9781422277409

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

forced labor, mining silver inPeru, raising coffee inBrazil, growing sugar in the Caribbean, and tending rice, cotton, and tobacco in the southern United States. Most lived lives of great poverty, stress, and danger. ANewEra I n theUnitedStates, the extended brutality of slavery eventually resulted in a violent conflict: the Civil War. After this bloody war ended in 1865, slaverywas abolished, although it took another century for conditions for AfricanAmericans to substantially improve.Manywhite people, especial- ly in the South, still thought of blacks as inferior. Blacks had nowhere

After the Civil War ended, African Americans still faced poverty, discrimination, and want, even as they worked to “rise up.”