Since the 18th century, due to the slave trade, many African Americans were forced into America as slaves, harvesting cotton, coffee and agricultural goods. Although the slave trade was abolished in 1807, the society still did not accept the white's and the coloured as equal citizens with the same rights. In 1865 however, the Jim Crow laws were passed where it has limited coloured people to what they could do, separating them in public areas and limiting their opportunities. Even-though the law has ended in 1965, racial discrimination still exists till today in several states, especially in Alabama, a southern state where most of the slave trade occured.