries where there is still slavery

are in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In summer 2007, 570 people were found to be
slaves for brick makers in China.They included 69 children. The Chinese government made a
force of 35,000 police check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, and sent lots of kiln
supervisors and officials to prison and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing a worker
who was a slave. In Mauritania, it is thought that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or
20% of the population, are slaves, and that many of them are used as bonded labour. Slavery in
Mauritania was made illegal in August 2007. In Niger, there is also much slavery. A Nigerian
study has found that more than 800,000 people are slaves, almost 8% of the population. Child
slavery has commonly been used when making cash crops and mining. According to the United
States Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in
Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labour' in 2002. In November 2006, the
International Labour Organization said that it would prosecute members of the junta that rules
Myanmar (also called Burma) at the International Court of Justice for "Crimes against
Humanity". This is because the military makes some citizens do forced labour. The International
Labour Organisation says that it thinks that about 800,000 people are forced to work this way.
Scholars of Islamic law have condemned the revival of the slave trade of non-Muslim women by
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Commented [I2]: Again irrelevant material. You are off topic.

Slavery in the United States

The system of slavery and the use of labor of slaves, which existed in the British American
colonies and the United States in 1619-1865. Most of the slaves were blacks, forcibly removed
from their homes in Africa, and their descendants. For the first time, African slaves were brought
to British Virginia by British colonists in 1619. As of 1860, of the 12 million population of the
15 US states where slavery persisted, 4 million were slaves. Of the 1.5 million families living in
these states, more than 390 thousand families had slaves. Among the "white slaves" the Irish
prevailed, captured by the British during the conquest of Ireland in 1649-1651 . The intermediate
position between the exiles and free colonists was “sold into service” (English Indenture) - when
people sold their freedom for the right to move to the colonies and “work out” it there again.
Slave labor was widely used in plantations. In the first half of the XIX century, the national
wealth of the United States was largely based on the exploitation of slave labor . During the
period from the XVI century to the XIX century, about 12 million Africans were brought to the
countries of America, of which about 645 thousand - to the territory of the modern USA .On
September 18, 1850, the US Congress passed a law on fugitive slaves, permitting the search and
detention of fugitive slaves in the territories where slavery was abolished. The law obliged the
population of all states to actively participate in apprehending runaway slaves and provided for
severe punishment for slaves, those who harbored them and those who did not facilitate the
capture of a slave. In all the southern and northern states, special commissioners for catching
slaves were established, who should be assisted. The captured slaves were put in prison and
returned to the slave owner under armed guard. For a slave to be recognized as a fugitive, it was
enough that any white man declared and confirmed on oath that this black man was a slave who
had fled from him . It should be noted that over time, a deep contradiction has ripened within the
United States, expressed in the fact that there was no slavery in the north, but it existed in the
south, and on a large scale.

Abolitionism as an ideological prerequisite for the abolition of

slavery
Closer to the beginning of the Civil War of 1861-1865, the ideological contradiction became
more acute. This was associated with abolitionism (in the traditional sense of this movement for
the abolition of any law), which turned into a social movement for the abolition of slavery, under
the slogan: "All people are born equal." The development of this social movement was one of the
key prerequisites for civil war and the abolition of slavery.

Political and legal disagreements arising from the admission of

new states to the federation
The second, perhaps no less important prerequisite, was the contradiction expressed in the
competition on the admission of new states to the American federation, when the question arose
whether the new state would be slave-owning or free. In 1857, even the US Supreme Court
found itself at the center of deep political and legal disagreements between the North and the
South in conditions of unreserved slavery. "The struggle between supporters and opponents of
slavery was further exacerbated by the loud legal process" Dred Scott vs. Sandford, during which
the US Supreme Court made an overtly racist decision that blacks could not be recognized as US
citizens and prohibited states from passing laws abolishing slavery "

Customs duties as an economic prerequisite for the abolition of

slavery
The third reason, of course, was the fundamental disagreement on the issue of increasing or
decreasing customs duties. The North, having a developed industry, was interested in selling its
goods on the market of southern states and increasing customs duties on imported goods, while
the south, on the contrary, was interested in the fact that goods imported from Europe were not
taxed, which would induce local restrain prices. In addition, in the north there was already a
serious shortage of manpower, which was in abundance in the south, but it was not free.

Slavery was abolished after the end of the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the adoption of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in December 1865. The last state to ratify this
amendment was Mississippi in 2013.

