This included empires like that of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec. Increasingly drawn to the New World by the myth of golden cities (and just gold and wealth, period) the Spanish colonized much of the Americas.

This colonization was justified by the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine, establish by Pope Alexander IX, declared that any lands not inhabited by Christians were 'discoverable' and within that, claimable.

Interactions between natives and the Spanish included enslavement, conversion, and overall violence. An example of such interactions would be between the Spanish and the Pueblo peoples of Southwest N. America.

Unlike most indigenous groups, however, the Pueblo launched a successful revolt, pushing the Spanish out of the region for 12 years. Upon their return, the Spanish essentially had to compromise with the Pueblo. This allowed the Pueblo peoples to retain aspects of their culture that other groups were not.

West Africa became part of the triangular trade that took place between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. In addition to the trade of enslaved Africans, raw materials like tobacco and cotton were traded, which were then turned into processed goods (like clothes, which were also traded).

One of the most important cash crops that European nations had enslaved people cultivate was sugar cane. This was grown, harvested, and processed on plantations throughout Brazil and the Caribbean. Sugar was highly profitable for European nations, so much so that the cultivation of sugar increased European reliance on enslaved African labor, and a new form of slavery: chattel slavery. Essentially, enslaved Africans were considered literal property. This also led to the development of race as we know it.

The experience of the Middle Passage (the leg of the triangular trade from Africa to the Americas) for enslaved Africans was horrendous and dehumanizing, and the vast majority of enslaved Africans were taken to Brazil and the Caribbean. Thousands of trips were taken, and millions of Africans were enslaved. Millions also died en route to the 'New World'.

Question: How did the triangular trade system relate to the Middle Passage?

• Motivations for Westward Expansion

• Mexican American War

• Chinese Exclusion Act

• War of 1898

• What caused the Great Migration?

• The connection between The Great Migration & the Harlem Renaissance

• How did the US 'Grow' in the Early 20th Century?

• Jim Crow

• Race Riots

• Redlining

• Sacrifice Zones

"Eugenics" was once considered by many to be a legitimate science (it no longer is; it is highly racist/ableist and not based on actual science). Highly educated people -- in the literal sense of the word, people who went to schools like Harvard, etc. -- were proponents of this set of ideas. Famous and well-known individuals like Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, and Margaret Sanger were staunch eugenicists.

Over 20,000 people were compulsorily sterilized in California alone. Overall, nearly 70,000 (likely more) people. Eugenics-based laws largely targeted working-class women (over time, undoubtedly targeting working-class women of color) and people with disabilities (both mental and physical). Some women were coerced into sterilization by being told their doctors would refuse to help with their pregnancy if they did not agree to a hysterectomy.

Nearly a third of Puerto Rican women were sterilized from the 1930s-1970s. Trials of birth control were introduced and used with little informed consent on Puerto Rican women as there was also a belief by some leaders that the population of Puerto Rico needed to be controlled. Sterilizations became so commonplace, in fact, that women began to call it “La Operación (The Operation)”.

In a case that became nationally known, two young girls -- 12 and 14 -- were sterilized when their mother, who was unable to read, 'consented' to their sterilization. However, there was a lack of transparency -- the Relf girls had already been subjected to an unsolicited experimental birth control trial; their mother thought they were receiving that same shot. Instead, both girls were surgically sterilized. This led to their parents filing a class-action lawsuit on their daughters' behalf. Relf v. Weinberger resulted in the prohibition of the use of federal funds for involuntary sterilizations. This is just one example of many -- this practice was prolific and thousands of women and girls were put into situations in which they were underinformed, coerced, and sterilized.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights activist, was herself sterilized without her consent. She noted how these nonconsensual sterilizations of working-class Black women in the South were so common that within Southern Black communities, the procedure was called "a Mississippi appendectomy."

Other groups known to have been targeted for sterilization includes Native American women -- the Indian Health Service was accused of sterilizing nearly 25% of Indigenous women during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell (1927) decided that a Virginia law authorizing the mandatory sterilization of inmates in mental institutions was constitutional. Essentially this meant that people, mostly women, who were committed, could be sterilized without their consent. People with disabilities were targeted for sterilization, and the law permitted it.

Eugenics was on the rise in other parts of the world, too, however. Notably -- Germany. In Mein Kampf Hitler praised the United States, noting, “There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of citizenship] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.”

• 1917 East St. Louis Race Riot

• The Scottsboro Boys

• Cancer Alley

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• Fannie Lou Hamer

• Ella Baker

• Diane Nash

• Bayard Rustin

• James Baldwin

• A. Phillip Randolph

• The Black Panther Party

• The Rainbow Coalition

• Fred Hampton

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• El Movimiento

• Gay Liberation Movement

• Asian American Movement

• American Indian Movement

• Women's Liberation Movement

• Why was a 'war on drugs' declared?

• What are the social consequences of the war on drugs?

• What has the 'cost' of the war on drugs been?

(excerpt from "A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States: The HIV/AIDS Epidemic")

The United States was the focal point of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. The disease was first noticed en masse by doctors who treated gay men in Southern California, San Francisco, and New York City in 1981.

When cases of AIDS first emerged in the U.S., they tended to originate among either men who had sex with other men, hemophiliacs, or heroin users. The fact that the disease was also prevalent among Haitians led to the "Four-H Club" of groups at high risk of AIDS.

Though some people believe that AIDS began in the U.S. in the 80's, that is actually the decade when it gained recognition as a health condition. Instances of HIV are believed to have been in the U.S. long before that - perhaps as early as the 1960s. The first reported cases of HIV are believed to have come from Kinshasa in or around 1920. Scientists believe the disease was transferred from monkeys and chimps to humans.

The prevalence of the disease among gay men in the U.S. in the 80's and 90's resulted in a stigma against homosexuals and a general fear and misunderstanding regarding how AIDS was spread. Over time attitudes changed as celebrities like Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury revealed that they had the disease, and Magic Johnson came forward with HIV, and dedicated his retirement to educating others about the virus. In 2010, a U.S. travel ban on HIV-positive people that had been in effect since 1987 was lifted, finally allowing entrance to the country without a waiver.

• What factors influenced the impact of COVID-19 on different groups? (reference class lecture/discussion in your response; provide a minimum of 3 sentences in your response)