Many of the blacks who arrived on the shores of this new land in the seventeenth century as slaves or indentured servants were able to work to purchase their freedombuy their own land and partake in the mainstream of infant America. In our proud history. there have been major black shipbuilders and shippers. We have seen highly successful black merchants who pioneered in the fields of catering. barbering and clothing manufacturing. But it was all taken away in the midnineteenth century by another set of restrictive laws designed to protect the large influx of European immigrants. In 1930. for example. black Americans owned 70.000 businesses and 134 banks. But. it was all lost during the depression.
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immigrants