It is 1542, and a priest named Bartolomé de las Casas has finally spoken up about the terrible oppression the Spanish had forced upon the Native Americans. Ecomiendas were the right for Spanish conquistadors, or conquerors, to enslave Native Americans and force them to work the land. It took many years for change, but Spain recognized the high death rate of the suffering Native Americans. So from then on the enslavement of Native Americans was banished. It was Bartolomé's "great idea" that called for foreign workers to be brought to the Americas in their stead. Perhaps he intended for his "workers" to be treated humanly, but that was not the case.

Africans were the solution to the loss of laborers. They were shipped in from their homes like cargo crammed by the hundreds into single vessels, then brought to the Spanish plantations to work under the harshest of...