African American

The use of the taxonomic category African American, either in public or health or other disciplines, fundamentally reflects the historic and contemporary systems of racial stratification in American society. The term "African American," as a categorical descriptor, includes many different segments of the American population referred to as "black" or Americans of sub-Saharan African ancestry. It is also a product of the group self-definition process in which African Americans have historically engaged as an expression of identity, power, defiance, pride, and the struggle for human rights. These designations were often in contradistinction to official government classifications and popular characterizations, which frequently reflected prevailing ideas about white supremacy intended to denigrate African Americans.

The historical roots of the nominal identity of African Americans date back to the early nineteenth century, when there were intense debates and political movements, mostly among free blacks in the North, to reunite with their African heritage. Part of the discussion and designation also involved classification of "mixed-race" populations, whose identity raised serious questions about the relevance of racial classification based on pigmentation. According to Collier-Thomas and Turner,

From the 1830s to the middle of the 1890s, Colored American and the more commonly used derivation Colored were the most popular terms. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Negro gained considerable support as a generic term, becoming by 1920 the most commonly used expression of race. Increasing dissatisfaction with the term Negro, most noted in the late 1930s, culminated with the Black power movement of the 1960s.

During the latter period of heightened cultural nationalism, "Black" and "Afro-American" emerged as key terms for race designation and were frequently used interchangeably. More recently, in the late 1980s, "African American" was posited as the most appropriate and comprehensive race designation. This current designation not only reflects a historical lineage, but it also establishes an identity that is rooted in cultural and ethnogeographic origins, rather than skin pigmentation as defined by United States politics and policy.

One reason for the attention African Americans have given to group designations is that group classifications by the white majority were highly instrumental in attempting to justify slavery, deny basic human rights, and restrain social opportunities. These oppressive practices had the effect of subordinating African Americans. Richard B. Moore in a book entitled The Name "Negro": Its Origin and Evil Use described how the skin color and other physical features of Africans who were brought into slavery "were identified in the mind of the people generally with ugliness, repulsion, and baseness." During earlier periods of the twentieth century, white media, publishers, and the scientific community largely refused to capitalize group designations such as Black, Colored, Negro, or African. This practice was in clear contrast to references in print to whites or the Caucasian "race." Moreover, scientific research and theories about so-called racial group differences (e.g., eugenics) were highly influential in promoting white supremacy.

Public health and medicine have historically reflected the racial inequities of American society as manifested in discrimination in medical care, research ethics and applications, professional education, and ideas about the disease etiology. Physicians in the antebellum period gave different treatment to blacks because of the belief that the black physiology was inferior to whites and thus differed with regard to intelligence, sexuality, and sensitivity to pain. These racist beliefs in the subhuman qualities of the "Black race" were responsible for blacks being used as subjects in excruciating medical experiments. For example, between 1845 and 1849, Dr. J. Marion Sims, the father of modern gynecology, subjected three African-American women in Alabama to 30 operations without anesthesia to perfect a surgical technique to repair vesicovaginal fistulas. During the same period, another physician in Georgia, Dr. Thomas Hamilton, subjected black bodies to high temperatures by burying them with their heads above ground in his quest to test the remedy for heatstroke so that slaves could work longer hours in the field. This tragic legacy of unethical race biology research was evident in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, in which 399 black men in Alabama unknowingly participated in a study (from 1932 to 1972) to determine the health consequences of untreated syphilis, even though there were known treatments for the disease during this period.

Some scholars have asserted that a lasting effect of this type of institutional racism has been the reluctance of many African Americans to seek medical care. The apprehension of being given different and inferior treatment or being used as guinea pigs in unethical medical research is also believed to have led to the present distrust by African Americans of prevention and treatment in HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Indeed, the persistence in the disparity of health outcomes between African Americans and the white population was the subject of a governmental report in 1985 documenting 60,000 excess deaths among African Americans.

Implicit in most discussions of race and health is the suggestion of a direct "racial" or genetic lineage between African Americans and Africans, advancing the notion of a defective gene pool in these populations. Ancestors of most African Americans were primarily from West Africa, and therefore the imputed genetic heritage may not necessarily be applicable to Africans from other parts of the continent. Additionally, sickle cell anemia, which has been conventionally viewed as an African-American or "Black" genetic disease, actually evolved from a biologic adaptation among persons residing in tropical climates as a protection against malaria. However, many non– West Africans, for example, people of the Mediterranean region or descent, also have a high incidence of this disease or carry the trait but would not be considered "Black" or African American. Also, some diseases such as stomach, lung, and esophageal cancers, as well as hypertension, are higher in African Americans than many Africans and, according to a study in Chicago, low birthweight is higher among African Americans compared to Africans. These examples suggest the strong role of environmental influences rather than genetic factors. Thus putative associations with "black" skin color or other phenotypic similarities are more complex and will continue to be the subject of more public health debate with regard to the human genome project, gene therapy applications, and sociobiologic research.

Within the field of public health, there has been extensive discussion of what the term "race" actually means and its overall value. One problem is that it is seldom defined by researchers. References are frequently made to biologic, cultural, and socioeconomic factors, as well as racism and political differences, without explicitly stating their meaning or relevance. For example, although the term "African American" is generally used inter-changeably with "Black" or "Negro," this is not the case with the descriptor of "non-white," which was widely used prior to 1960. This "racial" category included mostly African Americans but also Hispanic populations, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.

About 30 million persons were identified as African American in the U.S. Census of 1990. From the perspective of public health research, practice, and policy, it is not possible to view them as a monolithic or single group. While they have many commonalities, especially in terms of political opinions and interests, geographic concentrations, and some cultural patterns, it is crucial that public health professionals recognize within-group differences. Social heterogeneity among African Americans regarding health practices or risk factors and outcomes must be carefully examined in terms of age, gender, geographic location, migratory status, social class or socioeconomic status (e.g., education and income), and nativity.

The history of social designations applied to African Americans suggests that the nominal identity of this group may change in the future to reflect the evolution of internal group consciousness, political interests, and social heterogeneity or diversity. Some groups such as "biracial" persons or foreign-born immigrants from African or Caribbean countries may choose in increasing numbers not to be viewed strictly as African American. These issues point to the dynamic nature and significance of racial classification—it has changed and will continue to change. It is also important to note that African American as a racial classification in the United States reflects the unique historical experience and journey of identity in ways that render international comparisons problematic.

In summary, being classified as African American is quite significant because it reflects an important social group transformation and reality in terms of group identity, political orientation, life chances or social opportunity, normative standards and lifestyles, and discriminatory behavior. These are some of the factors that strongly relate to disease susceptibility, quality of life, morbidity and mortality, and longevity. It is only when the reality of racial classification carries little social impact that the term will become obsolete. At the present time, it is unlikely that serious consideration can be given to eliminating the use of racial designations such as "African American" in public health.

(SEE ALSO: Ethnicity and Health; Ethnocentrism; Immigrants, Immigration)

Bibliography

Airhihenbuwa, C. O. (1989). "Health Education for African Americans: A Neglected Task." Health Education 20(5):9–14.

Charatz-Litt, C. (1992). "A Chronicle of Racism: The Effects of the White Medical Community on Black Health." The Journal of the National Medical Association 84:717–725.

Collier-Thomas, B., and Turner, J. (1994). "Race, Class and Color: The African American Discourse on Identity." Journal of American Ethnic History 14:5–31.

Cooper, R. S. (1998). "A Note of the Biological Concept of Race and Its Application in Epidemiologic Research." American Heart Journal 108:715–723.

David, R. J., and Collins, J. W., Jr. (1997). "Differing Birth Weight Among Infants of U.S.-Born Blacks, African-Born Blacks, and U.S.-Born Whites." New England Journal of Medicine 337:1209–1214.

Gamble, V. N. (1997). "Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care." The American Journal of Public Health 87:1773–1778.

Gould, S. J. (1996). The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton Press.

Jones, J. (1981). Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: A Tragedy of Race and Medicine. New York: The Free Press.

King, G. (1997). "The 'Race' Concept in Smoking: A Review of the Research on African Americans." Social Science and Medicine 45:1075–1087.

King, G., and Williams, D. R. (1995). "Race and Health: A Multidimensional Approach to African-American Health." In Society and Health, ed. by Amick, Levine, Tarlov, and Walsh. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moore, R. B. (1992). The Name "Negro": Its Origin and Evil Use, 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press.

Polednak, A. (1989). Racial and Ethnic Differences in Disease. New York: Oxford University Press.

Stanton, J. (1960). The Leopard Spots. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Thomas, S. B., and Quinn, S. C. (1991). "The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 1932–1972: Implications for HIV Education and AIDS Risk Education Programs in the Black Community." The American Journal of Public Health 81:1498–1504.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1985). U.S. Department of Human Services. Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Black and Minority Health. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

— COLLINS O. AIRHIHENBUWA; GARY KING

African American history lies at the foundation of United States history. The story of African Americans began in Africa, where ethnic groups such as the Ashanti, Bantu, Congolese, and Yoruba began their chaotic and protracted journey to what would become the United States.

The First African Americans

The arrival of Africans in America began almost five hundred years ago in 1528, with the arrival of the Moroccan Esteban de Dorantes in Texas. He was the first of many Spanish-speaking Africans who were populating western America. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, Africans were imported as property to the "New World" for slave plantations via the transatlantic Slave Trade. Conservative estimates place the number at 8 to 12 million, but the total may be as high as 20 million. The trade in African men, women, and children exploded into one of the most massive and despotic extractions of a people from their land and way of life in history. These migrants became unwilling participants in a system of enslavement that gave rise to the African diaspora and African Americans. Of the total number of Africans sold into slavery, 600,000 to 1,000,000, or about 6 percent, were brought to the British North American colonies.

The first English-speaking Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. Initially British colonists and Africans coexisted, but developments in colonial America precipitated the enslavement of black people. By the late sixteenth century, it became clear to white colonists that Indians would not be a viable source of forced labor. Increasingly, white and black indentured servants became targets of the New World's economic development. Eventually, the labor of indentured servants became problematic and scarce. The number of indentured white servants who made the journey to America began to dwindle, and those already in America started to demand an equal share of the wealth, while life expectancies rose sufficiently to make the purchase of slaves financially sensible. Colonists, therefore, turned to the African slave trade to meet their labor needs.

Initially, some European indentured servants and laborers joined with Africans to oppose the exploitation of white and black laborers, but when attitudes and laws changed and as black skin became commensurate with slavery, whites understood that being white—no matter how poor—exempted them from outright slavery. White slave owners came to understand the value of their investments in black human property. White wealth and dreams of prosperity became tied to the survival of black slavery as an institution. As a result, whites began to support statutes that strengthened the chains of black slavery. As the eighteenth century came to a close, Africans were generally considered capital. Black people resisted enslavement, however, and often worked to undermine the institution. They ran away or feigned ignorance and illness, for example, to undermine the commercial success of the farms for which they labored. Slaves such as Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser physically confronted their masters and overseers in both individual clashes and collective rebellion.

Africans in America, despite their subordinate status, were able to forge a strong sense of community. They learned to speak English and, in the process, expanded and enhanced the language through new words and pronunciations. Many Africans also embraced Christianity and reconstructed it, while some continued to follow their original religions, including Islam. Usually, black people merged their faith with that of the ruling class. From their earliest arrival in America, many blacks also endeavored to give meaning to America's professed belief in freedom by calling upon colonial officials to recognize their right to liberty. In 1791, for example, Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer and publisher of almanacs, and perhaps the most accomplished black person in early America, wrote to Thomas Jefferson to argue for the respect and inclusion of black people in America's experiment in democracy. Most Africans in America, however, could not rely on petitions or whites to recognize their "unalienable" right to secure their freedom. Rather, they articulated belief in their own inherent worth through ongoing resistance to white supremacy and racial slavery.

By the eighteenth century, black acculturation gave rise to a stable, identifiable, and diverse African American culture, both in slave societies and in free black communities. This black culture was anchored in an expanded, flexible family structure and an emerging black church that found the means to survive under difficult circumstances. During this period, nothing exposed the contradiction between slavery and freedom for Africans as much as the American fight for independence from Great Britain. Some black people such as Crispus Attucks, one of the first casualties of the American Revolution, demonstrated their desire to be free from British rule, both as people of African descent and as Americans. On the other hand, having been promised liberation by the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, in 1775, some black people were loyal to the English monarchy only to witness its demise at the hands of tenacious American colonists. But whether in the poems of Phillis Wheatley, the legal action of Quok Walker, or the efforts of Paul Cuffee, Americans of African descent helped define what it meant to be revolutionary citizens. For black slaves in particular, independence was not simply a philosophical debate; it stood as an essential alternative to permanent bondage.

As blacks fought for freedom from both American slavery and British colonial rule, the debate over slavery intensified. As the United States emerged from the crucible of war, black slavery endured and expanded, especially in the South. Between the mid-1600s and 1865, most blacks were considered possessions. They were examined, marketed, sold, purchased, exchanged, and treated as chattel. Black people were ridiculed as aberrant and inferior, and most were denied the freedoms set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Out of this ordeal, Africans in America became a new people. They were no longer Ashanti, Bantu, Kongolese, and Yoruba; they constructed new identities rooted in their African past, yet inextricably linked to a burgeoning American culture.

By 1789, despite America's proclamation that "all men are created equal," slavery as an institution was still legal in eleven of the thirteen States. Moreover, the Atlantic slave trade, which was officially banned in 1808 but continued extralegally until the 1850s, continued to bring thousands of enslaved Africans to America. The primary destinations of black slaves were the rice plantations of low-country South Carolina and the tobacco farms of Piedmont, Virginia. Although there were, as there had always been, "free" blacks in the United States, by 1789, there were fewer than 60,000 of them out of a total black population of 700,000.

