African American
An
African American (also
Afro-American,
Black American, or simply
black) is a member of an
ethnic group in the
United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to
Africa. Many African Americans have a degree of
European,
Native American,
Asian and/or
Latin American ancestry as well. The term refers specifically to black African ancestry; not, for example, to white or
Arab African ancestry, such as Arab
Moroccan or white
South African ancestry. Definitively,
African American means an
American of black African descent. The majority of African Americans are the descendants of enslaved Africans transported from West and Central Africa to
North America from 1609 through 1807 during the trans-
Atlantic slave trade. Others have arrived through more recent immigration from the
Caribbean,
South America and
Africa. Black immigrants from
African and predominantly black/
mulatto non-African countries such as
Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, and
Jamaica are often referred to by their nations of origin and not culturally defined as African American; however in general, the cultural assumption is that if a person is black, native
English-speaking and living within the
United States, he or she is African American.
The term "African American" has been in common usage in the United States since the late 1980s, when greater numbers of African Americans began to adopt the term self-referentially. Black nationalist
Malcolm X favored the descriptive term "African American" as more historically and culturally defining over "Negro" and "black" and used the term at an OAAU (Organization of Afro American Unity) meeting in the early 1960s, saying, "Twenty-two million African Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America." Former NBA player/coach
Lenny Wilkens is another who used the term as a teenager in the 1950's when filling out a job application.
Many African Americans began to abandon the term "Afro-American", which had become popular in the 1960s and '70s, for "African American", out of desire for an unabbreviated expression of their African heritage that could not be mistaken or derided as an allusion to the
afro hairstyle.The term became increasingly popular, and by the 1980s,
Jesse Jackson and others pressed for its adoption and acceptance. Users of the term argued that "African American" was more in keeping with the United States immigrant tradition of "
hyphenated Americans", which link people with their, or their ancestors', geographic points of origin.
Terms used at various points in American history include
Negroes,
colored,
blacks and
Afro-Americans. Negro and colored were common until the late 1960s, but are now less commonly used and widely considered derogatory. African American, black and, to a lesser extent, Afro-American are used interchangeably today, but their precise meanings and connotations are in dispute. The term
African American is sometimes problematic because of its imprecise
cultural and geographic meaning. The term as originally applied refers to only those descended from a small number of colonial
indentured servants and the estimated 500,000 Africans taken to
British North America or the
U.S. as slaves (of approximately 10 - 12 million Africans taken to the
Western Hemisphere in general).
In slightly broader usage, the term can include
West Indian and
Afro-Latino immigrants whose African ancestors also survived the
Middle Passage or recent African immigrants/children of immigrants with American citizenship, but these groups tend to use the ethnic terms
Latino or
Hispanic, or identify themselves by their countries of origin (i.e., as
Nigerian,
Dominican or
Jamaican instead of African American). The term does not include predominantly
European,
Arab or
Indian descended immigrants from the African continent, and they are not generally considered to be indigenous Africans by the black African majority. Non-blacks from Africa who become permanent residents or citizens of the United States are not generally referred to nor do they generally refer to themselves as African American.
|
African Americans as percent of population, 2000. |
|
African American population density, 2000. |
In 1790, when the first
census was taken, African Americans numbered about 760,000â€"about 19% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the
American Civil War, the African American
population increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of the overall population of the
country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as "
freemen". By 1900, the black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the
South, but large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape
Jim Crow and racial violence. The
Great Migration, as it was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million black people moved
north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed, with more African Americans moving south to the
Sunbelt than leaving it. By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the U.S. population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. In current demographics, according to
2005 U.S.
Census figures, some 39.9 million African Americans live in the
United States, comprising 13.8 percent of the total population. At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8 percent of African Americans lived in the
South. In that year, 17.6 percent of African Americans lived in the
Northeast and 18.7 percent in the
Midwest, while only 8.9 percent lived in the western
states. Almost 88 percent of African Americans lived in
metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents,
New York City had the largest black
urban population in the
United States in 2000. Among cities of 100,000 or more,
Gary,
Indiana, had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with 85 percent, followed closely by
Detroit,
Michigan, with 83 percent.
Atlanta, Georgia, has a substantial African American population of about 65 percent.
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, with 43 percent, and
Washington, D.C., with 60 percent, are also large African American population centers.
Blacks in America are historically composed of many diverse
ethnic groups. Over 40 identifiable ethnic groups from at least 25 different
kingdoms were sold to
British North America (later becoming the
United States) during the
Atlantic slave trade. These ethnic groups were usually sold to
European traders by powerful coastal or interior states in exchange for European goods such as
textiles and
firearms. Africans were very rarely kidnapped by Europeans because they could not penetrate the interior. The danger of fatal disease was ever-present and the coastal areas were dominated by powerful warrior kingdoms.
Africans sold and traded into bondage and shipped to the United States came from eight distinct slave-trading regions in
Africa, including
Senegambia (Present day
Senegal,
Gambia,
Guinea and
Guinea Bissau),
Sierra Leone (also includes the area of present day
Liberia),
Windward Coast (present day
Ivory Coast),
Gold Coast (present day
Ghana and surrounding areas),
Bight of Benin (Present day
Togo,
Benin and western
Nigeria), Bight of Biafra (
Nigeria south of the Benue River,
Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea),
Central Africa (
Gabon,
Angola,
Democratic Republic of the Congo) and (
Mozambique and
Madagascar).
Enslaved Africans brought their own religious beliefs, languages, and cultural practices with them when they were forced on ships from Africa to the
New World, however, slave traders and owners mounted a systematic and brutal campaign to de-Africanize them, eventually nearly completely stripping them of their original
names,
languages and religious beliefs. As additional means of subjugation, slave owners often intentionally mixed people who spoke many different African languages to discourage communication in any language other than English on their plantations and it became illegal for slaves to be taught to read or write. Over time, Africans in America formed a new and common identity focused on their mutual condition in America as opposed to cultural and historic ties to
Africa.
