Black people did not "come to this country seeking a better life." They were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, dragged in chains and loaded onto slave ships--treated not like human beings but like things, commodities to be traded and used to enrich others. Tens of millions of enslaved Africans died before even reaching America, so terrible were the conditions on the slave ships. Those who survived the trip and were then sold to plantation owners were treated like pieces of machinery. Slaveowners commonly referred to the slaves as "talking tools." That is how Black people were treated for the first 250 years of their experience in America.
黑人来到这个国家并不是为了“寻求更美好的生活。”他们是在非洲自己家中遭绑架，用锁链缚着拖进奴隶船——不是被当成人，而是被当成物品来对待，他们是用于交易的商品，用来使他人发财致富。奴隶船上的条件是如此恶劣，数千万黑人在尚未到达美洲时就已死去。那些在旅途中幸存下来的黑人被卖给种植园主，当作机器使用。奴隶主通常把奴隶称做“会说话的工具”，这就是黑人在美洲最初250年来的遭遇。
The "founding fathers" of the USA defended slavery and upheld the interests of the slaveowners against the slaves. This is true of "the father of his country," George Washington, who was himself a slaveowner, and it is true of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States --men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
美国的“立国之父”捍卫奴隶制度，维护奴隶主压迫奴隶的权益。这就是“国父”华盛顿的真实面目，他本人也是一个奴隶主。《独立宣言》和《美国宪法》的起草者——像托马斯·杰弗逊和詹姆斯·麦迪逊的真相都是如此。
African peoples, and the native peoples in North America, were treated as something less than human--as though they were "beasts" or "savages" who never had reached and never could reach the "high level of civilization" of the Europeans. The fact that, both in Africa and in North America, there were highly developed societies and cultures long before Europeans came to dominate these places--this basic truth was denied and "written out of history" by the European conquerors and enslavers.
非洲人和北美土著居民，受到了非人的待遇——好象他们是从来没有而且永远不可能达到欧洲“高度文明”的“野兽”或“野人”。事实是，无论是非洲还是北美，在欧洲人统治那些地区之前，就已经产生了高度发展的社会和文化。但这些基本的事实遭到了欧洲征服者和奴隶主的拒绝，不能写入正史。
Black people's own major and heroic role in fighting against slavery is denied or downgraded by the "official histories." The facts are that there were over 200 slave revolts, including the more famous ones led by Nat Turner in Virginia and Denmark Vesey in South Carolina, as well as other revolts that were covered up and written out of history by the slavemasters.
黑人自己反抗奴隶制度的英勇斗争被“官方历史”否定或贬低。事实是有200多次奴隶起义，包括闻名的弗吉尼亚州奈特特纳起义和南卡来罗纳州丹马维斯起义，还有其它的反抗斗争，都被奴隶主所掩盖，不能写入“正史”。
What about the Civil War that finally ended slavery? Once they were allowed to, masses of Black people flooded into the northern (Union) army in that war and fought courageously and with great sacrifice on the front lines--even though they were still subjected to segregation and discrimination, even down to the level where their pay as soldiers was only about half that of the white soldiers! Nearly 200,000 Blacks fought in the Union army and one out of every five (almost 40,000) gave their lives in this fight.
最终结束奴隶制度的美国内战情况如何呢？一旦获得许可，成群的黑人如潮水般地涌入战争中的北方军队，勇敢地加入了前线的战斗，并付出了重大牺牲——尽管仍然遭受着隔离和歧视，尽管地位最低，军饷只有白人士兵的二分之一！将近20万黑人参加了北方军队的战斗，五分之一（近4万）在那场战争中献出了生命。
The Civil War came about because of the clash between two different economic and social systems--slavery, based on plantation farming in the South; and capitalism, based on factory and other wage-labor centered in the North. Things had gotten to the point where these two systems could no longer peacefully coexist within the same country.
内战的爆发是由于两种不同社会经济制度（南方建立在种植园农场基础上的奴隶制度和北方建立在工厂和雇佣劳动基础上的资本主义制度）的冲突。事情发展到这一地步：两种制度再也不能在同一个国家里和平共存下去。
The slaveowners and the capitalists were battling each other for control of the country, they were battling each other as the USA expanded westward. This expansion was carried out by slaughtering the native peoples and grabbing their lands and waging a war to steal a huge chunk of land from Mexico.
奴隶主和资本家为控制这个国家撕杀。当他们互相撕杀的时候，美国在向西部扩张。扩张是通过屠杀土著居民夺取他们的土地，发动墨西哥战争，盗取大片领土来实现的。
Anyone who is serious and honest knows that the enslavement and exploitation of Black people has been a big part of building up the wealth and power that the rulers of this country have in their hands--wealth and power that these suckers use to further exploit and oppress people here and all over the world. And anyone who is honest and serious knows that for revolution to have a chance in this country--a revolution to do away with all this oppression and exploitation and to change society from bottom to top--Black people must play and will play a big part in this revolution.
任何一个认真、正直的人都知道，对黑人的奴役和剥削是这个国家的统治者建构起手中财富和权力的一个重要组成部分，这些吸血者又进一步利用这些财富和权力剥削压迫这里的人民和全世界的人民。任何一个正直、认真的人都知道：为了给这个国家带来希望的革命，一场消灭这些剥削压迫，使社会发生翻天覆地变化的革命，黑人一定会并必将会在这场革命中发挥重大的作用。