By 1831, slavery had emerged as an even more powerful and "peculiar institution." It existed, for example, in twelve southern states, but was almost nonexistent in the twelve northern states. Moreover, although the slave trade had not existed as a legally sanctioned enterprise in almost twenty-five years, cotton plantations from Georgia to Mississippi that depended upon slave labor became inextricably linked to the "Southern way of life." The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton cultivation a lucrative business. Between 1811 and 1821 it fueled the expansion of slavery from the Atlantic coastal states to Texas. Slave labor also emptied swamps and cleared land for settlement and agriculture. This territorial expansion in turn stimulated an enormous surge in the slave population. By 1831, there were over two million black slaves in the United States, primarily in the deep South. By 1860 the number had risen to 3,953,760. In 1831 the United States was also home to 300,000 free black people, primarily located in the North and upper South; by 1860 there were 488,070.

Major social and cultural changes had taken place among black people in America by 1831. Resistance to slavery intensified as black communities and slaves watched their hopes of freedom continually dissolve and began to learn the ideology behind the American and French revolutions and gain knowledge of the successful slave revolt in Saint Domingue (Haiti). Despite the odds, some blacks continued to gain their freedom from bondage; most of those who succeeded had to struggle to survive the transition from slavery to freedom. Like their enslaved counterparts, free black people were relegated to the bottom of the American racial hierarchy, dominated by the theory of white supremacy. Despite being the objects of white racism, "free" blacks often set themselves apart from black slaves. This class—small, sometimes prosperous, and often literate—usually considered themselves superior to their enslaved counterparts.

Many "free" black people, however, in the North and upper South, expanded their concept of the black community to include those blacks still held in bondage. Many in this group, including celebrated abolitionist Frederick Douglass, championed black equality and freedom in all quarters. By 1831, Africans in America understood that only by destroying slavery could true freedom and equality be secured. Many believed—as did Nat Turner, who initiated a large-scale slave uprising in the fall of 1831—that it would take a devastating event such as a sustained revolt to abolish the institution. By 1840, slavery and its expansion became the most controversial and divisive issue in the nation. By 1860, northern and southern leaders could not avoid the problem of slavery and its expansion, thanks to pressure from a small but influential band of abolitionists—including Maria W. Stewart, David Walker, and William Lloyd Garrison.

Emancipation and the Illusion of Freedom

The end of slavery as an institution in American life can be tied to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Lincoln, a Republican, believed that the Constitution protected slavery in the states, but was opposed to its extension. He objected to the spread of slavery into Kansas and other territories. Southerners believed the Constitution protected slavery and saw Lincoln's resolve as a threat to their political standing in Congress and to their "way of life." Lincoln was elected in 1860, and following his inaugural address in March 1861, South Carolina seceded from the Union in retaliation. By February 1861, it was followed by six more southern states. Lincoln's calls for healing were unsuccessful. The Confederacy launched an artillery attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina on 12 April, and Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion. America's divided house fell, and the sectional conflict exploded into Civil War. After five years of fighting, the Southern Confederacy was forced to surrender to Northern troops on 9 April 1865. Four million African Americans emerged from the conflict legally free. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865 abolished slavery. The Confederate defeat, however, did not end white supremacy or black subjugation. As one nineteenth-century observer noted, "cannons conquer, but they do not necessarily convert." Former slaveholders faced emancipation with despair and fury and immediately embarked upon a crusade to "redeem" the South and force blacks into a state of virtual slavery.

Emancipated blacks set out to make the best of their new status. Millions of former slaves searched the South for loved ones from whom they had been separated. Women like the writer Harriet Jacobs attempted to re-construct their shattered lives and families, while creating a space for themselves to enjoy their freedom. To gain control over their labor, black washerwomen and domestic workers in Atlanta organized to raise their wages through strikes and demonstrations. In South Carolina, black women took a leading role in negotiating labor arrangements with their former masters. Black men sought wage labor, worked to acquire land, and made use of the ballot. Out of this movement to reclaim themselves and their families, black communities in the postwar South grew, while organizing schools and health care services. Legally, black people benefited from the enactment of several Constitutional amendments during the subsequent "Reconstruction" period. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment on 28 July 1868 affirmed state and federal citizenship rights for African Americans, and the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified on 30 March 1870, guaranteed that no American would be denied the right to vote on the basis of race. Radical Republicans also pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was supposed to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations throughout the South.

Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction on 8 December 1863 allowed blacks to secure fleeting political success. Blacks seized this opportunity to elect state and national Congressmen. Six hundred blacks, most of them former slaves, served as state legislators. During Reconstruction, there were two black senators in Congress—Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, both Mississippi natives who were educated in the North—and fourteen black members of the House. African Americans also sought to improve their lives by carving out spaces where they could congregate and build community away from the watchful eyes of whites. Reestablished, primarily Protestant, black churches emerged as spiritual havens for African Americans. Education was extremely important to African Americans as well. With the assistance of philanthropic northern whites, blacks established primary and secondary schools, as well as predominantly black colleges, across the South in the postwar period. Tuskegee Institute (1881) in Alabama and Howard University (1867) in Washington, D.C., represent two of the more celebrated examples of historically black colleges and universities founded during this era.

For African Americans, however, the ability to exercise their new rights was short-lived. Southern whites created laws and practices to circumscribe and oppress the lives of blacks. They created Black Codes, which limited the areas in which blacks could purchase or rent property, and vagrancy laws that forced African Americans to return to work on the plantations from which they were recently liberated. These measures helped force blacks into a state of peonage that would last well into the second half of the twentieth century. Blacks were not permitted to testify in court, except in cases involving other blacks, and fines were levied against them for alleged seditious speeches, insulting gestures and acts, absence from work, violating curfews, and the possession of firearms. Blacks had their freedom assaulted by white terrorist organizations as well. The prototype of these groups was the Ku Klux Klan, organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a "social club." The Klan was responsible for whippings, mutilations, burnings, and murders of men, women, and children. Violence emerged as one of the most effective ways of keeping blacks politically powerless.

Politically, whites used quasi-legal measures to oppress blacks. Polling places were often erected far from black communities and changed without warning, ballot boxes were stuffed, votes were manipulated, poll taxes were levied, and gerrymandering ran rampant. Black people were separated from whites on trains and ships and were banned from white hotels, barbershops, restaurants, and theaters. By 1885, most Southern states had laws requiring separate schools, and in 1896, the Supreme Court upheld Segregation in its landmark "separate but equal" doctrine set forth in Plessy v. Ferguson. The rights of blacks had been neutralized. By 1900, the "New South" was free to conduct its affairs as it saw fit. The New South, however, looked very much like the old. The new century, in fact, opened tragically with 214 lynchings in the first two years. The law, the courts, the schools, and almost every institution in the South favored whites. In the face of this opposition, African Americans and their supporters had few answers. This was an era of white supremacy.

African Americans in the South began to vote with their feet. Between 1900 and 1910, black people tried to escape the South by migrating to the northern and western United States in relatively modest numbers. When wartime industrial needs and labor demands increased between World Wars I and II, however, more than two million black southerners were motivated to migrate north and west to urban areas like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. This flight erupted into the largest African American migration in history. These migrants sought refuge and opportunity, and many found what they were looking for, while others found social isolation, political marginalization, and economic oppression.

All African Americans, whether they remained in the South or migrated to the North, experienced fundamental changes in their lives during the first decades of the twentieth century. African American men returned home from World War I—a war fought to make the world safe for democracy—prepared and determined to demand democracy for themselves and their community. Their militancy was rewarded with violence. African American men were lynched in their military uniforms, black institutions were attacked by white mobs, and African American workers, who were often the last hired, were the first to be fired during demobilization. On the other hand, many African Americans worked to "uplift the race" in northern and western urban areas by organizing groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Even though the 1920s witnessed ongoing race-related social, economic, and political problems, many black artists experienced "renaissances" in African American art, literature, and music in Harlem and Chicago. Some African American leaders became political agents, and others became successful in business.

When the Great Depression struck America in 1929, African Americans were among the hardest hit. The years between 1929 and 1940 were marked by both progress and persistent problems for black people. At a time when a black leader like Mary McLeod Bethune could hold an influential appointment in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, African American workers had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Moreover, while New Deal legislation displaced black sharecroppers in the South, the federal government also offered unprecedented opportunities for African American artists and writers such as Aaron Douglass and Zora Neale Hurston. However, discrimination and racial violence, unemployment, and housing shortages remained complicated and dispiriting issues for African Americans. As the United States entered World War II in 1941, blacks seized this opportunity to demand full inclusion in American society. African Americans were critical of the United States for fighting for democracy overseas while blacks lived in a segregated and unjust society in America. Black people fought fascism in Europe and white supremacy in the United States, which they christened the "Double-V": victory abroad and victory at home.

The Civil Rights Movement and Beyond

World War II and the industries that arose to support it also improved the prospect of good jobs and a freer life for African Americans, particularly in the West. As a result, a huge migration ensued that increased black populations in those urban areas. In the western region, some black populations grew tenfold. This migration gave rise to the nation's Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, and ignited the careers of local black leaders such as Dr. Lincoln J. Ragsdale Sr. in Phoenix, Arizona, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X at the national level. The black American freedom struggle quickly became a more inclusive beacon in the global fight for human rights, the defeat of European colonialism, and the destruction of racism. It ushered in profound and positive changes.

The Civil Rights Movement produced several pieces of legislation, which reaffirmed the rights of African Americans. The most effective were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in public places, and discrimination by employers of labor unions on the basis of color, race, religion, national origin, and sex. The Voting Rights Act re-enfranchised blacks by outlawing obstructionist educational requirements for voting and by empowering the attorney general to have the Civil Rights Commission assign federal registrars to uphold the voting rights of African Americans.

The impact of the Civil Rights Movement was monumental. Although their tremendous accomplishments did not end racial inequality or usher in true socioeconomic integration, black Americans did enjoy some major gains. However, jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity moved to predominantly white suburbs; unemployment remained disproportionately high among African Americans; and dislocations in black family structures, drug use, gang violence, police brutality, and urban poverty all emerged as disheartening and complex issues for black communities. Although African Americans had ended de jure segregation, they quickly realized that de facto segregation and racial socioeconomic inequality were just as debilitating and often more difficult to combat. Despite these problems, the black middle class continued to grow, most black families remained intact, and African American organizations continued to work for the advancement of the community as a whole.

By 1970, most black people were optimistic about the future of race relations and the black community. Many black people believed that the Black Power movement would instill a new confidence and independence in African Americans. Furthermore, a rash of victories in electoral politics gave hope to millions of African Americans. By the 1970s, in fact, several blacks, such Carl Stokes in Cleveland and Richard Hatcher in Gary, Indiana, were elected mayors of major urban centers. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first African American to make a serious bid for a major-party presidential nomination; Jesse Jackson, a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s did it again in 1984. By the end of the twentieth century an influential and growing black middle class had emerged. Multimillionaires such as the journalist, actor, talk show host, producer, and entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey and the athlete and businessman Michael Jordan stood as symbols of the ability of blacks to achieve against overwhelming odds. Despite persistent problems such as joblessness, police brutality, and economic and political inequality, African Americans—whose population stood at thirty mil-lion, or slightly over 10 percent of the population, by 2000—continued to make substantial gains. Indeed, the poverty, economic isolation, political marginalization, and racism in African American history are really aspects of a larger history of black progress through struggle, a history of survival and achievement.

Bibliography

Hine, Darlene Clark, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. The African American Odyssey. 2d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Kelley, Robin D. G., and Earl Lewis, eds. To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990. 2d ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

Taylor, Quintard, Jr. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York: Norton, 1998.

White, Deborah G. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994. New York: Norton, 1999.

—Matthew Whitaker

Race and foreign affairs have intersected at numerous points in U.S. history. Officials in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not always explicitly aware of the impact of race on foreign relations or on their own decision making, but its impact on historical events is demonstrable. Beginning with the American Revolution and continuing through the twentieth century, race influenced what the United States did and how it pursued its interests abroad.

The American Revolution

Black volunteers, detesting slavery and wanting liberty, fought on both sides of the revolutionary war. The activities of African-American revolutionaries were matched by those of black loyalists, some of whom were deliberately recruited into military service by British commanders eager to destabilize the plantation economy, especially in tidewater Virginia. This British policy was bitterly resented by slaveholders. Many of these soldiers retreated to Canada with the British after 1783. Freedom proved elusive for black protagonists on both sides. The U.S. flirtation with freedom for blacks proved ephemeral. Slavery persisted as a national institution and free people of color increasingly faced racial discrimination during the course of the antebellum period. Some loyalists who evacuated with the British were sold into slavery in the West Indies. Others found barriers to civil equality in their new Canadian homes.

Race, Impressments, and Maritime Issues

Race was a factor in the maritime trades and in navies during the age of sail. Black men from North America, the Caribbean, and Africa, slave and free, were among the thousands employed in a range of industries and at war. They served on slavers, whalers, packet boats, warships, and were represented as sailors in almost all sectors of maritime activity. Rules governing the movements of both enslaved sailors and free men of color affected relations among states. In the antebellum South during periods of slave unrest, authorities enforced regulations that restricted the portside activities of West Indian seamen. Violators were threatened with enslavement. Abuse of foreign black sailors in U.S. ports sometimes brought protests from consuls or influential persons to whom they turned for support. The seamen's papers given black American sailors in 1796 did not afford them substantial protection from infringements on their rights, and until 1823, when civil equality was extended to black sailors in the British navy, black seamen of all nationalities were readily exploited, and those who were free faced the risk of illegal enslavement.

