Krista Howard, age 10, of Matthews, N.C., for her question:
WHY DID PEOPLE HAVE SLAVES?
Today very few nations allow slavery. Most people agree the practice is wrong, but slavery does continue in some parts of Africa, Asia and South America. Most of the present slaves are blacks and Indians who were captured in local conflicts or were sold to satisfy debts. Unfortunately, slavery today remains a strongly accepted custom among the people who presently practice it.
Slavery probably developed when farming came about more than 10,000 years ago. Cultivating fields gave men an opportunity to put their prisoners of war to work. People captured in wars continued to be the chief source of slaves during earliest civilization. Criminals or people who could not pay their debts joined the ranks later.
Slavery existed with the ancient Sumerians, Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians. It was also practiced in ancient China and India and among the early Negroes in Africa and the Indians of America.
Ancient slavery probably reached its fullest development during the time of the great empires of Greece and Rome. Slaves did most of the work in these societies. Slaves made up more than a third of the population, and it was so widespread that even poor men owned slaves.
After the Roman Empire broke up, international trade fell sharply and the loss of markets for goods led to a decline in the need of slaves. In Europe, slavery slowly changed into a system of serfdom.
Throughout the Middle Ages, various peoples in Africa and Asia continued to enslave prisoners of war. Then, with the establishment of European colonies in the New World during the 1500s, sugar plantations were established in Mexico and Cuba and on other Caribbean islands. The Europeans enslaved thousands of Indians to work the fields, but most died quickly from European diseases and harsh treatments. The Europeans then began to import blacks from West Africa as slaves.
During the 1600s, France, Great Britain and The Netherlands joined Portugal and Spain with colonies in the New World and they greatly increased the African slave trade. Sugar, coffee, cotton and tobacco plantations became profitable because of enslaved labor.
Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, discrimination and a lack of education prevented most former slaves from obtaining good jobs. It was a great struggle for many blacks to receive the civil rights that they legally had been granted.
Historians still disagree over how much slavery contributed to discrimination and to other racial conflict that occurred in years following the Civil War.