African Americans

ALTERNATE NAMES: Blacks
LOCATION: United States
POPULATION: 37 million (half of whom live in the Southern states, 2006)
LANGUAGE: English (sometimes with Black English variants)
RELIGION: National Baptist Convention; Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal); Roman Catholicism; Nation of Islam; African Methodist Episcopal Church; African Orthodox Church; Judaism; Rastafarianism
RELATED ARTICLES: Vol. 2: Americans

INTRODUCTION

Unlike other immigrants to the United States, the ancestors of today's African Americans did not come to America of their own free will. Beginning in 1619, they were captured and forcibly brought from their West African homelands to serve as slaves, mostly on Southern plantations. The inhuman conditions aboard the ships on which they traveled killed many Africans before they reached the New World. When the thirteen British colonies declared and ultimately won their independence from Britain in the 18th century, the institution of slavery was retained, although largely confined to the Southern states. During the Civil War, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the Southern slaves; the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed in December 1865, abolished all slavery in the United States. At the close of the Civil War, African Americans accounted for 14% of the U.S. population.

The newly freed slaves made progress during Reconstruction, especially in education, but the end of this period, in 1877, brought a new era of repression marked by lynchings and other forms of persecution, in which the recently formed Ku Klux Klan played a prominent role. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed. The following two decades saw the migration of about 1.6 million Southern blacks to Northern cities in search of newly available industrial jobs. Weathering the hardships of the Depression, blacks continued their northward migration through the years of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies and World War II.

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the country's most egregious forms of racism were eliminated, as blacks joined forces to demand their legal and human rights through civil disobedience and other forms of protest and social activism. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation illegal. Progress was also made in the area of voting rights, as well as the desegregation of public facilities, especially in the South. In 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The 1960s also saw the growth of the black nationalist movement, whose leadership was assumed by the Black Panthers following the assassination of Black Muslim leader Malcolm X.

By the 1970s, African Americans had been elected as mayors of several major cities, and affirmative action programs had created new opportunities in employment and education. However, many of these programs were weakened or eliminated during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the country's continuing racial tensions were brought to the forefront of national attention by events including the riots in Los Angeles in response to the court's decision in the Rodney King case and the 1995 acquittal in the O. J. Simpson murder trial.

African-American achievement in American society has been remarkable in the 21st century. Black political leaders in the late 20th and early 21st centuries included: civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988; Douglas Wilder, elected the first state governor (Virginia) in the United States in 1989; Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, who became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate (1992); General Colin Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989–1993, and Secretary of State, 2001–2005; Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser from 2001–2004, and Secretary of State beginning in 2005; Ron Brown, United States Secretary of Commerce, 1993–1996; Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas; and President Barack Obama, who was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in 2009.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

According to the United States Census Bureau, there were an estimated 37 million African Americans in the United States in 2006, a population larger than that of most African nations and one that represents 12.4% of the total U.S. population. The Census Bureau projects the black population of the United States to rise to 61.4 million by July 1, 2050. On that date, blacks would constitute 14.6% of the nation's total population. As of 2006, 18 U.S. states had a black population of at least 1 million. New York, with 3.5 million blacks, led the way. The 17 other states were Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Approximately 31% of the black population was younger than 18 in 2006. At the other end of the spectrum, 8% of the black population was 65 and older.

LANGUAGE

African Americans speak English, although some blacks, either in addition to or instead of Standard American English, speak a variant known as Black English Vernacular (BEV), or Black English. In the late 1990s, the term ebonics was coined by linguists to refer to the grammar of Black English. The grammar and syntax of Black English are traceable to West African and Niger-Congo languages. They include the frequent omission of forms of the verb "to be" ("He nice" instead of "He is nice"); the use of "be" in place of "is" ("He be home today"); the absence of endings from third person singular verbs ("She know"); absence of the possessives when possession is signified by word order ("That John house"); replacement of a final "th" sound in a word by an "f" sound ("I going wif you"); and replacement of indefinite pronouns such as "anyone" by negative pronouns when verbs are negated ("He don't like nobody"). Black English Vernacular has introduced African words such as goober (peanut), tote (carry), juke (juke box), and okay into the English language, as well as produced original terms later incorporated widely into general informal or conversational use, such as jive, hip, and jazz. In other cases, Standard English terms have been given new meanings, as in the case of cat, rap, bad, and awesome.