Impressment was a danger for all U.S. seamen, regardless of race, before and during the War of 1812. Those recruited into the British navy could expect harsher treatment than that experienced aboard U.S. ships. The fate of black loyalists enslaved in the West Indies during the American Revolution contributed to anti-British feeling among some African Americans in the early nineteenth century and helped preserve their loyalty to the United States during those years. The United States, however, was reluctant to recruit blacks into any armed forces except the navy. As a result, there were few black combatants except for those enlisted as volunteers in state units. The United States and Britain ultimately employed the same tactic that had been used in the revolutionary war in promising manumission to those who fought or served as military laborers. Those who allied themselves with Britain were taken to Canada at the end of the war and settled on plots of land. While many of the manumission promises made by U.S. authorities were honored, African Americans had no guarantee of civil equality.

Slavery and Abolition

In Western countries, efforts to limit slavery began with the prohibition of the African slave trade and attempts to enforce an international ban on this traffic. Britain outlawed the slave trade in its possessions in 1807, and the United States soon followed suit, effective as of 1 January 1808. While the U.S. law curtailed the international supply of slaves, American traders continued to retail slaves through a domestic market. The abolitionist movement then focused on eradicating slavery itself. Antislavery activists created cooperative networks where they proselytized against slavery and abetted the escape of fugitives. Some antislavery activities had an international character. One campaign, noted in the cities of the northeastern United States and in Great Britain, focused on encouraging consumers to buy products grown without slave labor. The effort met with indifferent success but provided small ephemeral markets for imports from Haiti—a country that had gained its independence through slave rebellion—and after 1833, the British West Indies. The promotion of free labor produce coincided with a growing conviction in the northern United States and Britain that wage labor was the most rational, just, and efficient method of work, and with the social and political evolution of industrial society in those areas.

The British Parliament in 1833 enacted a gradual abolition program that ended slavery in British dominions by 1838. Between 1830 and 1860 a small African-American community had gathered in Britain. As most American universities barred black students, some were attending universities of far higher caliber than those in the United States. Others were fugitives who had made their way to a country where slavery was prohibited. Such prominent U.S. abolitionists as Frederick Douglass and Charles Lenox Remond and his sister Sarah Remond visited Britain to enlist both the working classes and the bourgeoisie in the American antislavery cause. Black abolitionists gave public lectures and sold copies of slave narratives written by themselves and others. They succeeded in thwarting many of the fund-raising efforts of the American Colonization Society, established in 1816–1817 to resettle blacks on the west coast of Africa. In Ireland, the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell, an outspoken foe of slavery, embraced Frederick Douglass. Douglass spent nineteen months lecturing in the British Isles between 1845 and 1847. British Quakers raised the money to buy Douglass's freedom from his Maryland owner.

Antislavery activists hoped that pressure applied by Britain, then the world's most powerful nation, would persuade the United States to deal forthrightly with the slavery question. Abolitionists did not succeed in capturing all Britons. They faced the opposition of those manufacturers and workers most dependent on imports of U.S. cotton, but benefited from a widespread revulsion among all classes against slavery. The groundwork that Douglass, the Remonds, and others laid helped neutralize British sympathies for southern slaveholders. This was a critical issue during the 1850s, when sectional animosity reached a crisis point in the United States. If Britain, despite its own antislavery stand within its realms, allied with the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War, the United States would likely be defeated. While American abolitionists often avoided direct discussions of class conflict because of their frequent reliance on elite patronage in Britain and their desire to keep the focus on slavery, the zenith of their activity coincided with the Chartist movement, which sought to improve conditions for the industrial working class, and debates over the status of labor.

American slavery was also drawn into the international arena as a result of the activities of fugitive slaves. In the course of the nineteenth century some thirty thousand black persons from the United States entered Canada. Periods of domestic crisis, such as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision, accelerated this immigration. The Fugitive Slave Act made it easy for slaveholders and bounty hunters to threaten the liberty of free people of color. In an explicitly racist finding, the Supreme Court, in the 1857 case Scott v. Sandford, ruled that blacks could not be citizens and had no civil rights. The decision effectively ended the prospects of free people of color in the United States until after the Civil War. Many who were able left the country. In addition to the relatively familiar escapes to Canada by slaves and free people alike, blacks from Texas crossed the border into Mexico, where slavery was illegal. During the early years of the Republic, when Spain loosely administered Florida, fugitives in combination with the Seminole nation engaged the United States in wars in 1817–1818 and 1835–1842. In the aftermath of the first Seminole war, Spain, unable and unwilling to guarantee the security of U.S. real and chattel property along its Florida borders, and wishing to avoid armed conflict with Americans, ceded the rebellious territory to the United States.

Fugitives also included those whose antislavery activities put them in jeopardy of the law. Frederick Douglass in 1859 was a suspect in John Brown's conspiracy to seize the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Douglass fled to England to avoid arrest. Once there, he contacted the U.S. minister to the Court of St. James's hoping to secure a passport to visit France. The passport was denied on grounds that Douglass, according to Supreme Court dicta, was not a U.S. citizen. Douglass was an early victim of passport denial, a practice that would be used in the twentieth century to restrict the movements of blacks who were known critics of racial discrimination.

Colonization and Emigration

Opinion leaders on both sides of the slavery question during the antebellum period expressed fears about the consequences of emancipation. Some abolitionists believed that slavery was morally wrong but did not think that freed slaves could be assimilated into American society for racial reasons. Certain proslavery advocates used these doubts about assimilation to argue that slavery could not be eradicated. A third alternative to slavery or abolition was the removal of freed slaves from the United States. The option appealed to blacks who wished a homeland of their own, and to proslavery and antislavery advocates alike who thought blacks could not be assimilated into American life. Paul Cuffe, a black New England shipowner, was committed to civil rights for African Americans and an outspoken opponent of slavery. He nevertheless employed his own resources in a back-to-Africa project in the early 1810s. After correspondence with prominent British abolitionists, including the parliamentarian William Wilberforce, Cuffe sought to repatriate selected emigrants to the British African colony of Sierra Leone. His plans were interrupted by the War of 1812 and by his own death not long thereafter, but he did succeed in settling some thirty-eight persons in Africa.

In 1821 the American Colonization Society resumed Cuffe's work. Members of the organization included such figures as Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, and other prominent white Americans for whom the United States had to remain a white man's country. The society purchased African land from local rulers, and in 1847 the settlement, called Liberia, became an independent republic. Many antislavery activists opposed the American Colonization Society, believing that it was simply a stratagem to solidify slavery by removing from the United States the only blacks in a position to contest it. Others endorsed colonization and emigration in principle, reserving their objections for the society per se. There were, accordingly, other colonization ventures. In the 1820s and 1850s, two emigration movements to Haiti were organized with the cooperation of the Haitian government. A project in the 1830s involved the removal of American blacks to the island of Trinidad. President Abraham Lincoln, who endorsed colonization as a strategy to prevent a civil war over the slavery question, researched the possibility of a black homeland on the isthmus of Central America. These schemes involved negotiations with heads of state for land grants and concessions. Foreign leaders had their own reasons for endorsing these programs. Haiti had traditionally offered itself as an asylum for blacks in the Western Hemisphere and in the 1820s wanted to create a buffer on its frontier with Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) by settling African Americans there. Great Britain in the 1830s sought labor to work on the Trinidad plantations abandoned by the beneficiaries of its own emancipation laws, a need for which it later recruited workers from India.

Civil War and Recognition of Black Countries

During the nineteenth century, slavery and its accompanying racist ideology prevented the United States from conducting full diplomatic relations with Haiti and Liberia, states modeled on modern republics that were populated and governed by blacks. Many U.S. diplomats did not believe it possible to consort with black counterparts on an equal basis and receive them into the polite society of the period. Proslavery southerners saw Haiti as anathema on social and political grounds and as a security problem. Some southern states passed laws that forbade the entry of sailors and other free people of color from Haiti. Before the Civil War, the U.S. government did not recognize Haiti and was represented there only by consuls. Southern secession removed the obstacles to recognition, which occurred on 12 July 1862 when the State Department appointed a chief of mission, Benjamin Whidden. In 1869, U.S. representation was raised to the ministerial level with the appointment of the first African American in such a post, Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett. The defeat of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery meant improvement in Haitian-American relations, ending the threat of slavery expansionism and filibustering raids on Haitian coasts. Beginning with Bassett's appointment, diplomatic and consular posts to Haiti and Liberia became patronage posts for loyal black Republicans, a pattern that persisted until well into the mid-twentieth century.

In the late nineteenth century, American activists sought to bring international attention to the lynching problem in the "Jim Crow" South. Hampered by lack of access to sources of state power, activists such as the anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells-Barnett searched for unconventional and less restrictive venues for international contact. Just as American activists had sought British support for abolition during the slavery era, Wells-Barnett toured the United Kingdom in 1893 and 1894 to publicize the lynching problem and bring the weight of British public opinion to bear on the issue. She devised another way to focus international attention on U.S. domestic affairs when, in 1893, Chicago hosted the Columbian Exposition, which brought visitors from all over the world. Through the mediation of Frederick Douglass, the government of Haiti selected Wells-Barnett to manage its exhibit and provided her with a table in the Haitian pavilion. There she sold copies of a book she had written to document lynching and the context in which it occurred. Wells-Barnett was thereby able to reach a wide audience in one of the first efforts to employ an international cultural festival to air concerns about U.S. race relations.

The League of Nations and the Pan-African Congress

World War I shattered the balance of power in Europe and destroyed the Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires. These state systems lost control of the diverse ethnic groups previously under their control. Subject nations and national minorities began demanding language rights, sovereignty, and democratic governments. When the Allies met in the Paris suburb of Versailles in 1919 to rebuild the world order, their agenda included the construction of nations in eastern Europe and the revitalization of the empires that remained. European debates on political autonomy and territoriality were the model for Asians and Africans seeking to bring their own interests to world attention.

The Pan-African Congress was an important vehicle for formulating and disseminating such demands. The association emerged from a 1900 London conference. Organized by a Trinidadian attorney resident in London and an African-American bishop, the congress brought together blacks from Britain and its colonies, the United States, and South Africa. The purpose was to discuss colonialism and racism and suggest strategies for reform. The association made little headway in its first twenty years, the zenith of European colonial domination of Africa. World War I provided an opportunity to renew its goals, however, and it planned a Paris conference that would convene simultaneously with the Versailles peace conference.

African-American leaders sought representation as observers at the peace conference and began discussing it before the war ended. Those most interested included the intellectual activist W. E. B. Du Bois, entrepreneur C. J. Walker, National Equal Rights League founder William Monroe Trotter, and activist Wells-Barnett. The Universal Negro Improvement Association, an international organization founded by Marcus Garvey, named delegates to the congress, including the labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Other interested organizations included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Race Congress. The thinking was that if representatives of black organizations were denied admission to the proceedings or audiences with principals, they could use the Pan-African Congress and their proximity to the peace talks to bring their issues to public attention.

President Woodrow Wilson led the U.S. delegation at Versailles. Wilson believed in international organization and saw the peace conference as an opportunity to put the United States permanently at the center of power in the global community. Like other Allied leaders, Wilson wished to maintain control over national minorities. He was, additionally, a committed segregationist who as president of Princeton University had excluded African-American students from dormitories, and as president of the United States had separated federal civil servants by race, placing black employees behind partitions.

The Wilson administration did not want minority observers or protesters in Europe. The State Department accordingly refused passports to most of the black Americans wishing to go to France. Those who managed to cross the Atlantic attended a Pan-African Congress composed of fifty-seven delegates who discussed, under the careful scrutiny of the French government, such issues as the status of defeated Germany's colonies and colonial reform. The more militant civil rights activists and nationalists were less interested in the Pan African Congress than in addressing the peace conference, the forum where decisions affecting the world's national minorities and subject peoples would be made. President Wilson was determined to prevent such initiatives. He refused to see either Trotter or a young Vietnamese leader, Nguyen That Thanh, later known as Ho Chi Minh. Wilson and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George prohibited the presence of delegates of colonized peoples and racial minorities at Versailles, but Du Bois succeeded in representing the NAACP at the first conference of the League of Nations in 1921.

The Italo-Ethiopian War

In October 1935, Benito Mussolini's fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia. The war there occurred at the height of isolationist sentiment in the U.S. Congress and the nation at large. While public sympathy for Ethiopia was considerable, so was the disinclination to intervene. The minority that pressed for a more forthright stand included African Americans and Irish Catholics who broke with the Catholic majority on the issue. The administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt showed concern about Italian aggression, but domestic opposition to even rhetorical intervention discouraged firm action. When Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt sent Mussolini a note suggesting that the United States would not necessarily remain indifferent to what his government did in Africa, the message was so subdued that Mussolini readily dismissed it. A neutrality act banned the sale of finished war products to belligerents, but it did not deny them access to strategic materials, which could be purchased proportionately to the rate of prewar consumption. Italy, a growing industrial power, bought large quantities of American oil. Ethiopia, still feudal, bought none. The neutrality act thus helped ensure that Italy would be well equipped to defeat its decrepit adversary.

Administration officials shrank from the prospect of ventilating an issue that would bring down isolationist wrath. For actors at the policy center, domestic considerations and the ultimate collapse of Ethiopian resistance tabled the question for the duration of World War II. At the periphery, however, the Ethiopian issue enabled the development of linkages that remained timely. Ethiopia was a ready-made issue for black nationalists and permitted liberals and leftists to focus their general opposition to fascism. The Ethiopian government-in-exile played a leading role itself in keeping public interest alive through publicity campaigns and appeals for funds. It also made explicit appeals to African Americans as a usable pressure group. Ethiopia's experience with fascist conquest facilitated a sharper critique of racism and imperialism and focused postwar attention on the disposition of colonies in northeast Africa and colonialism in general.

German Reconstruction and Racial Segregation

In 1945 the Allies claimed victory over a German state that had taken racism to its logical extreme in the pursuit of eugenic purity and the destruction of millions of lives. African-American troops were part of the force that occupied Germany from 1945 to 1955, when efforts were made on all fronts to reform its institutions and reconstruct it physically. From the beginning of the occupation, U.S. racial practices in the military contradicted the essence of its mission in Germany and led to confusion and resentment among the conquered.