By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved Africans in the
Southern United States, and another 500,000 Africans lived free across the country.
Slavery was a controversial issue in American society and politics. The growth of
abolitionism, which opposed the institution of
slavery, culminated in the 1860 election of
Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, and was one reason for the secession of the
Confederate States of America, which lead to the
American Civil War (1861 - 1865).
After the Civil War, the United States offered certain civil rights to African Americans. The
Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederacy free under U.S. law. It included exceptions for those held in all territories that had not seceded, however, and thus did not immediately free a single
slave, since U.S. law held no sway over the Confederacy at the time. The
Thirteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, freed all slaves, including those in states that had not seceded. During
Reconstruction, African Americans in the South obtained the right to vote and to hold public office, as well as a number of other
civil rights they previously had been denied. However, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern, white landowners reinstituted a regime of disenfranchisement and racial segregation, and with it a wave of terrorism and repression, including
lynchings and other
vigilante violence.
During the
Progressive Era, black members of the
middle-class attempted improving the conditions of their ethnicity. This movement was strongest in the
Southern United States and it often revolved around black southern
universities such as
Tuskegee University or
Atlanta University, academic journals, and the
Episcopal Church. Like white
progressives, black
Progressives helped the
working class through charitable means while supporting political changes that increased the role of the
state in creating socioeconomic equity, as opposed to equality. Many black
progressives were
elitist and often condescending towards those they were intent on helping, akin to white
progressives' attitudes and actions towards European immigrants. Black
progressives were successful in their charitable efforts, but often were not concerned with issues like
segregation. Instead, they supported a
social darwinist mentality with the hope that blacks through hardwork and education could accelerate their
social evolution. The plight of most black people did not improve during this time due to racist policies supported by many
whites and white
vigilante action.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century in the United States, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom. Elected, appointed, or hired government authorities began to require or permit discrimination, specifically in the states of
Texas,
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Alabama,
Georgia,
Florida,
South Carolina,
North Carolina,
Virginia,
Arkansas,
Tennessee,
Oklahoma, and
Kansas. There were four required or permitted acts of discrimination against African Americans. They included racial segregation â€" upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 - which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities. Although racial discrimination was present nationwide, the combination of law, public and private acts of discrimination, marginal economic opportunity, and violence directed toward African Americans in the southern states became known as
Jim Crow.
The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the
Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American intellectual and cultural elite in the
Northern United States, led to a movement to fight
violence and
discrimination against African Americans that, like
abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. One of the most prominent of these groups, the
NAACP, galvanized by outspoken journalist and activist
Ida B. Wells Barnett, led an anti-lynching crusade. In the 1950s, the organization mounted a series of calculated legal challenges to overturn
Jim Crow segregation, culminating in the landmark
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision.
The Supreme Court's decision in
Brown v. Board was one of defining moments of the modern-day
American Civil Rights Movement. It was part of a long-term strategy to strike down Jim Crow segregation in public education, the hospitality industry, public transportation, employment and housing, granting
equal access to African Americans and ensuring their right to
vote.
The
Civil Rights Movement aimed at abolishing public and private acts of
racial discrimination against African Americans between 1954 to 1968, particularly in the southern United States. By 1966, the emergence of the
Black Power Movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the
Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority. Several scholars have begun to refer to the
Civil Rights Movement as the
Second Reconstruction.
The
Civil Rights Movement and subsequent
Black Power Movement was the culmination of generations of oppression and contained several key events in American history, including the murder of
Emmett Till,
Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery bus boycott, the desegregation of
Little Rock, Arkansas, multiple
sit-ins and
freedom rides, the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and many other notable events. The
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy and then Lyndon B. Johnson that culminated in the passage the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned
discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and
labor unions.
|
Malcolm X holding an M1 Carbine and pulling back the curtains to peer out of a window. This photograph is a popular image on T-shirts and often appears with the slogan "By Any Means Necessary". |
The "
Mississippi Freedom Summer" of 1964 brought thousands of idealistic youth, black and white, to the state to run "freedom schools", to teach basic literacy, history and civics. Other volunteers were involved in voter registration drives. The season was marked by
harassment,
intimidation and
violence directed at Civil Rights workers and their host families. The disappearance of three youths,
James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman and
Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, captured the attention of the nation. Six weeks later, searchers found the savagely beaten body of Chaney, a black man, in a muddy dam alongside the remains of his two white companions, who had been shot to death. Outrage at the escalating injustices of the "Mississippi Blood Summer", as it by then had come to be known, and at the brutality of the murders brought about the passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act struck down barriers to black enfranchisement and was the capstone to more than a decade of major civil rights
legislation.
By this time, African Americans who questioned the effectiveness of nonviolent protest had gained a greater voice. More militant black leaders, such as
Malcolm X of the
Nation of Islam and
Eldridge Cleaver of the
Black Panther Party, called for blacks to defend themselves, using violence, if necessary. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the
Black Power movement urged African Americans to look to
Africa for inspiration and emphasized black solidarity, rather than
integration.
The movement reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, Sr. At the same time,
Nation of Islam spokesman
Malcolm X and, later,
Stokely Carmichael, the
Black Panther Party, and the
Republic of New Africa called for African Americans to embrace
black nationalism and black self-empowerment, propounding ideas of African (black) unity, solidarity and
pan-Africanism. By the end of the 1960's, however, several civil rights activists, leaders and pan-africanists were assassinated, including
Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and
Fred Hampton. Nevertheless, politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era.
Many African Americans have significantly improved their social economic standing since the
Civil Rights Movement and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the
United States. Unprecedented access to higher education and employment has been gained by African Americans in the post-civil rights era, however, due in part to the legacy of
slavery,
racism and
discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced
economic,
educational and
social disadvantage in many areas relative to whites.
Persistent
social,
economic and
political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery;
institutional racism and
discrimination in housing,
education, policing,
criminal justice and
employment;
crime,
poverty and
substance abuse. One of the most serious and long standing issues within African American communities is
poverty.
