From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
African American history is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans
held in the United States from 1619 to 1865. Others who are considered
African American by the US government include voluntary immigrants from
Africa, South America, and the Caribbean
who self identify as being of African descent. African-American history
is celebrated in the United States during February, designated as Black History Month.
African origins
The majority of African Americans
descend from slaves who were either sold as prisoners of war by African
states or kidnapped directly by Europeans and Americans. The former was
far more common than the latter. The existing market for slaves in
Africa was tapped into by European powers in need of labor for New World plantations.
The American slave population was made up of the various ethnic groups from western and central Africa, including the Bakongo, Igbo, Mandé, Wolof, Akan, Fon and Makua
amongst others. Over time in most areas of the Americas, these
different peoples did away with tribal differences and forged a new
history and culture based on their similarities.[1]
Studies of contemporary documents reveal seven regions from which Africans were sold or taken during the Atlantic slave trade. These regions were Senegambia, encompassing the coast from the Senegal River to the Casamance where captives as far away as the Upper and Middle Niger River
Valley were sold. There was also the Sierra Leone region, which
included territory from the Casamance to Assini in the modern countries
of Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. Another region was the Gold Coast, which is mainly modern Ghana. The Bight of Benin was a region stretching from the Volta River to the Benue River in modern Togo, Benin and southwestern Nigeria. The Bight of Biafra extended from southeastern Nigeria through Cameroon into Gabon. West Central Africa, the largest region, included the Congo and Angola. The region of Mozambique-Madagascar included the modern countries of Mozambique, parts of Tanzania and Madagascar.[2]
Origins and Percentages of African-Americans imported into British North America and Louisiana (1700-1820) [3]
| Region |
Percentage |
| West Central Africa |
26.1% |
| Bight of Biafra |
24.4% |
| Sierra Leone |
15.8% |
| Senegambia |
14.5% |
| Gold Coast |
13.1% |
| Bight of Benin |
4.3% |
| Mozambique-Madagascar |
1.8% |
Introduction of Slavery
-
The first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. The English settlers treated these captives as indentured servants
and released them after a number of years. This practice was gradually
replaced by the system of race-based slavery used in the Caribbean.[4]
As servants were freed, they became competition for resources.
Additionally, released servants had to be replaced. This, combined with
the still ambiguous nature of the social status of Blacks and the
difficulty in using any other group of people as forced servants, led
to the relegation of Blacks into slavery. Massachusetts
was the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641. Other colonies
followed suit by passing laws that passed slavery on to the children of
slaves and making non-Christian imported servants slaves for life. [5]
A former slave displays the telltale criss-cross,
keloid scars from being
bullwhipped.
The Revolution and Early America
- See also: American Revolution, History of the United States (1776–1789), and African Americans in the Revolutionary War
The later half of the 18th century was a time of political upheaval in the United States. In the midst of cries for relief from British tyranny and oppression, several people pointed out the apparent hypocrisies of slave holders demanding freedom. The Declaration of Independence, a document that would become a manifesto for human rights and personal freedom, was written by Thomas Jefferson, who owned over 200 slaves. Other Southern statesmen were also major slaveholders. The Second Continental Congress
did consider freeing slaves to disrupt British commerce. They also
removed language from the Declaration of Independence that included the
promotion of slavery amongst the offenses of King George III. A number of free Blacks, most notably Prince Hall—the founder of Prince Hall Freemasonry, submitted petitions for the end of slavery. But these petitions were largely ignored.[6]
This did not deter Blacks, free and slave, from participating in the Revolution. Crispus Attucks, a free Black tradesman, was the first casualty of the Boston Massacre and of the ensuing American Revolutionary War. 5,000 Blacks, including Prince Hall, fought in the Continental Army. Many fought side by side with White soldiers at the battles of Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill. But when George Washington took command in 1775 he barred any further recruitment of Blacks.
