On Thursday in social class my teacher talked about the African slave trade. This was way before Christopher Columbus explored. African people (men, women and children) were captured and was brought to the Americas. There they are to be auctioned off to someone, and they will be their personal slave. These slaves were tortured by their owners if they tried to escape, looked at a white man for too long and sometimes for just looking bad. The slaves were given 30 lashes on the back and if they touched a women’s hand they would get 7o lashes on the back. Inequality was a big thing during this time, they were not treated like humans but like animals because they were “black”.
Slavery still exists until now, there is child slavery, human trafficking, forced labour, domestic labour and many more. Men, women and even children are forced to work with little amount of money that they pay them. They are also abused and tortured.
This topic has a relation to my country, Somalia. A group of people named the Somali  Bantu came to Somalia from Mozambique and Malawi. Around the 1800’s the Somali Bantu people were captured by the Arabs, and started the Arab slave trade. They were to work in plantations harvesting crops that would make a lot of money, grain and cotton. Some of the slaves that were captured were sold to the Europeans and some parts of Africa, including Somalia.
In the 1930’s the Italians came and freed the Somali Bantu people, although some of the Bantu people were still enslaved. The mid-1930’s Italy enforced labour laws. The Somali Bantu people were forced to work in over 100 plantations, and to do this they were to abandon their farms and homes and live in government authorized homes. So, the Somali Bantu people were slaves for most of their lives. They were released from being slaves, but once they got out they were forced in labour working in plantations by the Italians.
ChangeCanHappen 