Poverty itself is a hardship as it is related to marital stress and dissolution, health problems, low educational attainment, deficits in psychological functioning, and crime. [
1]In 2004, 24.7% of African American families lived below the poverty level [
2].
The effects of
criminal activity, such as
murder,
drug dealing, and
robbery in impoverished African American communities is a serious and ongoing
issue. In 1995, one-third of African American men between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some form of
criminal justice control (in
prison, on
parole or
probation) [
3]. Some statistics report that African Americans are at least seven times more likely to murder, be
murdered and/or
incarcerated than white Americans. [
4] Other studies suggest, however, that the association of
racial or
ethnic identity with crime rates is a false and possibly
racist paradigm, with
education and
socioeconomic status being more accurate correlates to criminal behavior. Rates of
homicide and other violence among African Americans are no greater than those of similarly situated (i.e., economically disadvantaged) whites or any other
ethnic group in the United States.[
5]
African Americans are frequently the targets of
racial profiling[
6] and negative societal stereotyping. Historians agree that black
stereotypes and coping strategies are rooted in America's history of
slavery and
segregation.[
7] Studies have also shown how the stress of coping for black men can damage the circulatory system and lead to chronic poor health. Black men are 20 percent more likely to die of
heart disease than whites, and black men have the highest rates of
hypertension in the world, according to the
National Medical Association.[
8] African Americans have a higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions[
9], and a higher rate of out-of-wedlock births relative to the general population. 56% of African American children are born into families where the mother is not married to the biological father. In 1998, single women headed 54% of African American
households [
10].
A significant issue particularly within the African American community has been the tensions that exists in some communities between black
immigrants from the
Caribbean,
South America and parts of
Africa and African Americans whose families have resided in the United States for generations. These tensions have brought about contemporary issues primarily regarding
assimilation, post-diasporic identification, and
cultural identity in several
native and
immigrant black communities.
All of these problems and potential remedies have been the subject of intense
public policy debate in the
United States in general, and within the African American
community in particular.
The collective
economic status of African Americans is a matter of contentious
debate, with
statistics simultaneously suggesting both the residual effects of historical
marginalization and sustained progress for large sections of the population in the United States, and the greater
affluence of the group when compared to populations outside of the United States.
The median income of African Americans as a group is roughly 65 percent [
11] of that of "
white" people, that is, "people having origins in any of the original peoples of
Europe, the
Middle East, or
North Africa" [
12] according to census. Racial economic disparities are greatest of all at the highest levels of
income, although clearly this economic super elite hardly reflects any American population collective, black or non-black. According to
Forbes Magazine's wealthiest American lists, a 2000 net-worth of $800 million dollars made
Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the
20th century, in sharp contrast to the 20th century's richest White American
Bill Gates whose net-worth briefly hit $100 billion in 1999.
However, in Forbes' list of 2004, Gates' net worth decreased to 46.6 billion USD while Winfrey's net worth increased to 1.4 billion USD, cementing her status as the wealthiest African American of the 20th century, the world's only
black billionaire[
13], the 235th richest American in 2005[
14], the 562nd richest person in the world and one of the most affluent and influential people in the United States.
Despite the
poverty levels of many African American communities, current information points to a continuation of a long-term trend toward
parity with national levels and absolutely higher levels of affluence than those experienced by most populations outside the United States. Since the mid to late 1990's, African American incomes have risen at a remarkable pace and the progress shows up at every income level - from the still-large but shrinking
underclass, to the fast-developing black
middle class, to the growing ranks of
wealthy African Americans.
Over 1.7 million African Americans have gone off the
poverty rolls; earnings by African American women have moved to within a few percentage points of white women's; and unemployment among blacks in recent years has dropped below the 10 percent mark. The poverty rate among African Americans has dropped from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004. [
15] The growth in African American incomes is translating into big gains in buying power and opportunities for black businesses.
By 2003, sex had replaced
race as the primary factor in life expectancy in the United States, with African American females expected to live longer than white males born in that year. [
16]. In the same year, the gap in
life expectancy between American whites (78.0) and blacks (72.8) had decreased to 5.2 years, reflecting a long term trend of this phenomenon [
17]. The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in countries with a high
human development index.
In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest
median earnings of American
minority groups after
Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States [
18]. Also, among American
minority groups, only
Asian Americans were more likely to hold
white collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields) [
19], and African Americans were no more or less likely than whites to work in the service industry [
20]. In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more [
21]. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity [
22].
Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the US, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004 [
23]. African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States[
24] (despite the common perception that groups "fresh off the boat" arrive with higher value placed on education than African Americans).
Although the unemployment rate among African Americans (in 2002, approximately 11% [
25] has typically been twice the rate among European Americans (app. 5% in the same year, [
26]), it is still at or below rates found in France and Spain [
27], [
28], and is slightly higher than the overall rate of the
European Union [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ee.html].
When compared to populations outside of the United States and European Union, the collective affluence of African Americans is even more striking and disproportionate. Based on worker income alone (excluding
purchasing power parity and extra wealth, both of which would accentuate the comparative affluence of African Americans), African Americans produced $586 billion in 2004[
29],[
30], slightly smaller than the GDP of Brazil in 2006 (even though Brazil's population is about 5 times the size of the African American one) [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/br.html], and approximately 80% the size of Russia's 2005 GDP (even though Russia's population is nearly 4 times the size of the African American one [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html]. In 2004 this amount would have been ranked as the 15th largest GDP internationally (out of 177 ranked) [
31], compared to a population ranking of 33 in 2005[https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html].
In 2005, the populations of Poland and African Americans were roughly equal, but the 2004 earnings of the latter group would have been nearly 2.5 times the size of the former's GDP in 2005[https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/pl.html]. In 2005, the Ukraine's population was approximately 10% larger than the African American population, but its GDP was over 8 times
smaller than the 2004 earnings of the latter group. Argentina, arguably the most developed country in Latin American (with an overwhelmingly European population (97%)), has an unemployment rate slightly higher than that of African Americans as a group, the poverty rate is almost twice the rate [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ar.html#Econ], and the 2004 earnings of African American workers were nearly 3.5 times the size of Argentina's 2005 GDP, even though Argentina's population is slightly
larger than the African American population [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ar.html].