By contrast, the British and Loyalists offered emancipation to any slave owned by a Patriot who was willing to join the Loyalist forces. Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, recruited 300 African American men into his Ethiopian regiment
within a month of making this proclamation. In South Carolina 25,000
slaves, more than one-quarter of the total, escaped to join and fight
with the British, or fled for freedom in the uproar of war. Well-known Black Loyalist soldiers include Colonel Tye and Boston King.
The Americans eventually won the war and in the provisional treaty they
demanded the return of property, including slaves. Nonetheless, up to
4,000 documented African Americans were able to leave the country for Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and Britain rather than be returned to slavery.[7]
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 sought to define the foundation for the government of the newly formed United States of America. The constitution set forth the ideals of freedom and equality while providing for the continuation of the institution of slavery through the fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths compromise.
Additionally, free blacks' rights were also restricted in many places.
Most were denied the right to vote and were excluded from public
schools. Some Blacks sought to fight these contradictions in court. In
1790, Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker used language from the new Massachusetts
constitution that declared all men were born free and equal to
successfully sue for freedom. A free Black businessman in Boston named Paul Cuffe sought to be excused from paying taxes since he had no voting rights.[8]
In the Northern states, the revolutionary spirit did help African
Americans. Beginning in the 1750s, there was widespread sentiment
during the American Revolution that slavery was a social evil (for the
country as a whole and for the whites) that should eventually be
abolished.[citation needed]
All the Northern states passed emancipation acts between 1780 and 1804;
most of these arranged for gradual emancipation and a special status
for freedmen, so there were still a dozen "permanent apprentices" into
the 19th century. In 1787 Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance and
barred slavery from the large Northwest Territory.[9] The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 declared all men "born free and equal";[citation needed] the slave Quork Walker sued for his freedom on this basis and won his freedom, thus abolishing slavery in Massachusetts.[citation needed]
In 1790, there were more than 59,000 free Blacks in the United States.
By 1810, that number had risen to 186,446. Most of these were in the
North, but Revolutionary sentiments also motivated Southern
slaveholders.
For 20 years after the Revolution, more Southerners also freed
slaves, sometimes by manumission or in wills to be accomplished after
the slaveholder's death. In the Upper South, the percentage of free
blacks rose from about 1%[when?] to more than 10% by 1810. Quakers and Moravians worked to persuade slaveholders to free families. In Delaware, three-quarters of all blacks were free by 1810.[10] By 1860 just over 91% of Delaware's blacks were free, and 49.1% of those in Maryland.[11]
Among the successful free men was Benjamin Banneker,
a distinguished scientist, almanac writer, and surveyor, who was
instrumental in the design and construction of the grand street and
park plan of Washington, D.C.
Despite the challenges of living in the new country, most free Blacks
fared far better than the nearly 800,000 enslaved Blacks. Even so, many
considered emigrating to Africa.[8]
The Antebellum Period
- See also: History of the United States (1789–1849) and Origins of the American Civil War
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became more entrenched in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. Pennsylvania
was the first with a gradual abolition act passed in 1780. A number of
events continued to shape views on slavery. The invention of the cotton gin
in 1793 allowed the cultivation of short staple cotton, which could be
grown in inland areas. This triggered a huge demand for imported slave
labor to develop new plantations. There was a 70% increase in the
number of slaves in the United States in only 20 years.
In 1808, Congress
abolished the international slave trade. While American Blacks
celebrated this as a victory in the fight against slavery, the ban
increased the demand for slaves. Changing agricultural practices in the
Upper South from tobacco to mixed farming decreased labor requirements,
and slaves were sold to traders for the developing Deep South. In
addition, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
allowed any Black person to be claimed as a runaway unless a White
person testified on their behalf. A number of free Blacks, especially indentured children, were kidnapped
and sold into slavery with little or no hope of rescue. By 1819 there
were exactly 11 free and 11 slave states, which increased sectionalism. Fears of an imbalance in Congress led to the 1820 Missouri Compromise that required states to be admitted to the union in pairs, one slave and one free.[12]
The Black Community
The number of free Blacks grew during this time as well. By 1830
there were 319,000 free Blacks in the United States. 150,000 lived in
the northern states. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that catered to the Black community. Racial discrimination
often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in
White businesses and other establishments. To counter this, Blacks
developed their own communities with Black-owned businesses. Black
doctors, lawyers and other businessmen were the foundation of the Black
middle class.[13] Further supporting the growth of the Black Community was the Black church. Starting in the early 1790s with the AME, AME Zion
and other churches, the Black church grew to be the focal point of the
Black community. The Black church was both an expression of community
and unique African-American spirituality, and a reaction to European
American discrimination. At first, Black preachers formed separate
congregations within the existing denominations.