Commented [I3]: The entire text is copied from Wikipedia –

Martin Luther King, Jr. word for word.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.
You have even used the same photos.
Copying is inacceptable in the graduation project work. Normally,
you can not invent anything from the past, but you can rewrite it in
your own words by using transformations of any kind.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 –

April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-
American Civil Rights Movement. He was best known for improving civil rights by using
nonviolent civil disobedience, based on his Christian beliefs. Because he was both a Ph.D. and a
pastor, King is sometimes called the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. (abbreviation: the
Rev. Dr. King), or just Dr. King. He is also known by his initials MLK. King worked hard to
make people understand that not only blacks, but that all races should always be treated equally
to white people. He gave speeches to encourage African Americans to protest without using
violence. Led by Dr. King and others, many African Americans used nonviolent, peaceful
strategies to fight for their civil rights. These strategies included sit-ins, boycotts, and protest
marches. Often, they were attacked by white police officers or people who did not want African
Americans to have more rights. However, no matter how badly they were attacked, Dr. King and
his followers never fought back. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington,
where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. The next year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
King fought for equal rights from the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 until he was
murdered by James Earl Ray in April 1968.

Early life of MLK

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Although the name
"Michael" appeared on his birth certificate, his name was later changed to Martin Luther in
honor of German reformer Martin Luther. As King was growing up, everything in Georgia was
segregated, 70 years after the Confederacy was defeated and blacks were later separated away
from white people. This meant that black and white people were not allowed to go to the same
schools, use the same public bathrooms, eat at the same restaurants, drink at the same water
fountains, or even go to the same hospitals. Everything was separate. However, the white
hospitals, schools, and other places were usually much better than the places where black people
were allowed to go. At age 6, King first went through discrimination (being treated worse than a
white person because he was black). He was sent to an all-black school, and a white friend was
sent to an all-white school. Once, when he was 14, King won a contest with a speech about civil
rights. When he was going back home on a bus, he was forced to give up his seat and stand for
the bus ride so a white person could sit down. At the time, white people were seen as more
important than black people. If a white person wanted a seat, that person could take the seat from
any African American. King later said having to give up his seat made him "the angriest I've ever
been in my life."

Education
King went to segregated schools in Georgia, and finished high school at age 15. He went on to
Morehouse College in Georgia, where his father and grandfather had gone. After graduating
from college in 1948, King decided he was not exactly the type of person to join the Baptist
Church. He was not sure what kind of career he wanted. He thought about being a doctor or a
lawyer. He decided not to do either, and joined the Baptist Church. King went to a seminary in
Pennsylvania to become a pastor. While studying there, King learned about the non-violent
methods used by Mahatma Gandhi against the British Empire in India. King was convinced that
these non-violent methods would help the civil rights movement. Finally, in 1955, King earned a
Ph.D. from Boston University's School of Theology.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

King first started his civil rights

activism in 1955. At that time, he led a protest against the way black people were segregated on
buses. They had to sit at the back of the bus, separate from white people. He told his supporters,
and the people who were against equal rights, that people should only use peaceful ways to solve
the problem. King was chosen as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA),
which was created during the boycott. Rosa Parks later said: "Dr. King was chosen in part
because he was relatively new to the community and so [he] did not have any enemies." King
ended up becoming an important leader of the boycott, becoming famous around the country,
and making many enemies. King was arrested for starting a boycott. He was fined $500, plus
$500 more in court costs. His house was fire-bombed. Others involved with MIA were also
threatened. However, by December 1956, segregation had been ended on Montgomery's buses.
People could sit anywhere they wanted on the buses. After the bus boycott, King and Ralph
Abernathy started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group decided
that they would only use non-violence. Its motto was "Not one hair of one head of one person
should be harmed." The SCLC chose King as its president.

March on Washington
In 1963, King helped plan the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This was the largest
protest for human rights in United States history. On August 28, 1963, about 250,000 people
marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Then they listened to civil
rights leaders speak. King was the last speaker. His speech, called "I Have a Dream," became
one of history's most famous civil rights speeches.King talked about his dream that one day,
white and black people would be equal. That same year, the United States government passed the
Civil Rights Act. This law made many kinds of discrimination against black people illegal.
The March on Washington made it clear to the United States government that they needed to
take action on civil rights, and it helped get the Civil Rights Act passed.

Nobel Prize
In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When presenting him with the award, the
Chairman of the Nobel Committee said:

Today, now that mankind [has] the atom bomb, the time has come to lay our
weapons and armaments aside and listen to the message Martin Luther King has
given us[:] "The choice is either nonviolence or nonexistence"....

[King] is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle
can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly
love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all
men, to all nations and races.

