Some things do get better for some poor, unrepresented people.

Roma were bought and sold as slaves to the state, grandees (Boyars)
rich merchants and monasteries in Romania
from when they arrived there in the late 14th century
until the 1860s - the same time that slavery was technically abolished in the USA.

The formal Romanian word for Roma, ţigani, comes from the Greek for heretic,
and passed into German (Zigeuner) and French (Tzigane).
The English word Gypsy came from a silly idea that Roma
were descendants of the slaves who built the pyramids in Egypt -
rather than nomads fleeing famine in Rajasthan.

The informal Romanian word for Roma was 'crows' (cioroi) - from the time when
were forced to climb trees so that Hunting Gentlemen aka Sportsmen
could take pot-shots at them.
Cioroi is also an abusive term for any dark-skinned person.