Because of discrimination at the higher levels of the church hierarchy,
some blacks simply founded separate Black denominations.[14]
The Dred Scott Decision
-
The American Civil War
- See also: American Civil War
Emancipation and Reconstruction
In 1863, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the southern states at war with the North. The 13th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, outlawed slavery in the United States. In 1868, the 14th amendment granted full U.S. citizenship to African-Americans. The 15th amendment, ratified in 1870, extended the right to vote to black males.
The Emancipation Proclamation.
After the Union victory over the Confederacy, a brief period of
southern black progress, called Reconstruction, followed. From 1865 to
1877, under protection of Union troops, some strides were made toward
equal rights for African-Americans. Southern black men began to vote
and were elected to the United States Congress
and to local offices such as sheriff. Coalitions of white and black
Republicans passed bills to establish the first public school systems
in most states of the South, although sufficient funding was hard to
find. Blacks established their own churches, towns and businesses. Tens
of thousands migrated to Mississippi for the chance to clear and own
their own land, as 90% of the bottomlands were undeveloped. By the end
of the century, two-thirds of the farmers who owned land in the
Mississippi Delta bottomlands were black.[15]
The aftermath of the Civil War accelerated the process of national African-American identity formation.[citation needed]
Tens of thousands of Black northerners left homes and careers and also
migrated to the defeated South, building schools, printing newspapers,
and opening businesses. As Joel Williamson puts it:
Many of the migrants, women as well as men, came as teachers
sponsored by a dozen or so benevolent societies, arriving in the still
turbulent wake of Union armies. Others came to organize relief for the
refugees.... Still others... came south as religious missionaries...
Some came south as business or professional people seeking opportunity
on this... special black frontier. Finally, thousands came as soldiers,
and when the war was over, many of [their] young men remained there or
returned after a stay of some months in the North to complete their
education.[citation needed]
Jim Crow, Disfranchisement and Challenges
- See also: Disfranchisement after the Civil War
In the face of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks
as well as whites sympathetic to their cause, the U.S. government
retreated from its pledge to guarantee constitutional protections to
freedmen and women. When President Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South in 1877
as a result of a national compromise on the election, white Democratic
southerners acted quickly to reverse the groundbreaking advances of
Reconstruction. To reduce black voting and regain control of state
legislatures, Democrats had used a combination of violence, fraud, and
intimidation since the election of 1868. These techniques were
prominent among rifle clubs and paramilitary groups in Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Florida prior to the 1876 elections. In South
Carolina, for instance, one historian estimated that 150 blacks were
killed in the weeks before the election.[16] Massacres occurred at Hamburg and Ellenton.
European American mob violence against African Americans intensified. Many blacks were fearful of this trend, and men like Benjamin "Pap" Singleton began speaking of separating from the South. This idea culminated in the 1879-1880 movement of the Exodusters, who migrated to Kansas.
Sign for "Colored waiting room",
Georgia, 1943
White Democrats first passed laws to make voter registration and
elections more complicated. Most of the rules acted against blacks, but
many poor whites were also disfranchised. Interracial coalitions of
Populists and Republicans in some states succeeded in controlling
legislatures in 1894, which made the Democrats more determined to
reduce voting by poorer classes. When Democrats took control of
Tennessee in 1888, they passed laws making voter registration more
complicated and ended the most competitive political state in the
South. Voting by blacks in rural areas and small towns dropped, as did
voting by poor whites.[17]
From 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi and ending with
Georgia, ten of eleven Southern states adopted new constitutions or
amendments that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. Using a combination of provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements and literacy tests, states dramatically decreased black voter registration and turnout, in some cases to zero.[18] The grandfather clause
was used in many states temporarily to exempt illiterate white voters
from literacy tests. As power became concentrated under the Democratic
Party in the South, the party positioned itself as a private club and
instituted white primaries, closing blacks out of the only competitive contests. By 1910 one-party white rule was firmly established across the South.