In the American zone of occupation, commanding officers could approve soldiers' marriages as they saw fit. Many of those holding conventional American ideas about race often prohibited mixed marriages even when children were involved. When individual soldiers appealed these prohibitions, military judges relied on the laws of the various U.S. states to determine whether a proposed union could be approved and compiled the relevant statutes for their own use. If a soldier resided in a state where interracial marriages were illegal, his application to marry outside his race would be turned down. Racial record keeping on marriages began in 1947. German courts followed this example. The Allies, having struck down the racist Nuremberg laws, oddly found themselves reapplying them in the American zone of occupation, where the German courts followed suit.

Military opposition to mixed marriages gradually declined, but in the interim approximately three thousand biracial children were born in Germany between 1945 and 1951, almost all the offspring of African-American servicemen. As a result of the continuing ambivalence among all parties about the children's prospects for adoption in the United States, the West German state, autonomous in 1955, was charged with the responsibility for absorbing them into German society. Germans witnessed the contradictions between U.S. opposition to nazi racism and policies governing intermarriage. The first cohort of biracial children reached their teens as violence associated with segregation in the United States made international headlines. While some Germans continued to believe that homes in the United States should be sought for those who were not already adopted, the prevailing opinion was that the orphans should not be sent into a society characterized by racial violence. If the United States' goal had been to transform Germany into a democracy characterized by tolerance, the biracial orphans provided them a paradoxical opportunity to show the world they had shed Hitlerism.

The United Nations Petition

At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in the autumn of 1944, delegates planned the foundations of a postwar international organization that would reprise the work of the League of Nations. Conferees rejected a racial and national equality clause that the Chinese government had put forward but failed to energetically defend. In the early years of the United Nations, efforts were made to insert ethnic and linguistic rights into the UN Charter and other central documents. Cold War tensions entered the deliberations of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in the late 1940s, as many sovereign states proved reluctant to permit international oversight of their treatment of national minorities.

For African Americans in particular the era reflected a rising interest in social science and world affairs and the secularization of black protest that moved it away from philanthropic church control. Black opinion widely supported a pluralist United Nations that would counter the "Anglo-American" conception of a postwar peace elaborated by Winston Churchill in his Fulton, Missouri, "Iron Curtain" speech. While no blacks attended the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, Walter White, secretary of the NAACP; W. E. B. Du Bois, the NAACP's director of special research; and Mary McLeod Bethune, of the National Council of Negro Women, were present as observers. Their attendance resulted from extensive organizing activities by black nongovernmental organizations to formulate an agenda for international activism. The black Republican Perry Howard urged blacks to send telegrams to their congressional representatives to demand that the UN Charter protect minority rights. Despite setbacks, the UN continued to be seen as a potentially useful instrument in checking Western abuses of national minorities and colonial subjects. In 1948 the chair of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP urged UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie to reject the University of Maryland's offer to house the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Segregation at the institution, including its college of agriculture, would inconvenience FAO personnel from non-European countries.

Attempts in 1945 to influence the United Nations to protect minority rights were among the first of several efforts. Backed by labor, professional, fraternal, and veterans' associations, the National Negro Congress drafted a petition to the United Nations in mid-1946. It was formulated at the same time that similar petitions were being presented by Indonesians and the Jewish diaspora, and shortly before the General Assembly voted to censure South Africa for its treatment of its East Indian resident population. Encouraged by parallel international events, the NAACP followed suit with its own petition in 1947. The NAACP asked the UN Commission on Human Rights to investigate racial discrimination in the United States. Supported by hundreds of black organizations across the political spectrum, and by African and Caribbean nationalists and labor federations overseas, the appeal was also viewed favorably by India, Pakistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Belgium, Haiti, Norway, China (Formosa), and the USSR, which introduced the petition in October 1947. Despite its popularity with the black public in the United States and international endorsement, the petition died in the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Pressure applied on the United Nations by the United States, the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt, then a UNESCO commissioner, and misgivings among certain NAACP officials about Soviet support of the appeal, led to its demise.

Racial Reform and Cold War Ideology

The U.S. rivalry with the Soviet Union and its Cold War partners involved political as well as military competition. President Harry S. Truman articulated the need to improve U.S. race relations not only because the Soviets were exploiting the race issue but also because U.S. credibility was at stake. Truman and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, articulated a need for reform and coupled this with the same repression of black communists and other radical black critics of America that generally characterized the early Cold War period in U.S. society. Such activists as Du Bois and Paul Robeson were refused passports. U.S. representatives abroad interfered with American-born dancer Josephine Baker, a French citizen and an outspoken critic of U.S. racial mores. The Eisenhower administration, committed to the reduction of military spending but putting greater emphasis on promoting the economic and cultural superiority of American life, had come to associate winning the Cold War with improving the civil rights climate for black Americans. While Eisenhower was not enthusiastic about desegregation, he was committed enough to the principle of civil equality to support a modest civil rights bill in 1957.

The belief that America's ability to champion democracy depended on its success at practicing it at home continued during the Kennedy years. The Cold War rationale for racial reform was strengthened by evidence that hostile countries utilized negative news about race relations to discredit the United States. In an increasingly decolonized world, where Africans and Asians now headed sovereign states, racial discrimination could no longer be endorsed or accepted. Technological change meant that journalists could record instances of racial violence and broadcast them to the world. The Soviet Union and its allies were not the only critics. Disapproval emanated from nonaligned countries, especially India, and from such conventional Western states as Denmark. In contrast to the world press, pro-apartheid South African journalists played up racial incidents in the United States, especially the exploits of white supremacists. This also constituted part of the embarrassment that necessitated a significant propaganda effort to neutralize damaging racial news stories about segregation.

Members of the intelligentsia and business communities also employed arguments that linked foreign and domestic affairs. In September 1950, for example, the NAACP convened the Breakneck Hill Conference, where senators, UN officials, journalists and broadcast executives, State Department representatives, educators, and activists considered the impact of racial discrimination on the nation's foreign policy objectives. Civil rights proponents, including participants in sit-ins and other demonstrations in the 1960s, also used Cold War arguments to rationalize their challenge to discriminatory statutes. Segregation tainted the U.S. reputation abroad, they claimed, and the limited opportunities for minorities that resulted from it meant fewer human resources available to defend the nation and extend its interests.

U.S. government efforts to counter the bad publicity involved activities sponsored by the State Department and the United States Information Agency (USIA). These included providing news to international readers, stocking U.S. libraries abroad with what was perceived as balanced information about black life in the United States, and enlisting African-American lecturers and entertainers to travel abroad and entertain or provide information to interested foreigners. Some individuals who toured foreign countries for this purpose sometimes exaggerated the amount of progress made in race relations. The State Department and USIA, for their part, did not deny the existence of racism but rather emphasized what they portrayed as a national commitment to effect change through nonviolent means. The appointment in 1964 of the African-American journalist Carl Rowan as USIA director was intended to emphasize the latter. Rowan had previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs and as ambassador to Finland.

African Americans and the Diplomatic Corps

The civil rights movement presented the State Department and other government branches not only with the problem of trying to counter America's racist image abroad but also that of dealing with discrimination within their own ranks. Since Reconstruction, most African-American consuls, ministers, and ambassadors had been political appointees posted to black countries. The number of career black foreign service officers and consular officials remained minuscule until the second half of the twentieth century. The State Department, an executive department in a staunchly segregated capital, steadfastly resisted integration. In addition to racial segregation, its institutional culture traditionally relied on eastern elites. The democratization of the State Department through geographic and demographic diversification evolved only gradually. Its racial desegregation occurred chiefly at the initiative of presidential administrations and informal pressure from black leadership.

Civil rights organizations had expressed dissatisfaction with the unrepresentative character of the State Department since the 1940s, but changes were desultory until the early 1960s. The Kennedy White House, seeking to consolidate its gains with the African-American electorate while maintaining a moderate posture on civil rights, looked to Africa for the solution. Well-publicized visits from African heads of state and the appointment of African Americans to diplomatic posts provided the symbolic politics the situation required. The United States would also realize the additional benefit of encouraging ostensibly nonaligned African states to view the West more favorably and limit their contacts with Warsaw Pact states. The State Department remained slow to change, however, and only after criticism of the pace and scope of reform accelerated were significant numbers of African-American diplomatic representatives named to countries outside Africa and the Caribbean.

In line with the perceived need to court newly independent African states and encourage them to maintain close ties with the West, U.S. officials tried to insulate U.S. foreign relations from the repercussions of domestic racism by assisting diplomats from Africa, the Caribbean, and other regions who encountered discrimination while living and traveling in the United States. In the 1950s and early 1960s, negative experiences of foreign envoys chiefly involved the refusal of service to Africans (as well as South Asians and others) in states where segregation was official, the relegation of nonwhites to Jim Crow sections of public facilities, and housing discrimination in states ranging from New York to Virginia.

Initially, the State Department dealt with the problem by attempting to isolate foreign blacks from African Americans, a task facilitated by the nature of diplomatic relations. Nonwhite envoys could, for example, simply be exempted from segregation laws by virtue of their status. Federal officials could intervene in particular cases, but they were not always present when visitors experienced embarrassments. When the Ghanaian finance minister was denied service at a Delaware restaurant in 1957, Eisenhower invited him to breakfast at the White House, and Vice President Richard Nixon sent him a formal apology. The State Department discussed the matter with the restaurant's franchisee. The most serious incident was the beating of a Guinean foreign service officer by New York City police officers following a traffic accident. The presence of nonwhite envoys also forced adjustments in the elite social life of Washington. State Department chief of protocol Angier Biddle Duke resigned in 1961 from the prestigious Metropolitan Club because of its refusal to continue extending what had previously been automatic membership to foreign diplomats and its absence of black members.

To be sure, another consideration that drove reform within the diplomatic corps was the awareness that segregation as a whole made a bad impression on foreigners regardless of race. As early as June 1951, the solicitor general of the United States, Philip Perlman, filed an amicus curiae brief in a U.S. Court of Appeals case that involved a Washington, D.C., restaurant's refusal of service to a U.S. citizen on racial grounds. Perlman argued that foreigners judge the United States by their experiences in its capital and that segregation marred the image of American democracy. The solicitor general thus linked the reform of racial policies in the United States to the nation's best interests abroad.

In August 1961 the Kennedy administration created a task force composed of representatives from the White House, State Department, and local state governments to address the problem of racial discrimination. Because of local entrepreneurs' inability to distinguish between Africans and African Americans and favor the former, public facilities along the Washington-Maryland corridor ultimately had to be desegregated for everyone.

The Vietnam War

African-American opposition to the war in Vietnam, the overriding U.S. foreign policy concern of the 1960s and early 1970s, reflected perceptions of self-interest. During the 1950s the major civil rights organizations had stopped taking action on foreign policy questions. As the war escalated, civil rights leaders feared both the loss of organizational revenues if prowar advocates withdrew their support and the prospect of internal friction among organizations over the peace issue. Anxiety about possible accusations of subversion, and concern lest the civil rights focus be dissipated, were other causes of apprehension. The immediacy of civil rights insurgency in the South provided a powerful pretext for channeling organizational energies to domestic questions only.

Moreover, by the mid-1960s the reluctance of black leaders to engage in issues apart from domestic civil rights was reinforced by an increasingly beleaguered presidential administration fighting to maintain a "one voice" approach for U.S. foreign policy around the globe. President Lyndon B. Johnson, for whom Africa was a low priority, particularly opposed the consolidation of an African-American foreign policy constituency. Johnson did not want to multiply the number of players in international affairs and perceived such a constituency as contradicting the goal of fully integrating blacks into American life. Johnson believed that racially and ethnically based interest groups generally fragmented what should be a unitary national position on foreign affairs as government experts defined them.

In 1965, however, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, at the center of some of the most sweeping changes in American society, publicly advocated draft resistance. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee became the first national body to oppose the war. While antiwar sentiment did not overtake the black majority until 1969, activist organizations mounted pressure on Martin Luther King, Jr., to take a stand. Vietnamese Buddhists who sent him an "open letter" joined with domestic war critics in urging action. In 1967, King formally reiterated his inability to square the war with his conscience, his belief that the war was sapping the economic and spiritual vigor of the country, and his conviction that the national mission needed redefinition. In an April speech at the Riverside Church in New York City, King delivered a radical critique of U.S. foreign policy.

Ultimately, Vietnam was a broad enough issue to absorb many of the questions that had long preoccupied African Americans. Critiques of the war called into question the integrity of the political process and opened the door to largescale insurgency. On this issue black foreign policy audiences entered the controversy late, had dwindling access to increasingly less responsive policymakers, and were considerably alienated from "normal politics." Their efforts to influence the conduct of the war were also hampered by strategies that were based on addressing legislatures and courts rather than executive officials.

The spirit of insurgency in the late 1960s combined with new global media to afford African-American activists new forums for international exposure to U.S. domestic problems. One of the most prominent examples was the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, from which South Africa had been excluded owing to worldwide opposition to that country's apartheid policy. Certain African-American athletes had contemplated a boycott of the games because of their dissatisfaction with racial conditions in the United States, but they ultimately decided to participate. African-American medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, feeling the need to make at least a symbolic gesture, raised their fists in protest at U.S. racial injustice as the "Star-Spangled Banner" was being played. Both athletes were widely criticized and their careers were destroyed. In an ironic twist in 1980, the U.S. government asked African-American boxing champion Muhammad Ali to persuade various countries to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

South Africa

By the mid-1950s, only in South Africa could U.S. diplomats be committed and outspoken racists. The State Department sent envoys to South Africa whose own outlook aligned closely with that of their hosts. In light of U.S. reliance on South African raw materials, mutual anticommunism, and interest in free trade, policymakers acquiesced to South African segregation laws that paralleled those that were still current in the United States. As civil rights insurgency and changing views toward race worldwide eroded segregation at home, U.S. official acceptance of South African racial practices could no longer be direct. Washington attempted to distance itself rhetorically from apartheid while continuing harmonious relations with South Africa.

