ABSTRACT
America has often been called a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of former slaves and natives who were either brought to the country against their will or forcibly pushed out of their ancestral homelands to make way for the white man. The history of race relations in the United States, especially with respect to African-American slaves and Native Americans, is disturbing and sad. The slaves brought to the country from West Africa to work in the fields of the South were not only denied their basic civil and human rights, but they were treated as simple property easily bought and sold by landowners who were anxious for inexpensive labor. The natives who occupied the country before the white man landed were often treated as unwanted interlopers who could
be moved from place to place to accommodate the white man’s dream of extending the frontier westward. The slaves and the natives were expendable, and many endured the cruelest treatment.