Although African Americans quickly started litigation to challenge
such provisions, early court decisions at the state and national level
went against them. In Williams v. Mississippi
(1898), the Supreme Court upheld state provisions, which encouraged
other Southern states to adopt similar measures over the next few
years, as noted above. Booker T. Washington, of Tuskegee Institute
secretly worked with Northern supporters to raise funds and provide
representation for African Americans in additional cases, such as Giles v. Harris (1903) and Giles v. Teasley (1904), but again the Supreme Court upheld the states.[19]
Seeking to return blacks to their subordinate status under slavery, white supremacists resurrected de facto
barriers and enacted new laws to further marginalize blacks in Southern
society, limiting, among other things, black access to transportation,
schools, restaurants and other public facilities. White supremacists
also promoted the idea that blacks' participation in government in the
South was ended due to incompetence; this view was disseminated in
school textbooks and movies such as The Birth of a Nation in 1915.
Although slavery had been abolished, most southern blacks for decades
continued to struggle in grinding poverty as agricultural, domestic and
menial laborers. Many were sharecroppers, their economic status little changed by emancipation.
Racial Terrorism
After its founding in 1867, the Ku Klux Klan,
a clandestine organization sworn to perpetuate white supremacy, became
a power for a few years in the South and beyond, eventually
establishing a northern headquarters in Greenfield, Indiana.
Its members hid behind masks and robes to hide their identity while
they carried out violence and property damage. The Klan employed lynching, cross burnings and other forms of terrorism,
physical violence, house burnings, and intimidation. The Klan's
excesses led to the passage of legislation against it, and with Federal
enforcement, it was squeezed out by 1871.
The anti-Republican and anti-freedmen sentiment only briefly went
underground, as violence arose in other incidents, especially after
Louisiana's disputed state election in 1872, which contributed to the Colfax and Coushatta massacres in Louisiana
in 1873 and 1874. Tensions and rumors were high in many parts of the
South, but in blow-ups or riots, African Americans were consistently
killed in much greater numbers than European Americans. Events long
called "riots", featuring whites heroically saving the community from
marauding blacks, have often been renamed by historians as massacres,
as at Colfax, because of the disproportionate number of fatalities for
blacks as opposed to whites. The mob violence there resulted in 40-50
blacks dead for each of the three whites killed.
While not as widely known as the Klan, the paramilitary organizations
that arose during the mid-1870s as the white Democrats mounted a
stronger insurgency against Republican governments, were more effective
in suppressing the black vote and achieving political goals. Unlike the
Klan, these members operated openly, often solicited newspaper
coverage, and had distinct political goals: to turn Republicans out of
office and suppress or dissuade black voting in order to regain power
in 1876. Groups included the White League, that started from white militias in Grant Parish, Louisiana, in 1874 and spread in the Deep South; the Red Shirts, that started in Mississippi in 1875 but had chapters arise and was prominent in the 1876 election campaign in South Carolina, as well as in North Carolina; and other White Line organizations such as rifle clubs.[20]
The Jim Crow
era accompanied the most cruel wave of "racial" hatred that America has
yet experienced. Between 1890 and 1940, millions of African Americans
were disfranchised, killed, brutalized, even discouraged from learning
the Three Rs. According to newspaper records kept at the Tuskegee Institute,
about 5,000 men, women, and children were murdered outright by the
system, tortured to death in documented extrajudicial public
rituals—human sacrifices called "lynchings."
The journalist Ida B. Wells estimated that lynchings not reported by
the newspapers, plus similar executions under the veneer of "due
process," may have amounted to about 20,000 killings.
Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers during this
period, it is reported that fewer than 50 whites were ever indicted for
their crimes, and only four sentenced. Because blacks were
disfranchised, they could not sit on juries or have any part in the
political process, including local offices. Meanwhile, the lynchings
were a weapon of white mob terror with millions of Afro-Americans
living in a constant state of anxiety and fear.[21]
Most blacks where denied their right to keep and bear arms under Jim
Crow laws, and they were therefore unable to protect themselves or
their families.[22]
Civil Rights
In response to these and other setbacks, in the summer of 1905, W.E.B. DuBois and 28 other prominent, African-American men met secretly at Niagara Falls, Ontario.
There, they produced a manifesto calling for an end to racial
discrimination, full civil liberties for African-Americans and
recognition of human brotherhood. The organization they established
came to be called the Niagara Movement. After the notorious Springfield, Illinois race riot of 1908, a group of concerned European Americans joined with the leadership of the Niagara Movement and formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) a year later, in 1909.
Under the leadership of DuBois, the NAACP mounted legal challenges to
segregation and lobbied legislatures on behalf of black Americans.
During this period, African Americans continued to create independent
community and institutional lives for themselves. They established
schools, churches, social welfare institutions, banks, newspapers and small businesses to serve the needs of their communities.
The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance
-
During the first half of the 20th century, the largest internal
population shift in U.S. history took place. Starting about 1910, in
the Great Migration
over 5 million African Americans moved from the South to northern
cities, the West and Midwest in hopes of escaping violence, finding
better jobs, voting and enjoying greater equality. In the 1920s, the
concentration of blacks in New York led to the cultural movement known
as the Harlem Renaissance, whose influence reached nationwide. Black intellectual and cultural circles were influenced by thinkers such as Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar Senghor, who celebrated blackness, or negritude; and arts and letters flourished. Writers Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Richard Wright; and artists Lois Mailou Jones, William H. Johnson, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Archibald Motley gained prominence.
The South Side of Chicago,
a destination for many on the trains up from Mississippi and Louisiana,
became the black capital of America, generating flourishing businesses,
music, arts and foods. A new generation of powerful African American
political leaders and organizations also came to the fore. Membership
in the NAACP rapidly increased as it mounted an anti-lynching campaign
in reaction to ongoing southern white violence against blacks. Marcus Garvey's UNIA, the Nation of Islam, and union organizer A. Philip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters all were established during this period and found support among urban African Americans.
Two World Wars
Black soldiers in
France, 1944
Many soldiers of color served their country with distinction during World War I and World War II.
Famous segregated units, such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the U.S. 761st Tank Battalion proved their value in combat. Approximately 75 percent of the soldiers who served in the European theater as truckers for the Red Ball Express and kept Allied supply lines open were African American.[23] A total of 708 African Americans were killed in combat during World War II.[24]
The distinguished service of these units was a factor in President Harry S. Truman order to desegregate all US Armed Forces in July 1948 with the promulgation of Executive Order 9981. It also helped open jobs for black women in the field of nursing.
The Civil Rights Movement
-
The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) of Topeka.
This decision led to the dismantling of legal segregation in all areas
of southern life, from schools to restaurants to public restrooms, but
it occurred slowly and only after concerted activism by African
Americans. Fannie E. Motley graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama in 1956. The ruling also brought new momentum to the Civil Rights Movement. Boycotts against segregated public transportation systems sprang up in the South, the most notable of which was the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Civil rights groups organized other boycotts, voter registration campaigns, Freedom Rides
and other nonviolent direct action, such as marches, pickets and
sit-ins to mobilize around issues of equal access and voting rights.
Southern segregationists fought back to block reform. The conflict grew
to involve steadily escalating physical violence, bombings and
intimidation by Southern whites. Law enforcement responded to
protesters with batons, electric cattle prods, fire hoses, attack dogs
and mass arrests.
