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Being Black In America

Being black in america: 'we have a place in this world too'.

Maquita Peters

In response to several high-profile deaths of African Americans in recent months, some black people are saying that enough is enough. Clockwise from top left: Michael Martin, Tunisian Burks, Sam Tyler, Alexander Pittman, the Rev. Carol Thomas Cissel, Brandon Winston, Donna Ghanney and Mark Turner. NPR hide caption

In response to several high-profile deaths of African Americans in recent months, some black people are saying that enough is enough. Clockwise from top left: Michael Martin, Tunisian Burks, Sam Tyler, Alexander Pittman, the Rev. Carol Thomas Cissel, Brandon Winston, Donna Ghanney and Mark Turner.

Editor's note: NPR will be continuing this conversation about Being Black in America online and on air.

As protests continue around the country against systemic racism and police brutality, black Americans describe fear, anger and a weariness about tragic killings that are becoming all too familiar.

"I feel helpless. Utterly helpless," said Jason Ellington of Union, N.J. "Black people for generations have been reminding the world that we as a people matter — through protests, sit-ins, boycotts and the like. We tried to be peaceful in our attempts. But as white supremacy reminds us, their importance — their relevance — comes with a healthy dose of violence and utter disrespect for people of color like me."

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For more than a week, tens of thousands of people have thronged cities nationwide, staging protests. The demonstrations were triggered by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Floyd, a black man, died while a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.

The protests also reflect outrage over the shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging through a Glynn County, Ga., neighborhood in February. Three white men were arrested in connection with his death, which was caught on video. Tensions also have flared in response to the death of Breonna Taylor , a 26-year-old black woman who was shot and killed in her apartment by police in Louisville, Ky., in March.

Jason Ellington, a 41-year-old marketing professional, says he is angry — and also feels helpless. Jason Ellington hide caption

Some protests have become violent , marred by looting, clashes with police and countless arrests, and several state officials have enacted curfews. This amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen a disproportionate number of deaths among African Americans, exacerbating challenges in these uncertain times for a people often racially profiled and long oppressed.

Cities are burning. Not just with fires but with anger.

Black people say they are frustrated. Fearful. Fatigued.

"I'm not going to lie — I am angry," said Ellington, a 41-year-old marketing professional who has a 10-year-old daughter. "As a black man in America, it is already hard enough that we have to fight within ourselves to become a better person, but there are countless forces working outside of ourselves that are also working against us and have been for generations."

Ellington is one of nearly 200 people who shared with NPR what it's like to be black in America right now.

Nicholas Gibbs of Spring, Texas, is particularly concerned about his two toddler sons growing up.

"To be black in America, you have to endure white supremacy. You have to fear the police. To be American, you have the luxury of saying, 'They should have complied!' To be black in America, you have to hope someone recorded your compliance because you may no longer be around to defend yourself," the 39-year-old said.

Alexander Pittman, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said there's a huge amount of anxiety on a daily basis regarding any contact with police even if you are doing nothing wrong or illegal, because you know it could escalate out of control.

"Being a black man in America, you know you live by a different set of rules," Pittman said.

He recounted what happened to him a few years ago when he'd just moved to Hollywood, Fla., and went out one evening to walk his dog, Marley.

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Ta-nehisi coates looks at the physical toll of being black in america.

"I was confronted by several Hollywood police officers. I was also roughed up and detained before being let go," the 32-year-old said, adding that no charges were filed against him.

As dad to a 4-year-old and a public school teacher, Pittman said he tries to have real conversations with his students and son about the role that race has played in the U.S. historically — and today.

"It's hard, because on one hand I don't believe in riots, looting and violence, but on the other hand, when is enough, enough? We need real, tangible policing reform on a national level, and that has largely been ignored."

The Rev. Carol Thomas Cissel says being black in America is about playing her part to help alleviate racial inequality. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County hide caption

Many black mothers in America expressed fear for the boys and men in their lives.