As noted, the State Department and USIA often sponsored goodwill tours of African-American entertainers to foreign countries, and these included South Africa. U.S. authorities may have believed that exposure to the diversity of U.S. society would give proponents of apartheid pause. Visits to South Africa by American performers were not limited to government-sponsored ventures. South African promoters signed U.S. artists to lucrative contracts, but they were often required to perform before segregated audiences.

The gap between U.S. democratic beliefs on one hand, and government and private sector ties to the South African regime on the other, led in the 1980s to an international protest movement against apartheid. Anti-apartheid activists set out to discourage artist exchanges in the belief that they had no effect on apartheid, degraded the artist involved, and lent credibility to the South African regime. Through adverse publicity and boycott, many U.S. entertainers were pressured into avoiding South Africa. Similar actions were mounted when the South African government sent African troupes to the United States if they apologized for conditions in their homeland.

Pressure from advocacy groups was a crucial factor in leading the United States to impose economic sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s. Thus, in February 1990, South African President F. W. de Klerk released the African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela from his twenty-seven-year imprisonment, and in March 1992 white South Africans passed a referendum that would end white minority rule.

Bibliography

Ahrari, Mohammed E., ed. Ethnic Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York, 1987.

Blackett, R. J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830–1860. Baton Rouge, La., 1983.

Borstelmann, Thomas. Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle. New York, 1993.

Collum, Danny Duncan, ed. African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: "This Ain't Ethiopia, but It'll Do." New York, 1992.

DeConde, Alexander. Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy: A History. Boston, 1992.

Du Bois, W. E. B. "Inter-Racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis: A Negro View." Foreign Affairs 14 (October 1935): 82–92.

Dudziak, Mary L. "Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative." Stanford Law Review 41 (November 1988): 61–120.

——. Cold War Civil Rights. Princeton, N.J., 2000.

Fairclough, Adam. "Martin Luther King Jr. and the War in Vietnam." Phylon 45, no. 1 (1984): 19–39.

Füredi, Frank. The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race. New Brunswick, N.J., 1998.

Gatewood, Willard B. Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898–1903. Urbana, Ill., 1975.

Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washington, D.C., 1996.

Harris, Robert L., Jr. "Racial Equality and the United Nations Charter." In Armstead L. Robinson and Patricia Sullivan, eds. New Directions in Civil Rights Studies. Charlottesville, Va., 1991.

Horne, Gerald. Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963. Albany, N.Y., 1986.

Hunt, Michael H. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven, Conn., 1987.

Isaacs, Harold Robert. The New World of Negro Americans. New York, 1964.

Krenn, Michael L. Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945–1969. Armonk, N.Y., 1999.

Krenn, Michael L., ed. The Impact of Race on U.S. Foreign Policy: A Reader. New York, 1999.

Lauren, Paul Gordon. Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination. 2d ed. Boulder, Colo., 1996.

Lockwood, Bert, Jr. "The UN Charter and U.S. Civil Rights Litigation: 1946–1955." Iowa Law Review 5 (1984): 901–956.

Noer, Thomas J. Cold War and Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948–1968. Columbia, Mo., 1985.

Plummer, Brenda G. Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996.

Smith, Tony. Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy. Cambridge, Mass., 2000.

Weston, Rubin Francis. Racism in U.S. Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893–1946. Columbia, S.C., 1972.

— Brenda Gayle Plummer

African American

Frederick Douglass · Barack Obama · Rosa Parks Condoleezza Rice · M. L. King, Jr. · Michael Jackson Malcolm X · Oprah Winfrey · W. E. B. Du Bois Michael Jordan · Harriet Tubman · Muhammad Ali
Total population
African American 37,586,050 [1] Non-Hispanic Black 36,701,103 [1] Black Hispanic 884,947 [1]
Languages
American English · African American Vernacular English · minorities speak Spanish · French  · Brazilian Portuguese  · Haitian Creole  · African languages
Religion
Predominantly Protestant, some Catholics. Minorities practice Islam and other religions
Related ethnic groups
African-Native Americans · Americo-Liberian · Afro-Latin American view • talk • edit

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa.^[2] In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations.^[3] As an adjective, the term is usually spelled African-American.^[4]

African-American history starts in the 17th century with indentured servitude in the American colonies and progresses onto the election of an African American as the 44th and current President of the United States – Barack Obama. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African-Americans. Some of these were: slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Black Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.^[5]

Contents 1 History 2 Demographics 3 Religion 4 Contemporary issues 4.1 Politics and social issues 4.2 News media and coverage 4.3 Education 4.4 Economic status 4.5 Health 4.6 Cultural influence in the United States 4.7 Political legacy 5 The term "African-American" 5.1 Political overtones 5.2 Who is African American? 5.3 Terms no longer in common use 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

History

An artist's conception of Crispus Attucks (~1723–1770), the first "martyr" of the American Revolution.

Main article: African American history

The first recorded Africans in British North America (including most of the future United States) arrived in 1619 as indentured servants who settled in Jamestown, Virginia. As English settlers died from harsh conditions more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Africans for many years were similar in legal position to poor English indenturees, who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America.^[6] Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom.^[7] They raised families, marrying other Africans and sometimes intermarrying with Native Americans or English settlers.^[8] By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards. The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 1700s. The first black congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after the English.^[9] During the 1770s Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American Independence by defeating the British in the American Revolution.^[10] Africans and Englishmen fought side by side and were fully integrated.^[11] James Armistead, an African American, played a large part in making possible the 1781 Yorktown victory, which established the United States as an independent nation.^[12] Other prominent African Americans were Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell, who are both depicted in the front of the boat in George Washington's famous 1776 Crossing the Delaware portrait.

By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the United States due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 500,000 African-Americans lived free across the country.^[13] In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared all slaves in states that had seceded from the Union were free.^[14] Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation with Texas being the last state to be emancipated in 1865.^[15] African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools, community and civic associations, to have space away from white control or oversight. While the post-war reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, in the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement.^[16] Most African Americans followed the Jim Crow laws, using a mask of compliance to prevent becoming victims of racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.^[17]

An African-American boy outside of Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1940s

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States. These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896^[18]—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement 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. The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century,^[19] 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.

African American Library at the Gregory School, located in the Fourth Ward in Houston, Texas

The Civil Rights Movement between 1954 to 1968 was directed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly in the southern United States. 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. Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act (1965), which expanded federal authority over states to ensure black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. 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 economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority.^[20]

In 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first Black American elected to the office of President of the United States. Ninety-five percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated whites, a majority of Asians, Americans of Hispanic origin,^[21] and Native Americans^[22] picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column.^[23][24] Obama lost the overall white vote, although he won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter.^[25] The following year Michael S. Steele was elected the first African-American chairman of the national Republican Party.^[26]

Demographics

African Americans as percent of population, 2000.

U.S. Census map indicating U.S. counties with fewer than 25 black or African American inhabitants

In 1790, when the first U.S. Census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the American Civil War, the African-American population had 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 laws 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 Sun Belt than leaving it.

The following table of the African-American population in the United States over time shows that the African-American population, as a percent of the total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then.

African Americans in the United States^[27]

Year	Number	% of total population	Slaves	% in slavery
1790	757,208	19.3% (highest)	697,681	92%
1800	1,002,037	18.9%	893,602	89%
1810	1,377,808	19.0%	1,191,362	86%
1820	1,771,656	18.4%	1,538,022	87%
1830	2,328,642	18.1%	2,009,043	86%
1840	2,873,648	16.8%	2,487,355	87%
1850	3,638,808	15.7%	3,204,287	88%
1860	4,441,830	14.1%	3,953,731	89%
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)	-	-
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%	-	-

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.^[28] In current demographics, according to 2005 U.S. Census^{[dubious – discuss]} figures, some 39.9 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 13.8% of the total population. The World Factbook gives a 2006 figure of 12.9%^[29] Controversy has surrounded the "accurate" population count of African Americans for decades. The NAACP believed it was under counted intentionally to minimize the significance of the black population in order to reduce their political power base.

At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African-American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin,^[5] many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent.

The only self-reported ancestral groups larger than African Americans are Irish and German Americans.^[30] Because many African Americans trace their ancestry to colonial American origins, some simply self-identify as "American".^{[citation needed]}

Almost 58% 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, overall the city has a 28% black population. Chicago has the second largest black population, with almost 1.6 million African Americans in its metropolitan area, representing about 18 percent of the total metropolitan population. Among cities of 100,000 or more, Gary, Indiana had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with 84% (though it should be noted that the 2006 Census estimate puts the city's population below 100,000). Gary is followed closely by Detroit, Michigan, which was 82% African American. Other large cities with African-American majorities include New Orleans, Louisiana (67%), Baltimore, Maryland (64%) Atlanta, Georgia (61%), Memphis, Tennessee (61%), and Washington, D.C. (60%).

The nation's most affluent county with an African-American majority is Prince George's County, Maryland, with a median income of $62,467. Within that county, among the wealthiest communities are Glenn Dale, Maryland and Fort Washington, Maryland. Other affluent predominantly African-American counties include Dekalb County in Georgia, and Charles City County in Virginia. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than Americans of European descent.^[31]

Religion

Main articles: Black church, Nation of Islam, and Black Hebrew Israelites

Religions of African Americans

The majority of African Americans are Protestant whom many follow the historically black churches.^[32] Black church refers to churches which minister predominantly African American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished allowed more African Americans to create a unique form of Christianity influenced culturally of African spiritual traditions.^[33] According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African American population are part of the historically black churches, majority are Baptist, with a strong numbers of Methodists and a few Pentecostals, while a fifth are part of Evangelical or mainline Protestant churches.^[32] There are 12 million African American Baptists,^[34] distributed in four denominations, includes the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention of America.^[35] There are 6 million Methodists,^[36] the largest sects are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.^[35][37] Pentecostals are mainly part of the Church of God in Christ.^[35] About 16% of African Americans Christians are members of white Protestant communions,^[36] these denominations (which includes United Church of Christ) mostly have 2 to 3% African American membership.^[38] The numbers of Roman Catholics is from 2.3 to 3 million.^[39] Of the total Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are black.^[32]

Some African Americans also practice Islam. Historically, between 15 to 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during American slavery.^[40] Some African Americans converted to Islam during the 20th century, mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; the largest such group was the Nation of Islam, founded during the 1930s and led by Elijah Muhammad, which attracted activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali.^[41] Malcolm X is considered the first to start the movement among African Americans towards Sunni Islam after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca.^[42] In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad who took control of the Nation after his death, guided most of the membership to Sunni Islam.^[43] However, some members rejected these changes, including Louis Farrakhan, who revived the Nation of Islam in 1978 based on its original teachings. Today the majority of African American Muslims are Sunni Muslims. It is estimated there are around 2.5 million African American Muslims,^[44][45] and they represent about 30% of the total U.S. Muslim population.^[46][47][48] It is estimated the Nation of Islam has between 10,000 to 50,000 members.^[49]

There are relatively few African American Jews; estimates of their number range from 20,000^[50] to 200,000.^[51] Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites.^[52]

Contemporary issues

"Harmony", oil on canvas by Philippe Derome, Alabama, 1987

African Americans have improved their social and economic standing significantly 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 in addition to representation in the highest levels of American government has been gained by African Americans in the post-civil rights era. Nevertheless, 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 European Americans. 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.^[53] In 2004, 24.7% of African-American families lived below the poverty level.^[54] In 2007, the average African-American income was $33,916, compared with $54,920 for whites.^[55]

Politics and social issues

President Barack Obama with First Lady Michelle

Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004.^[56] African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States.^[56] African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any other minority group in the U.S.^[57] African Americans tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats in U.S. elections. Even most conservative African Americans tend to vote for Democrats^{[citation needed]}. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African-American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W. Bush.^[58] Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African-American organizations have had in domestic policy.^[59]

Historically African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both right and left were represented equally in both parties. The African-American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans; Roosevelt's New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African-American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s.

After over 50 years, marriage rates for all Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed.^[60] These changes have been greatest among African Americans. After more than 70 years of racial parity black marriage rates began to fall behind whites.^[60] Despite that and heavy Democratic leanings, African Americans favor "traditional American values" about family and marriage. While 52% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, 30% of black Democrats do. In 2008, though Democrats overwhelmingly voted (64%) against the California ballot proposition banning gay marriage, blacks overwhelmingly approved (70% in favor) it, more than any other racial group.^[61] The high-profile candidacy of Barack Obama is credited with increasing black turnout on the bill which has been seen as the crucial difference in its passing.^[62] Blacks also hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole.^[62] On financial issues, however, African Americans are very much in line with Democrats, generally supporting a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce injustice and as well as more government spending on social services.^[63]

News media and coverage

BET founder Robert L. Johnson with former U.S. President George W. Bush.

