Between the 17th and 19th centuries, slavery was legal in the United States. The workforce demand for cotton plantations in the south of the country caused the number of slaves, who were carried in ships from the African coasts, to increase. As from the second half of the 17th century, slavery progressively became an institution under the effect of court rulings and legislative changes and played a main role in the social and economic structure in the South. At the beginning of the 19th century, an industrialization process started in the north of the country, fueled by the construction of railways in 1830. Industrial and manufacturing development in the north required salaried workforce and was a pull factor for European immigrants. In the south, slave workforce was still being used in plantations. Slavery was one of the main causes that triggered the American Civil War (1861-1865) between northern states and the Confederate States of America. In the years after the American Revolution, slavery was gradually abolished in northern states, while in the rest of the country it happened at the end of the Civil War. During this process, about four million people were freed.

Despite the fact that slavery had been abolished, in 1876, the Jim Crow laws of racial segregation were enacted, which lasted until 1965 and remained in force in all states of the country. These laws differentiated social benefits according to ethnicity and skin color, and prohibited black people from using public spaces like schools, restaurants, parks and transport.

In this context, racist practices and manifestations of racial violence were frequent. In southern states, public lynchings were an extreme expression of this type of violence. Around 4,000 Afro-descendants were killed through these executions carried out by civilians, mainly between the 1890s and the 1920s.

During the mid-1950s, the emerging civil rights movement started to consolidate; it eventually ended the racial segregation system in the US. In May 1954, the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in schools illegal. And in 1964, the Civil Rights Act, proposed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, declared serious discrimination and segregation acts against African-Americans illegal.