"I'm weary of living in a constant state of anxiety and fear because I have black and brown men in my life: my son, brothers, friends, grandson, son-in-law and father. I'm bone tired of existing in a system that tells me every damn day that me and my people do not matter," said the Rev. Carol Thomas Cissel of State College, Pa.

A mother, minister and grandmother, Cissel said her "DNA will continue to scream in agony" because black men and boys are not safe in America.

"I will try to hold the pain and soul wounds of my people. I will mourn because I know wishes, words or rituals cannot keep my son and grandson alive."

Jami Vassar, a 34-year-old fourth-generation military veteran from Aberdeen, N.C., can relate. As a mom of two teenage sons, she worries about their well-being and tries to keep them close.

"They are my gentle giants, but they are big black boys, and I have to remind them that the world doesn't see them as kids and there is real danger just for existing," she said.

Vassar said although she comes from a family of proud Americans who boast a long line of service to the country, the world sees them as black first. Just last week while driving with her younger son, she said he expressed fears about getting pulled over. He'll be getting his driver's license soon.

"I had to tell him I'm afraid when I get pulled over. My family has served in every war since War World I. They served before African Americans could vote, and we continue to serve even though we are not always seen as equals. It hurts," she said.

Arbery Shooting Sparks Racism, Corruption Questions About Georgia County

Another mom, Edith Jennings of Holyoke, Mass., said she too worries about her two adult sons. Last week on an unusually balmy spring day in New England, while driving through a small area with one of them, they noticed two young white men standing by their bicycles, laughing and talking to each other.

"My son, who is 28 years old and now a new father of his own son, said, 'It must be nice to wake up in the morning and feel safe, to not be afraid to go out and do what you have to do for the day, to hang out with your friends, not be afraid of the police. I wonder what that is like.' When I heard that, I was almost in tears," Jennings said.

Having grown up in the 1960s and '70s and remembering a story her mom told about watching the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses in her yard, Jennings said she never expected to have to deal with such racial issues when she had her own kids.

"Now here we are in the 21st century and I have a 2-month-old grandson, and I wonder if he, as a young black man, will survive in America. I feel like black men and women are an endangered species here in America. That's what's it like being black in America now!"

Protesters in Miami hold signs during a rally Sunday in response to the recent death of George Floyd. Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Protesters in Miami hold signs during a rally Sunday in response to the recent death of George Floyd.

Donna Ghanney of Brooklyn, N.Y., grew up during the same era as Jennings. She recalls white men standing on the corner and calling out the N-word as she passed by.

"All you had to be was a person of color to feel the hatred when you went near a white man. A feeling of fear, oppression, being disliked, having no rights, and the fear of being killed with a lie trailing behind the death," she said.

Other mothers shared their concern that nothing will change.

"People are tired of empty protests that fail to deliver change. Some care more about dogs than the lives of black and brown people in America," said Nicole Green of Melbourne, Fla., who said her childhood memories are filled with relatives being pulled over or being harassed by police.

Free Browning said the situation in the country is disheartening, particularly for a person who suffers from anxiety and depression.

"As a single mom of three and an Atlanta native, I'm angry, horrified, scared, hurt and uneasy. While I don't condone the destruction of many of the businesses here in Atlanta, I have lost my concern to care."

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Others said being black in America can feel like being at war.

"I recently purchased two guns and plan on purchasing more," said 62-year-old Bruce Tomlin of Albuquerque, N.M.

Tomlin said he dealt with a lot of racial tension living for more than three decades in Texas. While he says Albuquerque is different, he travels often out of state as a truck driver. After watching the video of Arbery being shot, he said he wants to be able to defend himself.

"I feel every person of color in America should be armed. I feel that the current administration and the 1% are guiding us into a civil war," he said. "I also feel that it is open season on black males in particular. People of color are being eliminated by police and disease. I plan on fighting until the end."

Michael Martin of Chicago said he feels like there's nothing he can do to protect himself and his family.