In Virginia, a campaign of obstructionism and outright defiance, called Massive Resistance,
entailed a series of actions by state legislators, school board members
and other public officials to deny state funding to integrated schools
and fund privately run "segregation academies" for white students. Farmville, Virginia, in Prince Edward County, was one of the plaintiff African-American communities involved in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
Supreme Court decision. As a last-ditch effort to avoid court-ordered
desegregation, officials in the county shut down the county's entire
public school system in 1959. [25]
White students were able to attend private schools established by the
community for the sole purpose of circumventing integration. The
largely black, rural population of the county had little recourse. Some
families were split up as parents sent their children to live with
relatives in other locales to attend public school; but the majority of
Prince Edward's more than 2,000 black children, as well as many poor
whites, simply remained unschooled until court action forced the
schools to reopen five years later.
Perhaps the high point of the Civil Rights Movement was the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which brought more than 250,000 marchers to the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.,
to speak out for an end to southern racial violence and police
brutality, equal opportunity in employment, equal access in education
and public accommodations. The organizers of the march were the "Big
Seven" of the Civil Rights Movement: Bayard Rustin
the strategist who has been called the "invisible man" of the civil
rights movement; labor organizer and initiator of the march, A. Phillip
Randolph; Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., of the National Urban League; Martin Luther King, Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); James Farmer of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); and John Lewis of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Also active behind the scenes and sharing the podium with Dr. King was Dorothy Height, head of the National Council of Negro Women. It was at this event, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that King delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech. This march 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.
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.
Political and economic empowerment
Politically and economically, blacks have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, brought unprecedented support and leverage to blacks in politics.
In 1989, Virginia elected Douglas Wilder, the first African-American governor in U.S. history. In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 black mayors.
The 38 African-American members of Congress form the Congressional Black Caucus,
which serves as a political bloc for issues relating to African
Americans. The appointment of blacks to high federal offices—including
General Colin Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989-1993, United States Secretary of State, 2001 - 2005; Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 2001-2004, confirmed Secretary of State in January, 2005; Ron Brown, United States Secretary of Commerce, 1993-1996; and Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas—also demonstrates the increasing visibility of blacks in the political arena.
In 2008, Illinois senator Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for the Presidency of the United States. He is believed to have a credible chance of winning the general election in November.
Economic progress for blacks' reaching the extremes of wealth has been slow. According to Forbes richest lists, Oprah Winfrey was the richest African American of the 20th century and has been the world's only black billionaire in 2004, 2005, and 2006. [1] Not only was Winfrey the world's only black billionaire but she has been the only black on the Forbes 400 list nearly every year since 1995. BET founder Bob Johnson
briefly joined her on the list from 2001-2003 before his ex-wife
acquired part of his fortune; although he returned to the list in 2006,
he did not make it in 2007. With Winfrey the only African American
wealthy enough to rank among America's 400 richest people [2],
blacks currently comprise 0.25% of America's economic elite. They make
up 12% of the U.S. population. The black middle and upper-middle
classes, however, have grown substantially. Blacks have followed other
middle classes into suburbs of many American cities in the last two
decades.
Scholars of African-American history
See also
Biography
Further reading
- The African-American Odyssey, by Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, 2nd ed.; Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2002
- Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Darlene Clark Hine, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Elsa Barkley Brown, editors; paperback edition, Indiana University Press, 2005
- Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste, by Mark S. Weiner, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004
- Bridges of Memory; Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration: An Oral History, by Timuel D. Black Jr., Northwestern University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-8101-2315-0
- From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, by John Hope Franklin, rev. ed., Alfred Moss, McGraw-Hill Education, 2001
- Roots: 30th Anniversary Edition, by Alex Haley, Vanguard Press, 2007
Notes
- ^ Perry, James A.. "African Roots of African-American Culture". The Black Collegian Online. Retrieved on 2007-06-04.
- ^ Gomez,
Michael A: "Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African
Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South" page 27. Chapel Hill,
1998
- ^ Gomez,
Michael A: "Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African
Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South" page 29. Chapel Hill,
1998
- ^ "New World Exploration and English Ambition". The Terrible Transformation. PBS. Retrieved on 2007-06-14.