In 1996, Black English Vernacular, newly labeled Ebonics, was the subject of nationwide debate when the Oakland, California, school board passed a resolution declaring it a separate language distinct from standard English in order to institute programs aimed at educating teachers in this dialect and inculcating respect for its African linguistic roots.

FOLKLORE

African Americans have a folklore tradition that dates back to the period of black slavery. Early forms of African-American folklore include animal-trickster tales, spirituals, and folk beliefs, such as the belief in conjurers, figures similar to African medicine men who, by using spells and charms, could either heal or cause injury. Folk traditions were also passed down through the generations by proverbs, sermons, prayers, and a variety of folktales.

Modern African-American folklore includes the "dozens," insult matches favored especially by young men and generally including disparaging remarks about each other's mothers. Another popular type of folklore consists of rumors about organized anti-black conspiracies. Today these rumors take the form of "urban legends" that are in widespread circulation in the black community but virtually unknown to other ethnic communities. Examples include the assertions that the Ku Klux Klan tampers with Church's fried chicken in ways that cause sterility among black men; that American scientists de-liberately created the AIDS virus and then attempted to test it by infecting African populations with it; and that twenty-eight African Americans were killed in the course of interferon research at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

RELIGION

The National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A., Inc., with some 7.5 million members in 2008, is the largest black religious denomination, followed by the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal sect (2008 membership of over 6 million). Roman Catholicism (with a black membership of more than 2 million in 2008) and the Nation of Islam both claim large black followings as well. Other religious affiliations include the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Orthodox Church, Judaism, and Rastafarianism.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

African Americans observe the national holidays of the United States and the religious holidays of the faiths to which they belong. Dates with special significance for African Americans are the birthdays of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 15 and of Malcolm X on May 19, and Juneteenth, which commemorates the date on which black slaves in Texas learned that they were free—June 19, 1865. In 1994 Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, designating the third Monday in January (near Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday) as a national day of volunteer service. The joyous holiday of Kwanzaa, the festival of first fruits, is celebrated from December 26 to January 1. Each day of this holiday, inaugurated by the philosopher Maulana Karenga in 1966, is devoted to and named for a particular virtue.

RITES OF PASSAGE

African Americans with active religious involvement mark major life events such as birth, marriage, and death within their respective religious traditions. "Jumping the broom" is a time-honored custom at African-American weddings. The African Americans of Louisiana's New Orleans Creole community are known for their jazz funerals. Observers within the black community have decried the lack of coming-of-age rituals for young black men, and some groups, including the Urban League and PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) have developed rite-of-passage programs that focus on responsibility, values, character, and discipline. (PUSH also offers such programs for young women.) Increasing numbers of parents are also adopting African-based rites of passage for children, which are called mfundalai, or Changing Season rites.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

Common greetings in Black English Vernacular include "Word up," "Yo," and "Look out." A common nonverbal greeting consists of slapping another person's outstretched palm. When done above the head it is called a "high five"; at knee level it is a "low five." The women's version of this greeting consists of sliding one's forefinger across the forefinger of the other woman. Expressions of farewell include "See you later," "Word to the Mother" (referring to the motherland of Africa), and "Stay black." "Man" is commonly used in informal situations as a form of address for men; black women often address each other as "girlfriend" or "sista." Many young African Americans still observe the West African custom of addressing their elders as "Aunt" or "Uncle." Like people from many Asian and Latin American cultures, African Americans, especially those from the South, often avoid eye contact as a sign of respect.

LIVING CONDITIONS

African Americans have a disproportionately high incidence of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, AIDS, obesity, and asthma than whites. The health of low-income blacks in particular is affected by a lack of affordable high-quality medical care and the health insurance that could pay for it. The rate of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) for black infants is as much as twice as high as for whites, a fact attributed to the lower quality of prenatal care many black mothers receive. However, recent increases in life expectancy have been pronounced among black males, whose average life expectancy increased from 64.5 years in 1990 to 69.5 years in 2004, following a decline in life expectancy in the late 1980s. Some of this increase reflects declines in homicide rates among black males during the mid- and late-1990s. Despite these increases, however, black children are still almost twice as likely as white children to die before reaching age 20. In 2004, white newborns had an average life expectancy of 78.3 years, compared with 73.1 years among black newborns.