"We can't go jogging without worrying about being lynched; we can't go bird-watching without having the police called on us. Our children can't go outside and play without us worrying about them being gunned down and labeled 'suspects.' We can't sleep in our own beds without being executed," he said. "The same rights and protections that our white peers are afforded are not afforded to us. We can't arm ourselves without being labeled thugs and shot."

Some people feel conflicted. Helpless. Ambivalent. Mentally drained.

"Last night I cried to my partner," said Glenn Smith of Brooklyn, N.Y. "I cried because I realized how proud I am to be an American, a New Yorker and a Brooklynite. I cried because in those feelings of pride, I'm faced with feelings of contradiction. Why are cops brutally killing people that look like me?"

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Cheyenne Amaya of Woodbridge, Va., said police-involved deaths no longer surprise her.

"They are so a part of my normal life now that I feel a bit desensitized. I still have to continue to try to put a brave face on while feeling angry, hurt, sad, anxious and tired. It's been like this my whole life," she said. "We were taught at a young age to make ourselves appear less threatening and to always keep our hands up. It's tiring trying to live your life while constantly in fear of someone shooting you down or accusing you of something you didn't do."

Waddell Hamer of Indianapolis, who recently graduated with his master's degree in social work, said: "The mental health of blacks during this time is fragile. I know mine is. COVID, racism and poverty to name a few. How do I tend to the mental health of blacks during this time?"

Still, amid these myriad emotions expressed by black Americans, some spoke of hope.

Cissel, the minister from Pennsylvania, said that for "all my people to be safe, the racist fabric of this country must be ripped to shreds and rewoven."

She's ready to do her part.

"I will light a candle, hope it blossoms into a steady flame of peace and say these words aloud: 'We are included. We belong. We are here.' For, just like you — entitled by birthright, we have a place in this world too."

NPR would like to hear about your reaction to these incidents and your personal experience as a black person in America. Please share your story here or in the form below, and a reporter might contact you.

• George Floyd protests
• black people
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Growing up black in America: here's my story of everyday racism

As a middle-class, light-skinned black man I am ‘better’ by American standards but there is no amount of assimilation that can shield you from racism in the US

I am a black man who has grown up in the United States. I know what it is like to feel the sting of discrimination. As a middle-class, light-skinned black man I also know that many others suffered (and continue to suffer) a lot worse than me. I grew up around a lot of white people. In elementary school, I remember being told that I was one of the “good ones” – not like the “bad ones” I was meant to understand; I was different.

I remember the way this kind of backhanded compliment stung me, but it took me a long time to understand why it hurt. In truth, though, the comment rings true. I am “good” by America’s standards, or at least “better”: my skin is light, most of the time I dress like a middle-class professional and my manner of speech betrays a large degree of assimilation in the white American mainstream (for example, I use phrases like “manner of speech”).

But as many others have learned, there is no amount of assimilation that can shield you from racism in this country. Throughout my life, something – the kink of my hair or my “attitude” – would mark me as inferior, worthy of ridicule, humiliation or ostracism. In elementary school I got the distinct impression that teachers didn’t like me. I got in trouble a lot, and one teacher actually wrote on my report card that I was “amoral”. In third grade, I had my first black teacher and the whole dynamic changed. Mrs Brooks decided it was OK if I squirmed in my chair. She taught us about discrimination and injustice and taught us to recite and interpret poetry from the black arts movement. (Thank you, Mrs Brooks!)

As I got older, I observed that my mother saw racism around every corner. She assumed that I would be the object of discrimination in school and maintained an intense, vigilant determination to protect me from it. She monitored everything about my treatment in school, ready to leap at the slightest slight. Sometimes I thought she went too far. I wasn’t chosen to give a speech to my middle school’s assembly, and so she inquired as to why I wasn’t chosen, and she insisted that I be given a shot. So, thanks to my mother raising a fuss I had to give a speech to my entire middle school. (Thank you, mom!)

