African American

African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans, Black Americans, or simply blacks are an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to West and Central Africa. Many African Americans have European and/or Native American ancestry as well.

African American history

Main article: African American history

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Africans were sold and traded into bondage and shipped to the American South from 1619 until 1807 when slave importation was formally outlawed but this was widely disregarded. By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States, and another 500,000 African Americans lived free across the country. Slavery was a controversial issue in American society and politics. The growth of abolitionism, which opposed the institution of slavery, culminated in the 1860 election of President of the United States Abraham Lincoln, and was one reason for the secession of the Confederate States of America which lead to the American Civil War (1861 - 1865).

Related Topics:
1619 - 1807 - 1860 - Southern United States - Slavery - Abolitionism - United States - Abraham Lincoln - Confederate States of America - American Civil War - 1861 - 1865

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The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederacy to be free under U.S. law; it included exceptions for those held in all territories that had not seceded, however, and thus did not immediately free a single slave, since U.S. law held no sway over the Confederacy at that time. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, freed all slaves, including those in states that had not seceded. During Reconstruction, African Americans in the South obtained the right to vote and to hold public office, as well as a number of other civil rights they previously had been denied. However, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern, white landowners reinstituted a regime of disenfranchisement and racial segregation, and with it a wave of lynchings and other vigilante violence.

Related Topics:
Emancipation Proclamation - 1862 - Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Reconstruction - 1877 - Disenfranchisement - Racial segregation

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The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American intellectual and cultural elite in the Northern United States, led to a strengthening movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans. One of the most prominent of these groups, the NAACP, led a series of legal battles in the 1950s to overturn Jim Crow segregation, culminating in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Related Topics:
Great Migration - 20th century - Northern United States - NAACP - 1950s - Jim Crow - Brown v. Board of Education

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The case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, was the major, opening salvo of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. It was part of a long-term strategy to strike down Jim Crow segregation in public education, the hospitality industry, public transportation, employment and housing, granting equal access to African Americans and ensuring their right to vote. The movement reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, Sr. At the same time, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and, later, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa called for African Americans to embrace black nationalism and black self-empowerment, propounding ideas of African (black) unity and solidarity and pan-Africanism.

Related Topics:
Brown v. Board of Education - Civil Rights Movement - 1960s - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Whitney Young - Roy Wilkins - Nation of Islam - Malcolm X - Stokely Carmichael - Black Panther Party - Republic of New Africa - Black nationalism - Pan-Africanism

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