In Mexico, whose
human development index is comparable to those of most former
Second World countries, and whose economy ranks as a mid-income one, the poverty rate is twice the rate of African Americans as a group [
32], and even though its 2005 population was nearly 3 times the population of African Americans, Mexico's GDP from the same year exceeded the 2004 earnings of African American workers by only 25%[https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mx.html].
Main article: African American culture
African American culture is a distinct part of
American culture.
While African American families share many features with other U.S. families, the African American family has some distinctive features relating to the timing and approaches of
marriage and family formation,
gender roles, parenting styles, and strategies for coping with adversity.[
33]
Within African American families, the formation of a
household often begins not with marriage, but with the birth of a child. The importance of
extended family and kin in maintaining family cohesion is often overshadowed by negative portrayals of African American family life, however, studies have found that African American families display about 70 various structural
formations, versus about 40 among white families. This comparison points to the variability of the African American family structure and to the flexibility of family roles.[
34]
African American families tend to be more
hierarchical and are more likely to be strict, to hold demanding behavioral standards, and to use physical
discipline.[
35] Grandparents, especially grandmothers, often play a crucial role in the maintenance of the family. When mothers cannot fulfill their roles, grandmothers often step in to parent children. In 1998, 1.4 million African American children (12%) lived in their grandparents' home (either with or without their parents). Grandparents care is often reciprocated in old age - African American families are much more likely to care for aging or dying family members.[
36]
The cultural resources for African American families consists of
spirituality, mutual support,
ethnic identity, adaptive extended family structures, and
church as offering both
ideological and instrumental support.[
37]
African American foods reflect creative responses to racial and economic
oppression. Under
slavery, African Americans were not allowed to eat better cuts of meat, and after Emancipation many often were too poor to afford them.
Soul food, a hearty cuisine commonly associated with African Americans in the
South (but also common among blacks nationwide), makes creative use of inexpensive products procured through farming and subsistence hunting and fishing.
Pig intestines are boiled and sometimes battered and fried to make "chitterlings", or "
chitlins". Hamhocks and neck bones provide seasoning to soups; beans and boiled greens (turnip greens, collard greens, and mustard greens).
Other common foods, such as
fried chicken and
fish,
cornbread and "hoppin' John" (black-eyed peas and rice), are prepared simply. When the African-American population was considerably more rural than it generally is today, rabbit, possum, and squirrel, as well as waterfowl, were important additions to the diet. Many of these food traditions are especially predominant in many parts of the rural
South. In culturally diverse urban areas, however, urban African Americans, like other ethnic groups, may eat and cook differently from their rural counterparts. Many African Americans have also begun to incorporate Caribbean and African
cuisine into their diets.
African American music (also called black music, formerly known as race music) is a strong presence in African American culture. The ancestors of African Americans were originally brought to North America to work as slaves in cotton plantations, bringing with them typically polyphonic songs from hundreds of ethnic groups across
West and
Sub-Saharan Africa. In the
United States, multiple cultural traditions merged with influences from polka, waltzes and other European music, creating unique forms of music in African American communities. Later periods saw considerable innovation and change, and in the
21st century, African American genres have become some of the most dominant in
mainstream popular music throughout the world. In African American communities across the United States, its
music reflects multiple and diverse aspects of African American historic and contemporary
life and
culture.
From their earliest presence in
North America, Africans and African Americans have contributed
literature,
art, agricultural skills,
foods, clothing styles,
music,
language,
social and
technological innovation to American culture.
The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the U.S., such as
yams,
peanuts,
rice,
okra,
sorghum,
grits,
watermelon,
indigo dyes, and
cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. A couple of notable examples include
George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans and George Crum, who invented the potato chip in 1853.[
38]
African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music.
Hip hop,
rock,
R&B,
funk,
soul,
techno and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from blues, jazz, and gospel music. African American derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular musical genre in the world.
Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans, and
African American literature is a major genre in American
literature. Famous examples include
Langston Hughes,
James Baldwin,
Richard Wright,
Zora Neale Hurston,
Ralph Ellison,
Toni Morrison, and
Maya Angelou.
African American
inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international
innovation. Though most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the
Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the entire Confederate
navy, but following the
Civil War, the growth of industry in the
United States was tremendous and much of this was made possible with inventions by ethnic minorities. By 1913 over 1,000 inventions were patented by Black Americans.
Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, and
Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines. Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate. He even sued
Alexander Graham Bell and
Thomas Edison for stealing his patents and won both cases.
Garrett Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask, and Norbert Rilleux who created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux was so brilliant that in 1854 he left
Louisiana and went to
France where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian
hieroglyphics from the
Rosetta Stone. [
39]
Lewis Latimer created an inexpensive cotton-thread filament, which made electric light bulbs practical because Edison's original light bulb only burned for a few minutes. More recent inventors include McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains and Lloyd Quarterman who with six other Black scientists, worked on the creation of the atomic bomb along (code named the
Manhattan Project.) Quaterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered
submarine called the Nautilus. [
40]
A few other notable examples include the first successful
open heart surgery, performed by Dr.
Daniel Hale Williams, the conceptualization and establishment of blood banks around the world by Dr.
Charles Drew, the air conditioner, patented by
Frederick M. Jones. More current contributors include Otis Bodkin, who invented an electrical device used in all guided missiles and all IBM computers, and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first Black
astronaut pilot but the person who also redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system. In 2000, Bendix Aircraft Company began a worldwide promotion of this microwave instrumentation landing system that can land planes without a pilot. [
41] *Excerpt from Black People & Their Place In World History By: Dr. Leroy Vaughn, MD, MBA
The gains made by African Americans in the
civil rights and
Black Power movements not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Americans were still living in the shadow of slavery and
Jim Crow, when, in the words of
Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal…."[
42]
The
Civil Rights Movement marked a sea of change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it
boycotts,
sit-ins, demonstrations, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; disrupted and realigned the nation's two major
political parties; and over time has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another.
