History of slavery in Louisiana

Slavery is a system in which people are treated as property and are forced to work like animals. In the United States, slavery was legal from the 1600s until it was made illegal in 1865 by the 13th Amendment. Slavery in Louisiana started in 1699 when the French brought slaves from Africa to their colony of Louisiana. Louisiana was a major slave-holding state during the American Civil War. This means that a lot of people there owned slaves who worked for them and were not allowed to leave. Slavery in Louisiana officially ended in 1865 when the 13th Amendment was passed, but it took a few more years for the last of the slaves to be freed. After the Civil War, black people in Louisiana were treated very badly and many were forced to work as sharecroppers or on plantations. It wasn’t until the 1960s that black people in Louisiana were truly free and had equal rights to white people.