Limited in their choice of housing by income and racial discrimination, the great majority of African Americans lived in substandard housing until the middle of the 20th century. Between 1950 and 1970 the proportion of blacks living in sub-standard dwellings dropped from 73% to 23%. In 2005, 48.2% of blacks owned their own homes, compared with 69% of the total population and 72.7% of whites. Blacks are disproportionately represented among the impoverished of the United States: in 2006, 24.2% of blacks were below the poverty line, compared to 12.3% for the total population. As a result, they are more likely than whites to need housing assistance. African Americans are also disproportionately represented among those who have criminal records, and as such are more likely to be rejected for public housing on that basis.

FAMILY LIFE

African-American family life offers many variations on the nuclear-family model, including single-parent families (usually headed by women); "blended" families that include a couple's children with previous partners as well as any children they may have together; adults, who live together, with or without children; and extended families, which have long played an especially important role in the lives of African Americans. In addition to grandparents, extended families may include aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives, who may join the nuclear family either temporarily or long-term. One prominent social trend has been a decrease in the number of married African-American couples, which has been associated with a variety of factors, including a demographic shortage of black men; increased opportunities for black women in the labor market; imprisonment of large numbers of black men; unemployment and low earnings among black men; and rising rates of intermarriage.

CLOTHING

African Americans wear clothing similar to that worn by other Americans. Certain fashions among inner-city youth, such as baggy, loose-fitting pants that hang down far below the waist and baseball caps worn backwards, have caught on among young men of other ethnic and racial groups. Doo rags are also in vogue among black men. Doo rags are made of a silk-like material, usually black, that wraps around the skull, with a small flap hanging down in the rear, over the neck. They were popularized by hip hop artists in the 2000s.

FOOD

Traditional African-American food, commonly known as "soul food," originated with the mingling of the West African culinary heritage of black slaves with the cooking styles and available foods of the American South. In particular, the African custom of using all edible parts of both plants and animals was of great importance to the sustenance of blacks, who had to make do with scraps and leftovers. This practice has been especially evident in the preparation of pork, which has long been the most common meat eaten by African Americans, who traditionally used virtually all parts of the animal, including the hocks, snout, ears, feet, and tail—everything, it was said, "but the oink." Other dietary staples of African-American diet have included chicken, corn, both white and sweet potatoes, okra, and a variety of greens. Barbecues are popular among African Americans, who take great pride in their sauce recipes. Depending on geographical region, fish has also been a staple of the African-American diet, and fish sandwiches with hot sauce on white bread are a current favorite in black communities. Popular desserts, including pralines and shortening bread, are often sweetened with molasses; and watermelon, which was brought to the New World from Africa, is still a favorite food.

EDUCATION

Education has been a strong concern of those seeking to improve the lives of African Americans, especially those in inner-city neighborhoods. In 2005, 6% of non-Hispanic whites ages 16 to 24 were not enrolled in school and had not completed high school, compared with 11% of blacks. As of the 2000 census, there were 14.4 million African Americans who held at least a high school diploma, and 2.8 million African Americans who held a bachelor's degree or higher. Cities including Baltimore, Detroit, and Milwaukee have experimented with Afrocentric and multicultural curricula and other programs geared toward the cultural background and educational needs of African-American youth. Among the oldest black colleges in the nation are Wilberforce University, Fisk University, Talladega College, Morehouse College, Howard University, and Tougaloo College.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

The most famous period in African-American literature was the Harlem Renaissance between the two World Wars, when writers including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston exposed racial injustice in works that reflected their personal experience. Classics of black literature in the years following this period included Richard Wright's Native Son, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. The Black Aesthetic Movement of the 1960s and 1970s reflected developments of the civil rights and black nationalist movements, as well as African Americans' growing awareness of their African cultural roots. Since the 1970s, many black women writers have risen to prominence, including Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Carolyn Ferrell.

Important genres of African-American music include spirituals, gospel, rhythm and blues ("R&B"), ragtime, jazz, soul, Motown, funk, rap, and hip hop music. Some of the greatest names of the jazz tradition include trumpeter Louis Armstrong, vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, bandleaders Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, saxophonist Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Miles Davis.

Prominent African-American visual artists in the 20th century have included Romare Bearden, Benford Delaney, Jacob Douglas, Aaron Douglas, Horace Pippin, Clementine Hunter, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Kara Walker is a 21st century American artist whose works are known for their exploration of race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity.