Ultimately, the movement resulted in the removal of codified,
de jure racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law and heavily influenced the civil and social liberties that many Americans of varied cultural backgrounds expect for themselves. The precedents set by the
Civil Rights Movement in terms of strategies and tactics, as well as goals achieved, influenced the
Free Speech Movement, the struggles of farm workers and migrant laborers in the
United Farm Workers union, the
American Indian Movement, the effort to secure equal rights for women, the physically handicapped, the hearing impaired, and other
ethnic minorities. Further, the struggle of African Americans for constitutional and human rights endures as a model for disenfranchised and oppressed groups worldwide in their struggles for
civil and
human rights and
self-determination.
The African Presence in Pre-Columbus America Though the majority of contemporary African Americans are the descendents of enslaved Africans from West and Central Africa, there has been research indicating the African presence in North America predates the arrival of
Christopher Columbus. According to
Ivan van Sertima, "The African presence in America before Columbus is of importance not only to African and American history, but to the history of world civilizations. The African presence is proven by stone heads, terra cottas,
skeletons,
artifacts, techniques and
inscriptions, by oral traditions and documented history, by
botanical, linguistic and
cultural data."
In 1862, an immense carved head with African-like features was found in
Central America. Similar carvings dating back to around 800 B.C have been found since. Step
pyramids, such as were built in
Egypt, and Peruvian looms resembling those found in Africa have also been found. Certain species of plants once only indigenous to Africa, including strains of
cotton and bananas, appear to have been introduced into the Americas from Africa prior to 1492. Numerous Native American words are similar to African ones and warly European explorers such as
Balboa wrote of seeing African was captives in Indian villages and of hearing of isolated tribes of blacks.
Many people have written on the African presence in pre-Columbian America, including
Ivan van Sertima, Leo Wiener, Kofi Wangara, R.A. Jairazbhoy, Legrand H. Clegg II, and Floyd W. Hayes III. In his own words, author Ivan van Sertima notes that:
"What I have sought to do in this book, therefore, is to present the whole picture emerging from these disciplines, all the facts that are now known about the links between Africa and America in pre-Columbian times."
The research and evidence that some Africans may have arrived in North America before Columbus and the trans-atlantic slave trade is excluded from general American history texts, and considered by some to be controversial as far as factuality is concerned.
The Black Statue of Liberty?Recent research indicates that one of the most famous landmarks in the
United States, the
Statue of Liberty was originally intended to represent the end of American
slavery and originally modeled after a black woman. According to various studies, including research by indepedent scholars and acclaimed publications such as the
New York Times and the
New York Post, the liberation of African American slaves may have been the primary inspiration for the creation of a Statue of Liberation for Edouard Rene LeFebvre DeLaboulaye. He recruited a young sculptor,
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, to create a Black female slave statue holding a broken chain in her left hand and with broken chains of slavery at her feet.
The official web site of the
Statue of Liberty states that the statue was given to the people of the United States by the people of France as an expression of friendship and to commemorate the centennial of American Independence (1776). The Encyclopedia Britannica states Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty as a monument to the Franco-American alliance of 1778. However, there is controversy by some scholars that this is a false paradigm.
Edouard Rene LeFebvre DeLaboulaye, an internationally renowned lawyer and author of a three-volume history of the
United States, first discussed the idea of a
symbol to represent the end of U.S. slavery at a dinner party in 1865, at his country home near Versailles, France. In attendance at the dinner party were many abolitionists including
Victor Hugo and Frederick Auguste Bartholdi, who had initially been retained to create a sculptured bust of Mr. DeLaboulaye.
Victor Hugo and Edouard DeLaboulaye were leaders of the French abolitionist movement. They hated slavery and were in strong support of
John Brown when he attempted to arm slaves in
West Virginia for rebellion by raiding the armory at
Harpers Ferry in 1859. After
John Brown failed and was hanged, Hugo and DeLaboulaye took up a collection among the French people and presented a gold metal to John Brown's
widow.
After
Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1861, the French liberals and abolitionists including Hugo, Bartholdi, and DeLaboulaye urged Lincoln to free the slaves even if civil war resulted. Lincoln was told: "You would become the first country in history to have fought a war against itself to free the internal
slave and you would go down in history as a truly great
country and a beacon of light to all freedom loving people." The French abolitionists saw the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 as a worthless piece of paper since it only freed slaves in the
Confederate controlled states where Lincoln had no jurisdiction and not in Union controlled states where Lincoln was still in authority. When the war ended in 1865, French abolitionists were extremely happy and in addition to again urging Lincoln to free all slaves, DeLaboulaye and Bartholdi requested permission to build and dedicate a
monument or colossal statuary to that freeing of all slaves in America. When
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, DeLaboulaye again headed the abolitionists' committee that presented a gold metal to Mrs. Lincoln, just as he had done for the widow of
John Brown.
In 1871,
Frederic Bartholdi at the urging of DeLaboulaye undertook a voyage to America to sale his idea of a colossal statue clearly symbolizing the end of
chattel slavery in the
United States. He was armed with a large terracotta statue and numerous drawings to clearly illustrate his proposed Statue of Liberty. The original African face of the Statue of Liberty was published in The
New York Post dated June 17, 1986 as part of the centennial celebration. Bartholdi found little American support for his African slave
model. In 1878, as the African head of Miss Liberty first went on display at the Universal Exposition in
Paris, France, rampant reaction raged throughout the
American South.
Bartholdi finally had to abandon his original ideas and changed the Statue of Liberty to the features the United States is now familiar with. The
African face was re-sculptured into the face of his mother Madame Bartholdi. A tablet of law tucked into her folded arm that bears the date July 4, 1776, replaced the broken chains in the slave's left hand. Ironically, the chains were left at the feet but the meaning changed from broken American slavery to broken English tyranny.