Voting rights
 King and many others then started
working on the problem of racism in voting. At the time, many of the Southern states had laws
which made it very hard or impossible for African-Americans to vote. For example, they would
make African Americans pay extra taxes, pass reading tests, or pass tests about the Constitution.
White people did not have to do these things. In 1963 and 1964, civil rights groups in Selma,
Alabama had been trying to sign African-American people up to vote, but they had not been able
to. At the time, 99% of the people signed up to vote in Selma were white. However, the
government workers who signed up voters were all white. They refused to sign up African-
Americans. In January 1965, these civil rights groups asked King and the SCLC to help them.
Together, they started working on voting rights.However, the next month, an African-American
man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a police officer during a peaceful march. Jackson
died.Many African-American people were very angry. The SCLC decided to organize a march
from Selma to Montgomery. By walking 54 miles (87 kilometers) to the state capital, activists
hoped to show how badly African-Americans wanted to vote. They also wanted to show that
they would not let racism or violence stop them from getting equal rights.

The first march was on March 7, 1965. Police officers, and people they had chosen to help them,
attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas. They threatened to throw the marchers off the
Edmund Pettus Bridge. Seventeen marchers had to go to the hospital, and 50 others were also
injured. This day came to be called Bloody Sunday. Pictures and film of the marchers being
beaten were shown around the world, in newspapers and on television. Seeing these things made
more people support the civil rights activists. People came from all over the United States to
march with the activists. One of them, James Reeb, was attacked by white people for supporting
civil rights. He died on March 11, 1965.

Finally, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send soldiers from the United States Army and
the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers. From March 21 to March 25, the marchers
walked along the "Jefferson Davis Highway" from Selma to Montgomery. Led by King and
other leaders, 25,000 people who entered Montgomery on March 25. He gave a speech called
"How Long? Not Long" at the Alabama State Capitol. He told the marchers that it would not be
long before they had equal rights, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
toward justice."

On August 6, 1965, the United States passed the Voting Rights Act. This law made it illegal to
stop somebody from voting because of their race.

After this, King continued to fight poverty and the Vietnam War.

Assassination
King had made enemies by working for civil rights and becoming such a powerful leader. The
Ku Klux Klan did what they could to hurt King's reputation, especially in the South. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) watched King closely. They wiretapped his phones, his home, and
the phones and homes of his friends.

On April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee. He planned to lead a protest march to
support garbage workers who were on strike. At 6:01 pm, King was shot while he was standing
on the balcony of his motel room. The bullet entered through his right cheek and travelled down
his neck. It cut open the biggest veins and arteries in King's neck before stopping in his shoulder.

King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital. His heart had stopped. Doctors there cut open his chest
and tried to make his heart start pumping again. However, they were unable to save King's life.
He died at 7:05 p.m.

King's death led to riots in many cities.

 In March 1969, James Earl Ray was
found guilty of killing King. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ray died in 1998.

Legacy
Just days after King's death, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act,
usually called the Fair Housing Act, made it illegal to discriminate in housing because of a
person's race, religion, or home country. (For example, this made it illegal for a realtor to refuse
to let a black family buy a house in a white neighborhood.) This law was seen as a tribute to
King's last few years of work fighting housing discrimination in the United States.

After his death, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. King and his wife were
also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. In 1986, the United States government created a
national holiday in King's honor. It is called Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is celebrated on the
third Monday in January.[1] This is around the time of King's birthday. Many people fought for
the holiday to be created, including singer Stevie Wonder.

In 2003, the United States Congress passed a law allowing the beginning words of King's "I
Have a Dream" speech to be carved into the Lincoln Memorial.
King County in the state of Washington, is named after King. Originally, the county was named
after William R. King, an American politician who owned slaves. In 2005, the King County
government decided the county would now be named after Martin Luther King, Jr. Two years
later, they changed their official logo to include a picture of King.

More than 900 streets in the United States have also been named after King. These streets exist
in 40 different states; Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico. and many others.

In 2011, a memorial statue of King was put up on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Conclusion
While it might be disregarded as fixed/solved, the issue still persists racism is still a worldwide
issue. Slavery was and still is an atrocious subject. Slavery might be near non-existent in this day
and age but racism is not, which is really concerning towards us the people and how this world
shapes itself in the following years of existence. While police brutality is somewhat a familiar
sight, social media helps make matters worse with its speed of transfer of information, while it
might all be true it might all be complete non-sense. In this day and age of computers and so
called smart phones where everyone can say their bad mannered or even racist thoughts
anonymously, those who aren’t as mentally strong suffer the most. The main matter I’m trying to
address here is racism is never good, never was never will be.

Commented [I4]: As it is previously commented, this project

work is meant to be your original work, not a copy-paste operation
from the internet. You also have used material that is irrelevant for
the topic and shouldn’t be used. You need to write the work in your
own words, with your own understanding of the problem of the
post-slavery period.