African Americans have been mining coal and fighting bosses for over 200 years. Slaves were working in coal mines around Richmond, Va. as early as 1760. During the Civil War, a thousand slaves dug coal for 22 companies in the “Richmond Basin.”

The Civil Rights Movement or 1960s Civil Rights Movement (also referred to as the African-American Civil Rights Movement although the term “African American” was not widely used in the 1950s and 1960s) encompasses social movements in the United States whose goals were to end racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law.

African slaves were then traded for raw materials, which were returned to Europe to complete the “Triangular Trade”. The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade.