African Americans Essay Example For Students

African Americans Essay Black Americans Black Americans are those persons in the United States who trace their ancestry to members of the Negroid race in Africa. They have at various times in United States history been referred to as African, coloured, Negro, Afro-American, and African-American, as well as black. The black population of the United States has grown from three-quarters of a million in 1790 to nearly 30 million in 1990. As a percentage of the total population, blacks declined from 19. 3 in 1790 to 9. 7 in 1930. A modest percentage increase has occurred since that time. Over the past 300 and more years in the United States, considerable racial mixture has taken place between persons of African descent and those with other racial backgrounds, mainly of white European or American Indian ancestry. Shades of skin colour range from dark brown to ivory. In body type black Americans range from short and stocky to tall and lean. Nose shapes vary from aquiline to extremely broad and flat; hair colour from medium brown to brown black; and hair texture from tightly curled to limp and straight. Historically, the predominant attitude toward racial group membership in the United States has been that persons having any black African ancestry are considered to be black. In some parts of the United States, especially in the antebellum South, laws were written to define racial group membership in this way, generally to the detriment of those who were not Caucasian. It is important to note, however, that ancestry and physical characteristics are only part of what has set black Americans apart as a distinct group. The concept of race, as it applies to the black minority in the United States, is as much a social and political concept as a biological one. Blacks Under Slavery: 1600-1865 The first Africans in the New World arrived with Spanish and Portuguese explorers and settlers. By 1600 an estimated 275,000 Africans, both free and slave, were in Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Africans first arrived in the area that became the United States in 1619, when a handful of captives were sold by the captain of a Dutch man-of-war to settlers at JAMESTOWN. Others were brought in increasing numbers to fill the desire for labour in a country where land was plentiful and labour scarce. By the end of the 17th century, approximately 1,300,000 Africans had landed in the New World. From 1701 to 1810 the number reached 6,000,000, with another 1,800,000 arriving after 1810. Some Africans were brought directly to the English colonies in North America. Others landed as slaves in the West Indies and were later resold and shipped to the mainland. Slavery in America The earliest African arrivals were viewed in the same way as indentured servants from Europe. This similarity did not long continue. By the latter half of the 17th century, clear differences existed in the treatment of black and white servants. A 1662 Virginia law assumed Africans would remain servants for life, and a 1667 act declared that Baptism do not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom. By 1740 the SLAVERY system in colonial America was fully developed. A Virginia law in that year declared slaves to be chattel personal in the hands of their owners and possessors . . . for all intents, construction, and purpose whatsoever. In spite of numerous ideological conflicts, however, the slavery system was maintained in the United States until 1865, and widespread antiblack attitudes nurtured by slavery continued thereafter. Prior to the American Revolution, slavery existed in all the colonies. The ideals of the Revolution and the limited profitability of slavery in the North resulted in its abandonment in northern states during the last quarter of the 18th century. At the same time the strength of slavery increased in the South, with the continuing demand for cheap labour by the tobacco growers and cotton farmers of the Southern states. By 1850, 92 percent of all American blacks were concentrated in the South, and of this group approximately 95 percent were slaves. Under the plantation system gang labour was the typical form of employment. Overseers were harsh as a matter of general practice, and brutality was common. Slaves could own no property unless sanctioned by a slave master, and rape of a female slave was not considered a crime except as it represented trespassing on anothers property. Slaves could not present evidence in court against whites. In most of the South it was illegal to teach a black to read or write. Opposition by Blacks Blacks were forbidden to carry arms or to gather in numbers except in the presence of a white person. Free blacks, whether living in the North or South, were confronted with attitudes and actions that differed little from those facing Southern black slaves. Discrimination existed in most social and economic activities as well as in voting and education. In 1857 the DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD case of the U. S. Supreme Court placed the authority of the Constitution behind decisions made by states in the treatment of blacks. Whenever I get a package of plain MMs, I make it EssayLater international audiences were won by Johnny MATHIS, Diana ROSS, and Michael JACKSON. BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE and art were slower to develop than was black music. Early artists and writers who were black dealt with themes that, in selection and approach, were indistinguishable from the works of whites. By the 1920s centers of artistic activity had developed, the best known being in New York. The HARLEM RENAISSANCE, as this artistic outpouring was known, produced outstanding figures. Among them were poets Langston HUGHES, Countee CULLEN, and James Weldon JOHNSON; writers Claude MCKAY and Jean TOOMER. The work of the Harlem Renaissance and writers such as Richard WRIGHT reflected the growing race consciousness among blacks and their opposition to the segregation encountered in all forms of life. These themes continue to be important in the work of such writers as James BALDWIN, Amiri BARAKA, Gwendolyn BROOKS, Ralph ELLISON, Douglas Turner WARD, and John A. WILLIAMS. Religion Religion has traditionally been important to black American life. The first major denomination among blacks, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, grew from the church established by Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1787. With Emancipation, most former slaves joined Baptist or Methodist churches. These remain today as the church groups with the largest black memberships. Smaller numbers belong to other denominations and to independent churches of varying sizes. Among non-Christian religious groups that have attracted sizeable followings are the Peace Mission of Father DIVINE and the Nation of Islam, often referred to as the Black MuslimsThe Peace Mission is strongly integrationist in teachings, a concept opposed by the Nation of Islam during most of its history. In recent years the racial character of leadership and members of the Peace Mission have become increasingly white. In 1985 the main Black Muslim group was unified with the Muslim community world-wide. Black ministers who have figured prominently in politics during the post-World War II period include Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr. , Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. , Leon Sullivan, and Andrew YOUNG. The Family The black family through much of U. S. history has borne the strain of slavery and Jim Crow. These institutions limited the opportunity for the black male to fulfill his traditional role of head of household and protector of and provider for his family. Because women were often able to find domestic employment when no jobs were available to black men, women often provided more dependable and regular incomes. Statistically, black women are more frequently the head of families than is the case in nonblack families. In addition to problems of unemployment, urbanisation produced strains of overcrowding, weakening of the extended family concept, and alienation. Nevertheless, relations among family members have traditionally been close. Many first-and second-generation city-dwelling blacks continue to think of home as the Southern place from which the family came. Education Until the post-World War II period, most blacks seeking higher education attended private BLACK COLLEGES located mainly in the South. Most of these had been started in the years immediately following the Civil War as a joint effort of blacks, Northern church groups, and the Freedmens Bureau. Among these were Fisk University, Atlanta University, Talladega College, Morehouse College, and Spelman College. Late in the 19th century Tuskegee Institute was founded by Booker T. Washington, and a number of colleges were established by black church groups. Almost all blacks who received a college education before 1940 attended these institutions. In the 1940s some improvement was made in publicly supported institutions of higher education for blacks, and for the first time black students began to appear in colleges that had previously been all white. In the 1970s the percentage of blacks attending college increased markedly, but in the 1980s blacks lost ground. Although desegregation of the public schools in the South proceeded slowly for the first decade after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, by 1969 school districts in every state were at least in token compliance with the 1954 ruling. By that time all forms of de jure segregation had been struck down by the courts. De facto school segregation continued, however, in large part because the communities the schools served were segregated in their residential patterns. This was particularly true in large urban areas and more prevalent in the North than in the South. One method adopted to overcome such segregation was to bus children across school district lines in order to achieve racial balance in the schools. This caused major controversy and led to instances of violent opposition . The overwhelming majority of black children now attend formally integrated schools, although they may have little contact with white pupils even within the schools