On May 18, 1986 during the centennial celebration, The
New York Times joined
The New York Post in describing the original Statue of Liberty and the intention of DeLaboulaye and Bartholdi in presenting this statue to America. Dr. Jack Felder sums it up clearly: "Once in place, Miss Liberty received a new meaning. She was hailed as the ‘Mother of White Exiles,' greeting European immigrants seeking
freedom in America. Nothing in the original conceptions of Bartholdi or DeLaboulaye envisioned this role for their statue."[
43] *Excerpt from Black People & Their Place In World History By: Dr. Leroy Vaughn, MD, MBA
Other research suggests that Bartholdi's creation was inspired by his trip to Egypt with four artist friends, and there he developed the idea of creating a gigantic statue to embellish the entrance to the
Suez Canal (the construction of which began around 1859). Upon his return, he created a model and presented it to a friend, who described it as follows: "It was a beautiful woman clothed in the ancient style, with a headdress in the style of the Egyptian
sphinx…The right arm carried the lamp of a lighthouse, the left arm fell along the side of the body. In the mind of the young artist, this statue was to serve as a
lighthouse at Suez, at the precise point where the canal opens into the Red Sea."
Controversy to the historical
roots and intentions of the Statue of Liberty lies in whether it was intended as popularly professed, or was it inspired by the then newfound freedom of slaves. Lack of documentation as to who served as the model for the statue (if, indeed, Bartholdi even used a model) has prompted speculation about her identity. Conjecture about the identity includes Bartholdi's mother, his wife, his mistress, a glove shop owner in Nancy, and the manager of a brothel in Paris. Apocrypha circulating on the Internet claim that the model was a black woman.
There have been some claims that the research into this matter is not legitimate, and that the whole controversy began as an urban legend circulated through the internet and that while freed slaves may have played a role in the French inspiration for the Statue, the primary issue was the representation of the freedoms of the United States in general and that many statements in the past regarding this matter have been misinterpreted. Whoever the original model was or whatever the true origins of the statue may be, the statue stands today as a
symbol of
liberty.
U.S. Presidents with African Ancestry?"Joel A. Rogers and Dr. Auset Bakhufu have both written books documenting that at least five former
presidents of the
United States had Black people among their ancestors. If one considers the fact that European men far outnumbered European women during the founding of the U.S., and that the
rape and
impregnation of an African female
slave was not considered a crime, as was documented throughout United States history. The presidents they name include
Thomas Jefferson,
Andrew Jackson,
Abraham Lincoln,
Warren Harding, and
Calvin Coolidge."
One of the best cases for black ancestry was against
Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States from 1921 to 1923, who never denied his
ancestry. When
Republican leaders called on Harding to deny the "Negro" history, he said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence." William Chancellor, a White professor of
economics and
politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy and identified
Black ancestors among both parents of President Harding.
Justice Department agents allegedly bought and destroyed all copies of this book. Chancellor also said that Harding's only academic credentials included education at Iberia College, which was founded in order to educate fugitive slaves.
Andrew Jackson was the 7th president of the
United States from 1829 to 1837. The Virginia Magazine of History, Volume 29, says that Jackson was the son of a White woman from
Ireland who had intermarried with a
Negro. The magazine also said that his eldest brother had been sold as a slave in
Carolina. Joel Rogers says that Andrew Jackson Sr. died long before President
Andrew Jackson Jr. was born. He says the president's mother then went to live on the Crawford farm where there were Negro slaves and that one of these men was Andrew Jr's father. Another account of the "brother sold into slavery" story can be found in David Coyle's book entitled "Ordeal of the Presidency" (1960).
Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. The chief attack on Jefferson was in a book written by Thomas Hazard in 1867 called "The Johnny Cake Papers." Hazard interviewed Paris Gardiner, who said he was present during the 1796 presidential
campaign, when one speaker states that Thomas Jefferson was "a mean-spirited son of a half-breed
Indian squaw and a Virginia
mulatto father." In his book entitled "The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson", Samuel Sloan wrote that Jefferson destroyed all of the papers, portraits, and personal effects of his
mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, when she died on March 31, 1776. He even wrote letters to every person who had ever received a letter from his mother, asking them to return that letter. Sloan says, "There is something strange and even psychopathic about the lengths to which Thomas Jefferson went to destroy all remembrances of his mother, while saving over 18,000 copies of his own letters and other documents for
posterity."
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States from 1861 to 1865. J. A. Rogers quotes Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, as saying that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of an
African man. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, said that Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and that his mother was from an
Ethiopian tribe. In Herndon's book entitled "The Hidden Lincoln" he says that Thomas Lincoln could not have been Abraham Lincoln's father because he was
sterile from childhood mumps and was later
castrated. Lincoln's presidential opponents made cartoon drawings depicting him as a Negro and nicknamed him "Abraham Africanus the First".
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States, and he succeeded
Warren Harding. He proudly admitted that his mother was dark because of mixed
Indian ancestry. However, Dr. Bakhufu says that by 1800 the New England Indian was hardly any longer pure Indian, because they had mixed so often with Blacks. Calvin Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "
Moor". In Europe the name "Moor" was given to all Black people just as the name
Negro was used in America.
All of the presidents mentioned were able to pass for
White and never acknowledged their Black ancestry. Millions of other children who were descendants of former slaves have also been able to pass for White. [
44] *Excerpt from Black People & Their Place In World History By: Dr. Leroy Vaughn, MD, MBA
As in many cases, this
genealogical research is excluded from general American history texts and considered controversial by many modern and historical standards.
Political overtones
The term African American carries important political overtones. Previous terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by whites and were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which became tools of white supremacy and
oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of their own choosing.
With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Negro fell into disfavor among many African Americans. It had taken on a moderate, accommodationist, even Uncle Tomish, connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the U.S., particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The
Black Power movement defiantly embraced black as a group identifierâ€"a term they themselves had repudiated only two decades earlierâ€"a term often associated in English with things negative and undesirable, proclaiming, "
Black is beautiful".
