They were considered property and Europeans thought they were somehow inferior because of their appearance. They were portrayed as savages that came from the wilderness, and considered some kind of animal. The massive immigration of African slaves to America led to several sociological problems such as the segregation of races in America, and the matriarchal order in Africa. Those slaves traveled long journeys through the Atlantic, and the conditions in which they traveled makes us realize how horrible they were treated. Some of them died in the middle of the trip and were thrown to the sea as food for the sharks. Even though the colonizers worked in some ways along with the Native Americans, they also intimidated them with their weapons and all because of their ignorance. As some of them were brought from different parts of Africa, they also struggled because of language and left behind their families causing changes in sociological order. Only because they were ignorant and had a different way of living, we took advantage of them and committed the atrocities that still shame us today.
Through the years, slavery became more popular and more accepted in America. As the demand for slaves increased because of the settlement of Englishmen in America, the number of slaves reached 11 million, who were divided among farm workers and servants. After the declaration of independence when Thomas Jefferson stated that "All men are created equal", the slaves thought that they would gain also some freedom as a result of the American Revolution. They achieved some confidence to start some protests like the Stono Rebellion in 1739, where one hundred slaves attempted to escape to Florida as a result of the bad treatment and the conditions they lived in. But then, events as the Dred Scott Decision where the government said that slaves were not considered US citizens and therefore could not vote, made them lose some of their hopes of freedom and started a friction between races.