AFRICAN AMERICANS

AFRICAN AMERICANS. 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.

MatthewWhitaker

See alsoDiscrimination: Race ; Harlem Renaissance ; Lynching ; Migration, African American ; South, the ; Suffrage: African American ; Tuskegee University .