In this same period, others favored the term Afro-American; this particular term never gained much traction, but by the 1990s, the term
African American had emerged as the leading choice of self-referential term. Just as other ethnic groups in American society historically had adopted names descriptive of their families' geographical points of origin (such as
Italian-American,
Irish-American,
Polish-American), many blacks in America expressed a preference for a similar term. Because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the U.S. under
chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.
For many, African American is more than a name expressive of
cultural and
historical roots. The term expresses African pride and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the
African diasporaâ€"an embracing of the notion of pan-Africanism earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as
Marcus Garvey,
W.E.B. Dubois and, later,
George Padmore.
A discussion of the term African American and related terms can be found in the
journal article "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self Reference Among American Slave Descendants" in American Speech v 66 is 2 Summer 1991 p. 133-46.
Who is African American?
To be considered
African American in the
United States, not even half of one's ancestry need be black African. The nation's answer to the question "Who is black?" long has been that a "
black" is any person with any known African
ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with
racism, white supremacy,
slavery, and, later, with
Jim Crow laws.
In the
Southern United States, it became known as the
one-drop rule, meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person "black". Some courts have called it the traceable amount rule, and anthropologists call it the
hypodescent rule, meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group.
This definition emerged from the American South to become America's national definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks -- but for different reasons.
|
Singer/songwriter, actress, record producer and fashion designer Beyoncé Knowles is of African American and Louisiana Creole (French, African, Native American) descent. |
White supremacists, whose motivation was
racist, considered anyone with African ancestry tainted, inherently inferior morally and intellectually and, thus, subordinate.During
slavery, there was also a strong economic incentive to maximize the number of slaves. The designation of anyone possessing any trace of African ancestry as "black", and, therefore, of subordinate status to whites, guaranteed a source of free or cheap labor during
slavery and for decades afterward.
For African Americans, the one-drop system of
pigmentocracy was a significant factor in ethnic solidarity. African Americans generally shared a common lot in society and, therefore, common cause -- regardless of their
multiracial admixture or social and economic stratification.
White Americans,
Indians, other
Asians and
Arabs are traditionally not considered African American in the United States, though they or their ancestors may have emigrated from the African continent after generations of residence. In relatively rare cases when South African whites, Caucasoid North Africans or Asian immigrants from
Africa living in America have self-identified as African American in an attempt to benefit from
Affirmative Action or other entitlement programs, their claims generally have not been upheld. There is an obvious legitimate reason for those immigrants to identify as African American, which is technically accurate.
In the 1980s, parents of mixed-race children began to organize and lobby for the addition of a more inclusive term of racial designation that would reflect the heritage of their children. As a result, the term
biracial has become more widely used and accepted to classify people of
mixed race. There are also many in the United States who identify demographically as black/African American while also acknowledging their "mixed" heritage socially.
Due to a centuries-old history within the
United States, historical experiences pre-and post-slavery, and migrations throughout
North America, most African Americans, historically and contemporarily, possess varying degrees of admixture with
European and
Native American ancestry.
In recent decades, as the
multicultural climate of the United States has continued to expand, significant
Asian and
Latin American admixture can also be found throughout various African American populations (especially those in large, populace, ethnically diverse states such as
New York and
California), though to a much lesser degree and extent historically than European and Native American ancestry within the general African American population.
Although the terms
mixed,
biracial or
multiracial are increasingly used, it remains common for those who possess any visible traits of black heritage to identify solely within black/African American
ethnic groups.
Terms no longer in common use
The term
Negro, which was widely used until the 1960s, has become increasingly considered passé and inappropriate or derogatory. It is still fairly commonly used by older individuals and in the Deep South. Once widely considered acceptable,
Negro fell into disfavor for reasons already herein stated. The self-referential term of preference for Negro became
black.
Negroid/
black was a term used by European
anthropologists first in the 18th century to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the
African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on inconsistent, unscientific phenotypical standards, the term is controversial and imprecise. Because of its similarity to Negro, growing numbers of blacks have substituted the term
Africoid which, unlike Negroid, encompasses the phenotypes of all
indigenous African peoples.
Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African Americans are
mulatto and
colored. Even so, the use of the word "
colored" can still be found today in the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or
NAACP. The American use of the term
mulatto originally was used to mean the offspring of a "pure African black" and a "pure European white".
The Latin root of the word is mulo, as in "mule", implying incorrectly that, like mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids,
mulattoes are sterile crosses of two different species. For example, in the early
20th century, African American leaders such as
Booker T. Washington and
Frederick Douglass, who had
slaves as mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. Whilst not as common as "
mixed", "
biracial", or even "
multiracial", mulatto is still sometimes used to refer to people of mixed parentage and, despite its origin, is not considered inherently derogatory.
The term
quadroon referred to a person of one-fourth African
descent, for example, someone born to a Caucasian father and a mulatto mother. Someone of one-eighth African descent technically was an
octoroon, although the term often was used to refer to any white person with even a hint of black ancestry.
Mulatto and terms with the -roon suffix persisted in a social context for a number of decades, but by the mid twentieth century, they no longer were in common use. With the end of slavery, there was no longer a strong commercial incentive to classify blacks by their African-European ancestral admixture. The occasional use of these terms, however, does still persist in electronic media, literature and in some social settings.
Criticisms of the term
There is some criticism of the term
African American. To be African American, some argue that an individual would have to be born in Africa, then
immigrate to the U.S., and then obtain citizenship. By this definition, an overwhelming majority of black Americans would not be African American, but of African American descent. The term can also be interpreted to include non-black immigrants from Africa to the United States, such as white South Africans or Arab Africans, although these groups generally do not refer to themselves as African American nor generally thought of as such in the United States.