News media coverage of African American news, concerns or dilemmas is inadequate, some activists and academics contend.^[64][65][66] Activists also contend that the news media present distorted images of African-Americans.^[67] To combat this African Americans founded their own television networks. Black Entertainment Television, founded by Robert L. Johnson is a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States. Most programming on the network consists of rap and R&B music videos and urban-oriented movies and series. Additionally, the channel shows syndicated television series, original programs, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET broadcasts a lineup of network-produced Christian programming; other, non-affiliated Christian programs are also shown during the early morning hours daily. BET is now an global network that reaches 85 million viewers in the Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom.^[68] In addition to BET there is Centric, which is a spin-off cable television channel of BET, created originally as BET on Jazz to showcase jazz music-related programming, especially that of black jazz musicians. Programming since has been expanded to include a block of urban programs as well as some R&B, neo soul, and alternative hip hop, with the focus on jazz reduced to low-profile hours.^[69] TV One is another African-American-oriented network and a direct competitor to BET. It targets African-American adults with a broad range of programming. The network airs original lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion and music programming, as well as classic series such as 227, Good Times, Martin, Boston Public and It's Showtime at the Apollo. The network primarily owned by Radio One. Radio One, Inc., founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes, it is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African-American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States.^[70] Other African-American networks scheduled to launch in 2009 are the Black Television News Channel founded by former Congressman J. C. Watts and Better Black Television founded by Percy Miller.^[71][72] In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio^[73] in partnership with the production team that created the black documentary film, Meeting David Wilson. It is the first African American video news site which focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History.^[74]

Education

Main article: Education outcomes in the United States by race and other classifications

By 2000, African Americans had advanced greatly. They still lagged overall in education attainment compared to white or Asian Americans, with 14 percent with four year and 5 percent with advanced degrees, though it was higher than for other minorities.^[75] African Americans attend college at about half the rate of whites, but at a greater rate than Americans of Hispanic origin. More African-American women attend and complete college than men. Black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U.S., and a pattern towards re-segregation is currently occurring across the country.^[76] Historically black colleges and universities remain today which were originally set up when segregated colleges did not admit African Americans. As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.^[77] US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed high school, less than whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through progressive policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism.^[78]

In Chicago, Marva Collins, an African-American educator, created a low cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low-income African-American children whom the public school system had labeled as being "learning disabled."^[79] One article about Marva Collins' school stated, "Working with students having the worst of backgrounds, those who were working far below grade level, and even those who had been labeled as 'unteachable,' Marva was able to overcome the obstacles. News of third grade students reading at ninth grade level, four-year-olds learning to read in only a few months, outstanding test scores, disappearance of behavioral problems, second-graders studying Shakespeare, and other incredible reports, astounded the public."^[80] During the 2006–2007 school year, Collins' school charged $5,500 for tuition, and parents said that the school did a much better job than the Chicago public school system.^[81] Meanwhile, during the 2007–2008 year, Chicago public school officials claimed that their budget of $11,300 per student was not enough.^[82]

Economic status

Oprah Winfrey, the wealthiest African American of the 20th century.^[83][84][85] A pair of economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama delivered one million votes for him in the close 2008 Democratic primaries.^[86]

Economically, African-Americans have benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, 47% of African Americans owned their homes. The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004.^[54] African-Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012.^[87][88] In 2002 African-American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses.^[89]

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.^[90] Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields),^[91] and African Americans were no more or less likely than European Americans to work in the service industry.^[92] In 2001, over half of African-American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more.^[92] 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.^[92]

By 2006, gender continued to be the primary factor in income level, with the median earnings of African-American men more than those black and non-black American women overall and in all educational levels.^{[93][94][95][96][97]} At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African-American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.^[93][98] Overall, the median earnings of African-American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men.^[93][96][99] On the other hand by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African-American women have made significant advances; the median income of African-American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.^{[94][95][100]}

African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African-American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%,^[101] while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.^[102]

The income gap between black and white families is also significant. In 2005, employed blacks earned only 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975.^[54] The New York Times reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African-American families exceeded that of white families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true.^[31]

In 1999, the rate of births to unwed African-American mothers was estimated by economist Walter E. Williams of George Mason University to be 70%.^[103] The poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the comparable rates were 26.4% and 6%.^[104]

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; by contrast, the net worth of the 20th century's richest American, Bill Gates, who is of European descent, briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. In Forbes' 2007 list, Gates' net worth decreased to $59 billion while Winfrey's increased to $2.5 billion,^[105] making her the world's richest black person.^[84][106] Winfrey is also the first African American to make Business Week's annual list of America's 50 greatest philanthropists.^[107] BET founder Bob Johnson was also listed as a billionaire prior to an expensive divorce and has recently regained his fortune through a series of real estate investments. Although Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.1 billion, which makes him the only male African-American billionaire, Winfrey remains the only African American wealthy enough to rank among the country's 400 richest people.^[105] Some black entrepreneurs use their wealth to create new avenues for both African-Americans and new opportunities for American business in general. Examples such as Tyler Perry who created new filming studios in Atlanta, Georgia which makes it possible to film movies and television shows outside of California.^[108]

Health

Ben Carson (left) being announced as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on June 19, 2008.

African Americans continue to have lower life expectancies on average than whites in the United States. Even when adjusted for age, African Americans are 1.6 times more likely to die from one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States than European Americans.^[109] However, there is evidence that this may be changing: 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 European American males born in that year.^[110] 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.^[110] By 2004, "the trend toward convergence in mortality figures across the major race groups also continued", with white–black gap in life expectancy dropping to five years.^[111] 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.

At the same time, the life expectancy gap is affected by collectively lower access to quality medical care. With no system of universal health care, access to medical care in the U.S. generally is mediated by income level and employment status. As a result, African Americans, who have a disproportionate occurrence of poverty and unemployment as a group, are more often uninsured than non Hispanic whites or Asians.^[112] For a great many African Americans, healthcare delivery is limited, or nonexistent. And when they receive healthcare, they are more likely than others in the general population to receive substandard, even injurious medical care.^[113] African Americans have a higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions.^[114]

African Americans are the American ethnic group most affected by HIV and AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has been estimated that "184,991 adult and adolescent HIV infections [were] diagnosed during 2001-2005" (1). More than 51 percent occurred among blacks than any other race. Between the ages of 25–44 years 62 percent were African Americans. Dr. Robert Janssen (2007) states, "We have rates of HIV/AIDS among blacks in some American cities that are as high as in some countries in Africa". The rate for African Americans with HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. is 3 percent, based on cases reported. In a New York Times Article, about 50 percent of AIDS-related deaths were African-American woman, which accounted for 25 percent of the city's population. In many cases there are a higher proportion of black people being tested than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen goes on by saying "We need to do a better job of encouraging African Americans to test. Studies show that approximately one in five black men between the ages 40 to 49 living in the city is HIV-positive, according to the TIMES. Research indicates that African Americans' sexual behavior is no different than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen says "Racial groups tend to have sex with members of their own racial group.^{[citation needed]}

Crime also plays a significant role in the racial gap in life expectancy. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice states "In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites" and "94% of black victims were killed by blacks."^[115]

Cultural influence in the United States

Further information: African American culture

The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921

From their earliest presence in North America, 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. 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.^[116] 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, R&B, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, ragtime, 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, including country and techno. African-American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.^[117]

African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Bill T. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African-American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African-American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally black fraternities and sororities at universities.^{[citation needed]}

Many African-American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.

African-American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. Most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the Confederate navy.

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 A. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask.^[118]

Lewis Howard 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. Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb (code named the Manhattan Project.) Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.^[118]

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 R. Drew, and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones. Vivian Thomas was another pioneer in surgery, the first to perform the misnamed Blalock-Taussig shunt on a dying baby girl. Dr. Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based. More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers, and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first black astronaut pilot but the person who 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.^[118]

Political legacy

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. remains the most prominent political leader in the American civil rights movement and perhaps the most influential African-American political figure in general.

African-Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.^[119]

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, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow. They would often be the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post WWII era, something had to give. 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 ..."^[120]

The Civil Rights Movement marked a sea-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. Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, de jure racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, women, Native Americans, and migrant workers.

The term "African-American"

Political overtones

Michelle Robinson Obama is the First Lady of the United States, the first African-American to hold the position

The term African American carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry. The terms were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of white supremacy and oppression.^[121] There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of self-identification of their own choosing.

With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, blacks no longer approved of the term Negro. They believed it had suggestions of a moderate, accommodationist, even "Uncle Tom" connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the United States, 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 identifier. It was a term social leaders themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier, but they proclaimed, "Black is beautiful".

In this same period, a smaller number of people favored Afro-American. In the 1980s the term African-American was advanced on the model of, for example, German-American or Irish-American to give descendents of American slaves and other American blacks who lived through the slavery-era a heritage and a cultural base. ^[121] The term was popularized in black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience, subsequently major media outlets adopted its use.^[121] Many blacks in America expressed a preference for the term, as it was formed in the same way as names for others of the many ethnic groups in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the United States 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 pride in Africa and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embrace of pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore.

Who is African American?

Further information: Multiracial American, Mulatto, and Black Indians

African-American topics
African-American history
Atlantic slave trade · Maafa Slavery in the United States African-American military history Jim Crow laws · Redlining Civil Rights Movements 1896–1954 and 1955–1968 Afrocentrism · Reparations
African-American culture
African American studies Neighborhoods · Juneteenth Kwanzaa · Art · Museums Dance · Literature · Music · Schools · Historic colleges and universities
Religion
Black church · Black theology Black liberation theology Doctrine of Father Divine Black Hebrew Israelites American Society of Muslims Nation of Islam · Rastafari
Political movements
Pan-Africanism · Black Power Nationalism · Capitalism Conservatism · Populism Leftism · Black Panther Party Garveyism
Civic and economic groups
NAACP · SCLC · CORE · SNCC · NUL Rights groups · ASALH · UNCF NBCC · NPHC · The Links · NCNW
Sports
Negro league baseball CIAA · SIAC · MEAC · SWAC
Ethnic sub-divisions
Black Indians · Gullah · Igbo
Languages
English · Gullah · Creole African American Vernacular
Diaspora
Liberia · Nova Scotia · France Sierra Leone
Lists
African Americans National firsts · State firsts Landmark legislation Black diaspora Index
Category · Portal
This box: view • talk • edit

Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government officially classified black people (revised to black or African American in 1997) as A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.^[2] Other Federal offices, such as the United States Census Bureau, adheres to the OMB standards on race in its data collection and tabulations efforts.^[122] In preparation for the United States 2010 Census, a marketing and outreach plan, called 2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of black people in the United States^[123] The ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity.^[124] The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire black population of the U.S. as though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation categorizes black or African-American people as "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 OMB classification.^[125] On census forms, the government depends on individuals' self-identification. Due in part to a centuries-old history within the United States, historical experiences pre- and post-slavery, and migrations throughout North America, contemporary African Americans possess varying degrees of admixture with European ancestry. A lesser percentage also have Native American ancestry.^[126][127]

With the help of geneticists, the historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. put African-American ancestry in these terms:

• 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one great-grandparent);
• 19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one grandparent);
• 1 percent of African Americans have at least 50 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one parent); and
• 5 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent Native American ancestry (equivalent to one great-grandparent).^[128]

However, studies by historians and geneticists show that African Americans have significant Native American heritage due to many different circumstances in different families.^[129] African Americans with Native American ancestry have either been accused of not having Native American ancestry or having little native ancestry. One reason being, the genetic tests done to test for how much Indian Blood a person has does not present a complete picture, as argued by geneticists, because tests trace only one bloodline and thus exclude most ancestors.^[130][131]

The short series African American Lives which was hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was greatly criticized because the program did not acknowledge nor inform those that were tested that not all ancestry may show up in the tests, especially for those who claimed having Native American heritage.^{[130][131][132]}

The most numerous families of free African Americans in the Upper South by the end of the 18th century were descended from white women, free or servant, and African men, slaves, free or indentured servants, who worked and lived closely together during the colonial period in Virginia. Their free descendants migrated to the frontier of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were also similar free families in Delaware and Maryland, as documented by Paul Heinegg.^[133]

In their attempt to ensure white supremacy, in the early 20th century some southern states created laws defining a person as black if the person had any known African ancestry. This was a stricter interpretation than what had prevailed earlier and went against commonly accepted social rules of judging a person by appearance. It became known as the one-drop rule, meaning that a single drop of "black blood" made a person "black". Some courts called it the traceable amount rule. Anthropologists called it the hypodescent rule, meaning that racially mixed persons were assigned the status of the subordinate group.

Prior to the one-drop rule, different states had different laws regarding color. More importantly, social acceptance often played a bigger role in how a person was perceived and how identity was construed than any law. In frontier areas there were fewer questions about origins, and the community looked at how people performed, whether they served in the militia and voted. When questions about racial identity arose because of inheritance issues, for instance, litigation outcomes often were based on how people were accepted by neighbors.^[134]

In Virginia prior to 1920, for example, a person was legally black if he or she had at least one-eighth black ancestry. The one-drop rule originated in some Southern United States in the late 19th century, likely in response to whites' attempt to limit black political power following the Democrats' regaining control of state legislatures in the late 1870s.^[135][136] The first year in which the U.S. Census did not count mulattoes separately was 1920, evidencing a shift in the American conception of what an African American is.^[136]

For African Americans, the one-drop system of pigmentocracy became a significant factor in ethnic solidarity. The binary division of society by race forced African Americans to share more of a common lot in society than they might have after the Civil War, given widely varying ancestry, educational and economic levels. The binary division altered the separate status of the traditionally free people of color in Louisiana, for instance, although they maintained a strong Louisiana Créole culture related to French culture and language, and practice of Catholicism. African Americans began to create common cause—regardless of their multiracial admixture or social and economic stratification. In further changes, during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the African-American community increased its own pressure for people of any portion of African descent to be claimed solely by the black community.

By the 1980s, parents of mixed-race children (and adults of mixed-race ancestry) began to organize and lobby for the ability to show more than one ethnic category on Census and other legal forms. They refused to be put into just one category. When the U.S. government proposed the addition of the category of "bi-racial" or "multiracial" in 1988, the response from the general public was mostly negative. Some African-American organizations and political leaders, such as Senator Diane Watson and Representative Augustus Hawkins, were particularly vocal in their rejection of the category. They feared a loss in political and economic power if African Americans abandoned their one category.