- ^ "From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery". The Terrible Transformation. PBS. Retrieved on 2007-06-14.
- ^ "Declarations of Independence, 1770-1783". Revolution. PBS. Retrieved on 2007-06-14.
- ^ "The Revolutionary War". Revolution. Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
- ^ a b "The Constitution and the New Nation". Revolution. Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877, New York: Hill and Wang, paperback, 1994, p. 78-79
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877, New York: Hill and Wang, paperback, 1994, p.78
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877, New York: Hill and Wang, paperback, 1994, pp.82-83
- ^ "Growth and Entrenchment of Slavery". Brotherly Love. PBS. Retrieved on 2007-06-16.
- ^ "Philadelphia". Brotherly Love. Retrieved on 2007-06-17.</ref
Blacks organized to help strengthen the Black community and continue
the fight against slavery. One of these organizations was the American
Society of Free Persons of Color, founded in 1830. These organizations
provided social aid to poor blacks and organized responses to political
issues. The Black community also established schools for Black
children, since they were often barred from entering public
schools.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3narr2.html |publisher=PBS
|title=Freedom and Resistance |accessdate=2007-06-17}}</li>
<li id="cite_note-13">'''[[#cite_ref-13|^]]''' {{cite web
|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3narr3.html |title=The Black
Church |publisher=PBS |accessdate=2007-06-17}}</li> <li
id="cite_note-14">'''[[#cite_ref-14|^]]''' John C.
Willis,''Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil
War'', Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2000</li> <li
id="cite_note-15">'''[[#cite_ref-15|^]]''' Nicholas Lemann,
''Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War'', New York: Farrar,
Strauss & Giroux, 2007, p. 174</li> <li
id="cite_note-16">'''[[#cite_ref-16|^]]'''
[http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=D033 Connie
L. Lester, "Disfranchising Laws", Tennessee Encyclopedia], accessed 17
Apr
2008<ref>[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=224731
Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon",
''Constitutional Commentary'', Vol.17, 2000, p. 27], accessed 10 Mar
2008</li> <li id="cite_note-17">'''[[#cite_ref-17|^]]'''
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=224731 Richard H.
Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", ''Constitutional
Commentary'', Vol.17, 2000, pp.12-13], accessed 10 Mar 2008</li>
<li id="cite_note-18">'''[[#cite_ref-18|^]]'''
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=224731 Richard H.
Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", ''Constitutional
Commentary'', Vol.17, 2000, pp.12-13], accessed 10 Mar 2008</li>
<li id="cite_note-19">'''[[#cite_ref-19|^]]''' Nicholas Lemann,
''Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War'', New York: Farrar,
Strauss & Giroux, 2007, pp.70-76.</li> <li
id="cite_note-20">'''[[#cite_ref-20|^]]''' For the story of the
lynchings, see Philip Dray, ''At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The
Lynching of Black America'' (New York: Random House, 2002). For the
systematic oppression and terror inflicted, see Leon F. Litwack,
''Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow'' (New
York, 1998).</li> <li
id="cite_note-21">'''[[#cite_ref-21|^]]'''
[http://www.guncite.com/journals/cd-recon.html The Second Amendment:
Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration<!--Bot-generated
title-->]</li> <li
id="cite_note-22">'''[[#cite_ref-22|^]]''' Williams,
Rudi.[http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=43934
"African Americans Gain Fame as World War II Red Ball Express
Drivers]." American Armed Forces Press Service, Feb. 15, 2002.
Retrieved 2007-06-10</li> <li
id="cite_note-23">'''[[#cite_ref-23|^]]''' Michael Clodfelter.
''Warfare and Armed Conflicts- A Statistical Reference to Casualty and
Other Figures, 1500-2000. 2nd Ed. 2002 '' ISBN
0-7864-1204-6.</li> <li
id="cite_note-24">'''[[#cite_ref-24|^]]'''
[http://www.mercyseatfilms.com/filmcredits.html Mercy Seat Films -
'THEY CLOSED OUR SCHOOLS' - Film Credits<!--Bot-generated
title-->]</li></ol></ref>
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