The term
African American has also been misused by some in lieu of
black, regardless of an individual's nationality, ethnicity or geography. For example, during the
2005 civil unrest in France,
CNN anchorwoman
Carol Lin referred[
45] to the rioters as "African Americans". While the majority of rioters were of North African background, none were known to be U.S. citizens.
Defenders of the term argue that the term was never meant to encompass all Africans, or even all black people, but only those individuals formerly referred to as
American Negroes, primarily people whose ancestors survived the
Middle Passage and
slavery. Further, in the U.S., which is often described as a "nation of immigrants",
hyphenated American terms are used to describe one's national origin.
By virtue of this, any person born in
Africa would take on the name of their country, for example, individuals from
Nigeria would be called
Nigerian-American, as it describes their national origin, as opposed to
African American. The term African American is preferred by many because although the historical national origin of the majority of black Americans is not traceable, the continent of
Africa provides a geographic point of origin and a descriptive term of themselves.
"I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me". --
Muhammad Ali (1942- )The Greatest (1975)
"The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans." --
Malcolm X "Racism: the Cancer that is Destroying America", in Egyptian Gazette (Aug. 25 1964).
"If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything . . . that smacks of discrimination or slander." --
Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) "Certain Unalienable Rights", What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan (1944)
"My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976) testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, June 12, 1956
"Tears will get you sympathy. Sweat will get you change."--
Jesse Jackson, minister and activist
"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . . . One ever feels his twoness,â€"an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." --
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
"We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered." --
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) Lift Every Voice and Sing, stanza 2 (1900)
We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice. --
Carter Woodson (1875-1950) on founding Negro History Week, 1926
"Freedom is never given; it is won." -- A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979)keynote speech given at the Second National Negro Congress in 1937
"If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great peopleâ€"a black peopleâ€"who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization." --
Martin Luther King Jr.The following gives the African American population in the U.S. over time, based on U.S. Census figures. (Numbers from years 1920 to 2000 are based on U.S. Census figures as given by the
Time Almanac of 2005, p 377)
| Percentage of total population | | 1790 ¦¦ 757,208 | 19.3% (highest historic percentage) |
| 1800 ¦¦ 1,002,037 | 18.9% |
| 1810 ¦¦ 1,377,808 | 19.0% |
| 1820 ¦¦ 1,771,656 | 18.4% |
| 1830 ¦¦ 2,328,642 | 18.1% |
| 1840 ¦¦ 2,873,648 | 16.8% |
| 1850 ¦¦ 3,638,808 | 15.7% |
| 1860 ¦¦ 4,441,830 | 14.1% |
| 1870 ¦¦ 4,880,009 | 12.7% |
| 1880 ¦¦ 6,580,793 | 13.1% |
| 1890 ¦¦ 7,488,788 | 11.9% |
| 1900 ¦¦ 8,833,994 | 11.6% |
| 1910 ¦¦ 9,827,763 | 10.7% |
| 1920 ¦¦ 10.5 million | 9.9% |
| 1930 ¦¦ 11.9 million | 9.7% (lowest historic percentage) |
| 1940 ¦¦ 12.9 million | 9.8% |
| 1950 ¦¦ 15.0 million | 10.0% |
| 1960 ¦¦ 18.9 million | 10.5% |
| 1970 ¦¦ 22.6 million | 11.1% |
| 1980 ¦¦ 26.5 million | 11.7% |
| 1990 ¦¦ 30.0 million | 12.1% |
| 2000 ¦¦ 36.6 million | 12.3% |
note: The
CIA World Factbook gives the current 2005 figure as 13.5% [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/us.html]
*
Political Correctness*
Black (people)*
:Category:African Americans*
African American National Biography Project*
List of African Americans *
List of African-American-related topics*
List of U.S. metropolitan areas with large African-American populations*
List of U.S. cities with large African-American populations*
Race,
Hyphenated American*Terminology:
Blacks,
Colored,
Creole,
Negro*
African American history**
Racial segregation **
Black nationalism*
African American literature*
African American Vernacular English*
Affirmative action*
Black Indians*
AtlanticismOther groups
*
Americo-Liberian*
Afro-Argentinian*
Afro-Brazilian*
Afro-Cuban*
Afro-Ecuadorian*
Afro-Filipino*
Afro-Latin American*
Afro-Mexican*
Afro-Peruvian*
Afro-Trinidadian*
African American culture*
African American music*Jack Salzman, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Afro-American culture and history, New York, NY : Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996
African American Lives, edited by Henry L. Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford University Press, 2004 - more then 600 biographies
From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans, by
John Hope Franklin, Alfred Moss, McGraw-Hill Education 2001, standard work, first edition in 1947
Black Women in America - An Historical Encyclopedia, Darlene Clark Hine (Editor), Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Editor), Elsa Barkley Brown (Editor), Paperback Edition, Indiana University Press 2005
*van Sertima, Ivan "They Came Before Columbus"
*Brandon S. Centerwall,
"Race, Socioeconomic Status and Domestic Homicide, Atlanta, 1971-72", 74 AM. J. PUB. HLTH. 813, 815 (1984)
*Darnell F. Hawkins,
"Inequality, Culture, and Interpersonal Violence", 12 HEALTH AFFAIRS 80 (1993)
*Jerome A. Neapolitan,
"Cross-National Variation in Homicide; Is Race A Factor?" 36 CRIMINOLOGY 139 (1998)
*Bohlen, C. "Does She Say the Same Things in her Native Tongue?" New York Times, May 18, 1986
*Felder, J. (1992) From the Statue of Liberty to the Statue of Bigotry. New York: Jack Felder.
*Felder, J. "Black Origins and Lady Liberty". Daily Challenge. July 16, 1990
*Sinclair, T. Was Original Statue a Tribute to Blacks? New York Voice, July 5, 1986
*The New York Post, "Statue of Liberty" June 17, 1986.
*Altman, Susan "The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage"
*
Definition of African American from MedicineNet
*
Article detailing the problems of defining African American*
Black men quietly combating stereotypes*
"Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"*
Scientific American Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements Reconnecting African-Americans to an ancestral past.