This reaction is characterized as "historical irony" by Daniel (2002). The African-American self-designation had been a response to the one-drop rule, but then people resisted the chance to claim their multiple heritages. At the bottom was a desire not to lose political power of the larger group. Whereas before people resisted being characterized as one group regardless of ranges of ancestry, now some of their own were trying to keep them in the same group.^[137]

In recent decades, the multicultural aspect of the United States has continued to expand, in part due to new waves of immigration from Asia, Central and South America, and Africa. Although the terms mixed-race, biracial, and multiracial are increasingly used, it remains common for those who possess visible traits of black heritage to identify or be identified as blacks or African Americans.

For example, 55% of European Americans classify President Barack Obama as biracial when they are told that he has a white mother, while 66% of African Americans consider him black.^[138] Obama describes himself as black^[139] and African American, using both terms interchangeably.^[140] Because of that and general conventions, he is generally considered to be African American.^[141] Obviously he is in fact both African-American and bi-racial; these are not exclusive categories.

People who are considered African American can also claim Native heritage. Relationships between Native Americans and African slaves first occurred in 1502, and continued throughout the centuries.^[142] Tracing the genealogy of African Americans and Native Americans is a difficult process, because records were not kept for most African slaves and many Native Americans did not speak English.^[143] Another difficulty is that elder family members sometimes withhold pertinent genealogical information.^[143] Knowing a family's geographic origins in different periods is a key factor in helping trace Native American ancestry related to specific tribes.^[143] Native Americans, during the transitional period of Africans becoming the primary race enslaved, were enslaved at the same time and shared a common experience of enslavement. They worked together, lived together in communal quarters, produced collective recipes for food, shared herbal remedies, myths and legends, and in the end they intermarried."^[144] In the eighteenth century, many Native American women did marry freed or runaway African men due to a large decrease in the population of men in Native American villages.^[145] In addition, records also show that Native American women actually bought African men, but unknown to European sellers the women freed and married the men into their tribe.^[145] It was also beneficial for African men to marry or have children by Native American woman because children born to a mother who was not a slave were free.^[145] In changes of their own, since the 1980s some Native American nations have changed their rules for membership to construe them more narrowly. They have excluded members who also have African-American ancestry, or who are descendants of slaves held by the tribe, but without a blood ancestor member of the tribe at certain time periods. After the Civil War, all tribes were supposed to make freed slaves citizens of their tribes, in a pattern similar to freeing slaves held by people in the Confederate states. There has been considerable controversy, for example, over the case of descendants of Cherokee Freedmen, who have recently been expelled from the tribal nation.^[146]

Terms no longer in common use

The terms mulatto and colored were widely used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when they were considered outmoded and generally gave way to the use of negro. By the 1940s, the term commonly was capitalized, but by the mid 1960s, it had acquired negative connotations, though the term mulatto is still in use in many parts of Latin America and is not considered offensive there. Today, in the culture of the United States, the term is considered inappropriate and is now rarely used and perceived as a pejorative.^[147][148] Colored and Negro, now largely defunct, survive in certain historical organizations such as the United Negro College Fund, the National Council of Negro Women, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Negroid was a term used by anthropologists first in the 18th century to describe some indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on inconsistent, unscientific phenotypical standards,^{[citation needed]} the term is controversial and imprecise.^{[citation needed]} Growing numbers of blacks have substituted the term Africoid, which, unlike Negroid, encompasses the phenotypes of all indigenous peoples of Africa.^[149]

See also

African American portal

Affirmative action African-American art African Americans in France Americans of Igbo ancestry African-American literature African-American music African American Muslims African American National Biography Project African American Vernacular English African diaspora African immigrants to the United States Afro-American Afro-Latin American American Black Indians American Black Upper Class American Civil War Americo-Liberian Black church Black feminism

Black Hispanic and Latino Americans Black Loyalist Black nationalism Black people Foreign-born Afro Americans Lists of African Americans List of African-American-related topics List of topics related to Black and African people List of U.S. cities with large African-American populations List of U.S. communities with African American majority populations List of U.S. counties with African American majority populations List of U.S. metropolitan areas with large African-American populations Military history of African Americans Race (classification of human beings) Racial segregation Racism Sierra Leone Creole people Slavery in the United States Terminology: Colored, Creole peoples, Negro, Nigger, Nigga

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} Data Set: 2008 American Community Survey; Survey
2. ^ ^{a b} McKinnon, Jesse. "The Black Population: 2000 United States Census Bureau" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-5.pdf. Retrieved 2007-10-22. 
3. ^ "The size and regional distribution of the black population". Lewis Mumford Center. http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/BlackWhite/BlackDiversityReport/black-diversity03.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-01. 
4. ^ "African American" in the American Heritage Dictionary
5. ^ ^{a b} United States - QT-P4. Race, Combinations of Two Races, and Not Hispanic or Latino: 2000.
6. ^ Hashaw, Tim (2007-01-21). "The First Black Americans". U.S. News & World Report. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-13. 
7. ^ The shaping of Black America: forthcoming 400th celebration.
8. ^ The First Black Americans - US News and World Report.
9. ^ http://www.dalhousielodge.org/Thesis/scotstonc.htm
10. ^ African-Americans in the American Revolution.
11. ^ http://www.africanamericans.com/MilitaryTimeline.htm
12. ^ http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/01.html
13. ^ Boddy-Evans, Alistair. "The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". African History. about.com. http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa080601a.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-04. 
14. ^ "The Emancipation Proclamation". Featured Documents. National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/. Retrieved 2007-06-07. 
15. ^ "History of Juneteenth". Juneteenth.com. 2005. http://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-07. 
16. ^ Davis, Ronald L.F., Ph. D.. "Creating Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay". The History of Jim Crow. New York Life Insurance Company. http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-07. 
17. ^ Davis, Ronald, Ph. D. "Surviving Jim Crow". The History of Jim Crow. New York Life Insurance Company. http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/surviving.htm. 
18. ^ Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
19. ^ "The Great Migration". African American World. PBS. 2002. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html. Retrieved 2007-10-22. 
20. ^ "The March On Washington, 1963". Abbeville Press. http://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp. Retrieved 2007-10-22. 
21. ^ Why Asian Americans Voted For Obama.
22. ^ Paying Attention to the Native American Vote - Votes of Native Americans could impact several battleground states.
23. ^ Behind the Numbers.
24. ^ http://www.gallup.com/poll/111781/Blacks-Postgrads-Young-Adults-Help-Obama-Prevail.aspx
25. ^ http://www.slate.com/id/2204251/
26. ^ http://www.emailwire.com/release/19287-Michael-Steele-First-AfricanAmerican-Leader-to-Chair-RNC-.html
27. ^ This table gives the African-American population in the United States 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.)
28. ^ Time Line of African American History, 1881-1900.
29. ^ United States entry at The World Factbook
30. ^ http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-35.pdf c2kbr01-2.qxd
31. ^ ^{a b} Black Incomes Surpass Whites in Queens, The New York Times, October 1, 2006.
32. ^ ^{a b c} U.S.Religious Landscape Survey The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (February 2008). Retrieved on 2009-07-20.
33. ^ The Black Church By Charyn D. Sutton. Energize Inc. Retrieved on 2009-11-18.
34. ^ Bill J. Leonard (2007). Baptists in America. Columbia University Press. pp. 34. ISBN 0231127030.
35. ^ ^{a b c} The NCC's 2008 Yearbook of Churches reports wide range of health care ministries National Councils of Churches USA. 2008-02-14. Retrieved on 2009-06-22.
36. ^ ^{a b} William Henry James, Stephen Lloyd Johnson (1997). Doin' drugs: patterns of African American addiction. University of Texas Press. pp. 135. ISBN 0292740417.
37. ^ Roger Finke, Rodney Stark (2005). The churching of America, 1776-2005: winners and losers in our religious economy. Rutgers University Press. pp. 235.
38. ^ Alfred Abioseh Jarrett (2000). The impact of macro social systems on ethnic minorities in the United States. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 235. ISBN 0275938808.
39. ^ Robert A. Burns (2008). Catholic Spirituality and Prayer in the Secular City. University Press of America. pp. 82. ISBN 0761841288.
40. ^ Samuel S. Hill, Charles H. Lippy, Charles Reagan Wilson. Encyclopedia of religion in the South. Mercer University Press (2005). pp. 394. ISBN 9780865547582.
41. ^ Jacob Neusner. World Religions in America: An Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press (2003). pp. 180-181. ISBN 9780664224752.
42. ^ William W. Sales (1994). From civil rights to Black liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. South End Press. pp. 37. ISBN 9780896084803.
43. ^ Uzra Zeya (1990-01) Islam in America: The Growing Presence of American Converts to Islam Washington Report on Middle East Reports. Retrieved on 2009-11-16.
44. ^ Gary Laderman, Luis D. León (2003). Religion and American cultures: an encyclopedia of traditions, diversity, and popular expressions. ABC-CLIO. pp. 127. ISBN 9781576072387.
45. ^ Rosemary Skinner Keller, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Marie Cantlon (2006). Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America. Indiana University Press. pp. 752. ISBN 0253346851, 9780253346858
46. ^ Ihsan Bagby, Paul M. Perl, Bryan T. Froehle (2001-04-26) "The Mosque in America: A National Portrait". Council on American-Islamic Relations (Washington, D.C.). p. 17. Retrieved on 2009-07-22.
47. ^ John W. Fountain (October 5 2001) A NATION CHALLENGED: AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSLIMS; Sadness and Fear as a Group Feels Doubly at Risk The New York Times. Retrieved on 2009-04-23.
48. ^ "Being Muslim in America" America.gov (United States Department of State). Retrieved on 2009-11-12.
49. ^ Nation of Islam Britannica. Retrieved on 2009-11-18.
50. ^ David Whelan (2003-05-08). "A Fledgling Grant Maker Nurtures Young Jewish 'Social Entrepreneurs'". The Chronicle of Philanthropy. http://philanthropy.com/jobs/2003/05/15/20030515-359473.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-17. 
51. ^ Michael Gelbwasser (1998-04-10). "Organization for black Jews claims 200,000 in U.S.". j.. http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/8426/. Retrieved 2007-07-21. 
52. ^ Angell, Stephen W. (May 2001). "Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism". The North Star (University of Rochester) 4 (2). ISSN 1094-902X. http://northstar.vassar.edu/volume4/chireau_deutsch.html. Retrieved 2007-10-19. 
53. ^ Oscar Barbarin, PhD. "Characteristics of African American Families" (PDF). University of North Carolina. http://ssw.unc.edu/RTI/presentation/PDFs/aa_families.pdf. Retrieved September 23, 2006. 
54. ^ ^{a b c} Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Cheryl Hill Lee (August 2005) (PDF). Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004. U.S. Census Bureau. pp. 60–229. http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf. 
55. ^ http://www.omhrc.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlID=51
56. ^ ^{a b} "Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2007" (PDF). March 2006. http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p20-556.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-30. 
57. ^ http://www.thisnation.com/congress-facts.html
58. ^ "2004 Election Results". CNN. 2004. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html. 
59. ^ Dickson, David A. (1996). "American Society and the African American Foreign Policy Lobby: Constraints and Opportunities". Journal of Black Studies 27 (2): 139–151. doi:10.1177/002193479602700201. 
60. ^ ^{a b} http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817998721_95.pdf
61. ^ http://www.sacbee.com/elections/story/1372009.html
62. ^ ^{a b} http://www.gallup.com/poll/112807/Blacks-Conservative-Republicans-Some-Moral-Issues.aspx
63. ^ http://people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=121
64. ^ blackandbrownnews.com Sharon Toomer, editor http://www.blackandbrownnews.com
65. ^ Examining the Future of Black News Media : NPR.
66. ^ How Will African Americans Get the News? : NPR.
67. ^ Mikal Muharrar, "Media Blackface", "FAIR", September/ October 1998, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1431
68. ^ http://bet.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=63
69. ^ http://bet.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=18
70. ^ http://www.blackamericastudy.com/
71. ^ http://www.nypost.com/seven/05272008/tv/black_news_net_112648.htm
72. ^ http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/better-black-television-bbtv-set/story.aspx?guid=%7B84DACE55-1089-4DB5-8992-4223A5DF65EE%7D&dist=hppr^{[dead link]}
73. ^ TheGrio.com
74. ^ NBC News & TheGrio
75. ^ Issued August 2003: Educational Attainment by race and gender: Census 2000 Brief.
76. ^ Kozol, J. "Overcoming Apartheid", [[The Nation (U.S. periodical)|The Nation. December 19, 2005. p. 26].
77. ^ Public Information Office, U.S. Census Bureau. High School Completions at All-Time High, Census Bureau Reports. 15 September 2000.
78. ^ Closing the Achivement Gap (California).
79. ^ Marva Collins Seminars, Inc.
80. ^ Excerpts from Ordinary Children, Extraordinary Teachers and Marva Collins’ Way.
81. ^ Marva Collins School to close, ABC News, June 05, 2008.
82. ^ Chicago students skip school in funding protest, Associated Press, September 2, 2008.
83. ^ "Oprah Winfrey the richest black person in the world". African Echo 43. 2006-09-11. http://www.africanecho.co.uk/business.html. Retrieved 2006-09-11. 
84. ^ ^{a b} Malonson, Roy Douglas (2006-05-10). "Condi and Oprah aren't good role models for Black motherhood". African-American News & Issues. http://www.aframnews.com/html/2006-05-10/publisher.htm. Retrieved 2006-09-11. 
85. ^ "#562 Oprah Winfrey". Forbes Special Report: The World's Billionaires. 2006. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/O0ZT.html. Retrieved 2006-09-11. 
86. ^ http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/so-much-for-one-person-one-vote/
87. ^ Report: Affluent African-Americans have 45% of buying power.
88. ^ [http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS218860+06-Feb-2008+PRN20080206 Buying Power Among African Americans to Reach $1.1 Trillion by 2012 Reuters.
89. ^ US Census Press Release.
90. ^ "Incomes, Earnings, and Poverty from the 2004 American Community Survey" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. August 2005. http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/acs-01.pdf. Retrieved October 24, 2006. 
91. ^ Peter Fronczek and Patricia Johnson (August 2003). "Occupations: 2000" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-25.pdf. Retrieved October 24, 2006. 
92. ^ ^{a b c} Jesse McKinnon (April 2003). "The Black Population in the United States: March 2002" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-541.pdf. Retrieved October 24, 2006. 
93. ^ ^{a b c} http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new03_131.htm PINC-03-Part 131
94. ^ ^{a b} PINC-03-Part 254
95. ^ ^{a b} PINC-03-Part 259
96. ^ ^{a b} PINC-03-Part 135
97. ^ PINC-03-Part 253
98. ^ PINC-03-Part 128
99. ^ PINC-03-Part 133
100. ^ PINC-03-Part 5
101. ^ http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm
102. ^ http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS14000000
103. ^ Blaming the past, Walter Williams, May 19, 1999.
104. ^ Ammunition for poverty pimps Walter E. Williams, October 27, 2005.
105. ^ ^{a b} http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070920/apfn_forbes_400_alphabetical_list.html
106. ^ "Oprah's £20m school proves she's not all talk". 3 January 2007. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2121670.ece. Retrieved 2007-05-29. 
107. ^ "Oprah Winfrey Debuts as First African-American On BusinessWeek's Annual Ranking of 'Americas Top Philanthropists'". BusinessWeek via PRNewsWire. November 19, 2004. http://www.urbanmecca.com/artman/publish/article_174.shtml. Retrieved 2006-10-01. 
108. ^ [http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2008-10-05-perry-studio_N.htm Tyler Perry unveils new studio in Atlanta USA Today.
109. ^ "[http://www.echt.chm.msu.edu/blockiii/Docs/RecRead/RaceSocioeconomic.pdf Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Health The Added Effects of Racism and Discrimination]". University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. 1999. http://www.echt.chm.msu.edu/blockiii/Docs/RecRead/RaceSocioeconomic.pdf. Retrieved 2009-11-25. 
110. ^ ^{a b} Donna L. Hoyert, PhD.; Hsiang-Ching Kung, PhD.; Betty L. Smith, B.S. Ed. (February 28, 2005). "Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2003" (PDF). Division of Vital Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_15.pdf. Retrieved September 23, 2006. 
111. ^ "Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2004". CDC. 2004. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/prelimdeaths04/preliminarydeaths04.htm. Retrieved 2007-09-20. 
112. ^ "Income Stable, Poverty Up, Numbers of Americans With and Without Health Insurance Rise, Census Bureau Reports". U.S. Census Bureau News. 2006-08-26. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html. Retrieved 2006-10-14. 
113. ^ "Ethics and Human Rights Position Statements: Discrimination and Racism in Health Care". American Nursing Association.. 1998-03-06. http://www.nursingworld.org/readroom/position/ethics/etdisrac.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-14. 
114. ^ "Risk Factors and Coronary Heart Disease". American Heart Association. http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4726. Retrieved 2006-09-23. 
115. ^ Homicide trends in the U.S., U.S. Department of Justice.
116. ^ "African-American Inventors". http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/black.shtml. Retrieved 2007-05-30. 
117. ^ Stewart, Earl L. (1998). African American Music: An Introduction. New York: Schirmer Books. p. 3. ISBN 0-02-860294-3. 
118. ^ ^{a b c} "Black People and Their Place in World History". http://www.computerhealth.org/ebook/1865post.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-30. 
119. ^ http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48936
120. ^ "Martin Luther King, Jr". http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/38.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-30. 
121. ^ ^{a b c} http://books.google.com/books?id=xoZ0POyF2YkC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=jesse+jackson+african+american+cultural+base&source=bl&ots=nEFSRzdT4Z&sig=oQ2lSr7NwQtkRTBDzLrv-c9WFIU&hl=en&ei=blsOSqudNOawtgfcu_iGCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
122. ^ "Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity". Office of Management and Budget. 1997. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/1997standards.html. 
123. ^ "2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan" (pdf). 2010 Census. U.S. Census Bureau. August 2008. p. 225. http://2010.census.gov/2010census/pdf/2010_ICC_Plan.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-05. "The Black audience includes all individuals of Black African descent. There are three major groups that represent the Black Audience in the United States. These groups are African Americans (Blacks born in the United States), Black Africans (Black Immigrants from Africa) and Afro-Caribbeans, which includes Haitians." 
124. ^ "2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan" (pdf). 2010 Census. U.S. Census Bureau. August 2008. p. 230. http://2010.census.gov/2010census/pdf/2010_ICC_Plan.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-05. "Community, both geographic and ethnic, creates a sense of belonging and pride that is unique to the Black audience (African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Black Africans)." 
125. ^ "Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook" (PDF). U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2004. p. 97. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf. 
126. ^ "Estimating African American Admixture Proportions by Use of Population-Specific Alleles." Am. J. Hum. Genet. 63:1839–1851, 1998
127. ^ Population structure of Y chromosome SNP haplogroups in the United States and forensic implications for constructing Y chromosome STR databases. Forensic Science International. Received August 17, 2005. Received in a revised form and accepted November 8, 2005.
128. ^ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, New York: Crown Publishing, 2009, pp. 20–21.
129. ^ Sherrel Wheeler Stewart (2008). "More Blacks are Exploring the African-American/Native American Connection". BlackAmericaWeb.com. http://www.rlnn.com/ArtOct06/MoreBlacksAfricanAmerNativeAmerConnection.html. Retrieved 2008-08-06. 
130. ^ ^{a b} ScienceDaily (2008). "Genetic Ancestral Testing Cannot Deliver On Its Promise, Study Warns". ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071018145955.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-02. 
131. ^ ^{a b} Troy Duster (2008). "Deep Roots and Tangled Branches". Chronicle of Higher Education. http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3908. Retrieved 2008-10-02. 
132. ^ Brett Lee Shelton, J.D. and Jonathan Marks, Ph.D. (2008). "Genetic Markers Not a Valid Test of Native Identity". Counsel for Responsible Genetics. http://www.ipcb.org/publications/briefing_papers/files/identity.html. Retrieved 2008-10-02. 
133. ^ Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, 2005, accessed 15 Feb 2008.
134. ^ http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/25.3/gross.html Ariela Gross, "Of Portuguese Origin": Litigating Identity and Citizenship among the 'Little Races' in Nineteenth-Century America", Law and History Review, Vol.25 (3), The History Cooperative, accessed 22 June 2008.
135. ^ Sweet, Frank W. Legal History of the Color Line. 2005, p. 11.
136. ^ ^{a b} D'Souza, Dinesh. The End of Racism. 1996, p. 181.
137. ^ G. Reginald Daniel (2002). "More Than Black?:Multiracial". Temple University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=9tP7_3j3WrkC&pg=PA129&dq=most+african+americans+may+have+native+american+heritage&sig=ACfU3U0Qj3oGYXBs5gOU7v--h2WgcInomg#PPA128,M1. Retrieved 2008-09-19.  p. 128f.
138. ^ "Williams/Zogby Poll: Americans' Attitudes Changing Towards Multiracial Candidates". BBSNews.com. 2006-12-22. http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20061222014017231. Retrieved 2007-09-23. 
139. ^ Eric Deggans, "Shades of black", St. Petersburg Times. Published April 15, 2007.
140. ^ "Transcript excerpt: Senator Barack Obama on Sixty Minutes". CBS News. 2007-02-11. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/11/60minutes/printable2458530.shtml. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 
141. ^ "Breaking New Ground: African American Senators". U.S. Senate Historical Office. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/Photo_Exhibit_African_American_Senators.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-22. 
142. ^ William Loren Katz (2008). "Black Indians". AfricanAmericans.com. http://www.africanamericans.com/BlackIndians.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-11. 
143. ^ ^{a b c} Mary A. Dempsey (1996). "The Indian connection". American Visions. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1546/is_n4_v11/ai_18953815. Retrieved 2008-09-19. 
144. ^ National Park Service (2009). "Park Ethnography: Work, Marriage, Christianity". National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/history/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/lowCountry_furthRdg1.htm. 
145. ^ ^{a b c} Dorothy A. Mays (2008). "Women in early America". ABC-CLIO. http://books.google.com/books?id=UYWs-GQDiOkC&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214&dq=indian+women+married+black+men&source=bl&ots=1E_JSZAfDk&sig=RzwOe3U5dehXn0DbTHVKxLSX9ws&hl=en&ei=xbwhSu-rKKPYMdG79ZkJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PPA214,M1. Retrieved 2008-05-29. 
146. ^ Wired 13.09: Blood Feud.
147. ^ Tottie, Gunnel (2002). An Introduction to American English. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 200. ISBN 0631197923. http://books.google.com/books?id=WWDUtK-f1tQC&pg=PA200&sig=ACfU3U2DFYzfzpKnN11PL6xnrQE37ysKRQ. Retrieved 2008-08-04. 
148. ^ Anderson, Talmadge; James Stewart (2007). Introduction to African American Studies. Baltimore: Black Classics Press. p. 3. ISBN 1580730396. http://books.google.com/books?id=49tXR1Ok6poC&pg=PA3&sig=ACfU3U1hBxBTh_1xiFq3YXtKPbauMAnkWw. Retrieved 2008-08-04. 
149. ^ S.O.Y. Keita. History in Africa, Vol. 20, 1993 (1993), pp. 129–154.