WORK

African Americans—and especially black men—are more likely to be unemployed and to work in low paying jobs than whites. But trends are showing that African Americans are making strides in employment in the 21st century. For instance, in 2007, for the first time in five years, the African-American unemployment rate dropped, from 8.4% in December 2006 to 8% in January 2007. In 1991 only 18% of blacks were employed in professional and managerial jobs. By 2006, 27% of blacks age 16 and older worked in management, professional, and related occupations. Nevertheless, black households had the lowest median income in 2004 ($30,134). Asian households had the highest median income ($57,518); the median income for non-Hispanic white households was $48,977 and $34,241 for Hispanic households.

SPORTS

Many disadvantaged black youths have dreamed of a professional sports career—especially in basketball—as a way out of the urban ghetto, a dream most poignantly portrayed in the 1994 documentary film Hoop Dreams, which chronicled the lives of two talented inner-city teens over several years. Although the chances of making it as a professional athlete are slim, sports scholarships give many young blacks educational opportunities that can provide solid, if less spectacular, forms of upward mobility.

Within the field of professional sports, current issues include the hiring of blacks in coaching and front-office positions. In addition to the accomplishments of great African-American athletes in basketball, baseball, boxing, and football, black athletes have more recently made pioneering achievements in what had been all-white sports, tennis and golf. Arthur Ashe became the first black American to garner the Wimbledon and U.S. Open championships, and African American tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams have both been ranked number one in the world. In 1997 21-year-old Tiger Woods became the first athlete of black ancestry to win the Masters' Tournament. As of 2008, Woods was the top golf player in the world and the highest-paid professional athlete in 2006. By 2008 Woods had won 13 major golf championships, the second highest of any male player, and 64 PGA Tour events.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

African Americans enjoy many of the same types of leisure-time activities as other Americans, including television, movies, concerts, dancing, family gatherings, and both participatory and spectator sports. The Black Entertainment Television cable network broadcasts hip-hop and R&B music videos, black collegiate sports, public affairs programs, reruns of popular programs, religious programming, and urban-oriented movies and series. Dance clubs, at which music is provided by disk jockeys, create a sense of community for many young people, with popular dance styles including hip-hop, lofting, and house.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Traditional forms of African-American folk art include basket weaving, pottery, wood-carving, quilting, and the making of musical instruments. Prominent characteristics of black folk art include a pervasive religious theme; the frequent appearance of bird, serpent, and other animal imagery; the use of significant figures in African-American history, both white and black, including Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and a talent for transforming scrap objects into works of art. Precisely this form of art was in evidence in "The Quilts of Gee's Bend," a nationwide exhibition of more than 60 quilts made between 1930 and 2000 by four generations of quilt makers from a rural community in Alabama. The New York Times declared that the exhibition featured "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced."

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Social problems faced by African Americans include the lack of good jobs, high unemployment, gang violence, the sale and use of crack cocaine in inner-city areas, reductions in social spending by governments at all levels, the high teen pregnancy rate and high percentage of households headed by young single mothers, and tensions with recently arrived Asian and Hispanic immigrants. In 2006, 46% of all African-American children in the United States lived below the poverty level.

GENDER ISSUES

African American women face some of the same problems as other American women when it comes to gender discrimination. However, black women are more likely than white women to become pregnant when they are young and unmarried, which not only makes it difficult for them to hold together and support their families, but also may prevent them from furthering their educations or careers.

Gay and lesbian African Americans face disproportionate degrees of homophobia from the black community than whites face in the general culture. Researchers have suggested this is due in part to the prominence of the black church in African Americans' lives. Beginning in the 1980s, HIV/AIDS became a dominant area of concern for homosexuals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AfricanAmericans.com, http://www.africanamericans.com/ (March 31, 2008).

Bates, Karen Grigsby, and Karen Elyse Hudson. Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times. New York: Doubleday, 1996.

Billingsley, Andrew. Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacy of African-American Families. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. 7thed. New York: Knopf, 1994.

Harris, Jessica B. The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Kelley, Robin D. G. "Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970." The Young Oxford History of African Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Medearis, Angela Shelf. A Kwanzaa Celebration: Festive Recipes and Homemade Gifts from an African-American Kitchen. New York: Dutton, 1995.

Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, http://www.census.gov/acs/www/ (March 31, 2008).

—revised by J. Hobby