References

• 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".
• The Music of Black Americans: A History. Eileen Southern. W. W. Norton & Company; 3rd edition, (1997). ISBN 0-393-97141-4.
• Stewart, Earl L. (1998). African American Music: An Introduction. ISBN 0-02-860294-3.

Further reading

• Jack Salzman, ed., Encyclopedia of Afro-American culture and history, New York, New York : Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996.
• African American Lives, edited by Henry L. Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford University Press, 2004 – more than 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".
• "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self Reference Among American Slave Descendants", American Speech, v 66, no.2, Summer 1991, pp. 133–46.

External links

Look up african american in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: African Americans

• Richard Thompson Ford Name Games, Slate, September 16, 2004. Article discussing the problems of defining African American
• "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
• "The Definition of Political Absurdity", San Francisco Chronicle, March 2, 2007
• African American archaeology in Sacramento, California pdf
• African American archaeology in Oakland, California – See Part III, Chap 10
• Black History related original documents and photos
• President Obama's Speech to the NAACP on July 16, 2009 – full video by MSNBC

v • d • e African American topics African American history Atlantic slave trade · Maafa · Slavery in the United States · Military history of African Americans · Jim Crow laws · Redlining · Civil Rights Movements 1896–1954 and · 1955–1968 · Afrocentrism · Reparations for slavery African American culture African American studies · Neighborhoods · Juneteenth · Black colleges and universities · Kwanzaa · Art · Museums · Dance · Literature · Music Religion Black church · Black liberation theology · Black theology · Doctrine of Father Divine · American Society of Muslims · Nation of Islam · Black Hebrew Israelites Political movements Pan-Africanism · Nationalism · Black Power · Black fist · Capitalism · Conservatism · Populism · Leftism · Black Panther Party · Garveyism Civic and economic groups National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) · Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) · Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) · Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) · National Urban League (NUL) · Rights organizations · Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) · United Negro College Fund (UNCF) · National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) · National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) · The Links · National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) Sports Negro league baseball · Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) · Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) · Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) · Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC)  · African Americans in the NFL  · African Americans in the CFL Ethnic sub-divisions Black Indians · Gullah · Igbo Languages English · Gullah · Louisiana Creole French · African American Vernacular English Diaspora Liberia · Nova Scotia · Sierra Leone · France Lists African Americans · African-American firsts · First mayors · U.S. state firsts · Landmark African-American legislation · African-American-related articles · Topics related to the Black Diaspora · African-American visual artists Category · Portal

v • d • e Demographics of the United States Demographic history Economic and social Affluence · Educational attainment · Homeownership · Household income · Immigration · Income inequality · Language · Middle classes · Personal income · Poverty · Social class · Unemployment by state · Wealth Religion Prominent examples: Buddhist Americans · Christian Americans (Catholic Americans, Mormon Americans, Protestant Americans, etc.) · Hindu Americans · Jewish Americans · Muslim Americans · Neopagan Americans · Non-religious Americans · Sikh Americans Race, ethnicity, and ancestry Ethnic groups in the United States · American people by ethnic or national origin · History of the United States by ethnic group · American culture by ethnicity · Race and ethnicity in the United States Census · Ethnic groups in the United States · Maps of American ancestries · 2000 Census · Race/ethnicity by EEOC · Racism Major examples: Arab and Middle Eastern Americans · Black Americans (African Americans, African immigrants, Afro-Caribbeans, etc.) · Asian Americans (Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Indian Americans, Japanese Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, etc.)  · Hispanic and Latino Americans (Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans in the United States, Cuban Americans, etc.) · White Americans (European Americans, Jewish Americans (by ethnic origin), etc.) · Multiracial Americans · Native Americans (Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, etc.)

v • d • e Race in the 2000 United States Census "American Indian and Alaskan Native"  "Asian"  "Black or African American"  "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander"  "White"  "Hispanic or Latino Americans"

v • d • e African diaspora Americas Argentina · Belize · Bolivia · Brazil · Canada (Black Nova Scotians) · Colombia · Chile · Cuba · Costa Rica · Ecuador · Guyana · Jamaica (Jamaican Maroons) · Latin America · Mexico · Peru · Puerto Rico · Trinidad & Tobago · United States (African immigrants · Black Indians in the U.S. · Black Seminoles) · Uruguay Asia Pakistan & India · Sri Lanka Europe France (African Americans) · Germany · Greece · Ireland · Italy · Poland · Portugal (Portuguese of Black African ancestry) · Russia  · United Kingdom (Scotland  · Black British  · African-Caribbean community  · Other Black groups) Middle East Abkhazia · Iraq · Israel  · Turkey Oceania Australia · New Zealand

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)