In high school I started wondering, as teenagers do, how people go about finding romantic partners. From what I could tell in movies and television shows – my principal sources of information – you had to be a rich and white to be worthy of love. I was neither, so I was worried. Like many young black people, I internalized the idea that I would have be twice as good to get half as much respect. Much to my dismay, my blackness seemed to be the salient thing about me. One of my classmates had a gift for inventing creative ways to make fun of my kinky hair, and he got enough people laughing to send me home in tears for a good part of my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

One year, one of the few black students at my high school found a noose hanging in his locker one day. The culprit – a white student – was quickly discovered, and all he had to do to get out of trouble was issue a lame apology. I thought his punishment should have been more severe. I convinced my best friend to wear black armbands in school to protest. This act earned me no greater respect, and actually greater ridicule. Several of our teachers thought it was funny and even prompted our classmates to laugh at our expense: “Look at Jones,” one teacher said, “starting a revolution.” (Thank you, Mr I forget-your-name!)

Looking back, I realize that, apart from my black armband episode, my survival strategy was to make myself as non-threatening as possible. I became so well-practiced in the art of not offending racist white people that I ceased to become outraged by them, at least when they affected me directly. I knew how to enter a store, to make eye contact with someone who worked there, to smile and say hello as if to say: “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to steal anything.” Somehow – I suppose from being followed in stores frequently – I learned not to carry books into a bookstore, not to walk through a store with bags that were not sealed or zippered shut, and so on.

Now that I’m older, with a graying beard and significantly less hair on my head, I probably don’t need to keep up this routine, as I’m probably the cause of less suspicion, but the habit has stayed with me. While shopping, I still assume that I am suspect. I am a middle-aged man, and yet I still habitually enter the grocery store, the book store, the clothing store, etc looking for the first opportunity to reassure the employees that I’m not going to be a problem.

At some point, I figured out (at least, intellectually) that it doesn’t matter how “good” I am – my fate is bound up with all of those who are “bad”. There was a moment in my adulthood when I decided that the present order is intolerable and a new world is both possible and necessary. In the grand scheme of things, my experiences of everyday racism are not that important. I am neither the most privileged nor most oppressed. I know that there are people of all stripes who are trying to survive on this planet with fewer resources than I have.

I am consistently inspired by the words of the early 20th-century socialist Eugene V Debs (a white guy!) who famously told a judge, after being convicted of sedition: “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

I am also inspired by the words of Malcolm X, who summarized the goals of the black movement as: “Human rights! Respect as human beings! That’s what American black masses want. That’s the true problem. The black masses want to not be shrunk from as though they are plague-ridden. They want not to be walled up in slums, in the ghettoes, like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men and women!”

Eugene Debs and Malcolm X are very different men from very different social contexts, and yet in my mind they are congruent.

Growing up in this country, my experience with everyday racism, although unique to my class and complexion, has nevertheless given me some access to the “second sight” that is a crucial part of black people’s gift to the world. To paraphrase WEB Du Bois, I believe that black history has a message for humanity. That message, to paraphrase activist Alicia Garza, is that the kind of equality black people need to be free is the kind of equality that will make everyone else free.

I write this as a black person who also knows the white American world. There is ignorance and prejudice there, but there is also pain, suffering and struggle. I am grateful to my parents and teachers who helped me to notice and name racism and discrimination. They have helped me to understand my personal experience and, just as importantly, to see beyond it. I have become convinced that black liberation is bound up with true human liberation. Look at me, with any luck, starting a revolution.

Brian Jones is an educator and activist in New York. He is the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

• Everyday racism in America
• Race in education

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Our Favorite Essays by Black Writers About Race and Identity

Books & Culture

A personal and critical lens to blackness in america from our archives.

It’s fitting that two of the first three essays in this roundup are centered on examining the Black American experience as one of horror. In a year when radical right-wing activists are truly leaning in, we’ve already seen record numbers of anti-LGBTQ legislation, the very real possibility of the end of Roe v. Wade, and more fervent redlining measures to keep Black people (and other marginalized communities) from voting. Gun violence is at an all time high, in particular mass shootings.

Since the success of Jordan Peele’s runaway hit film Get Out , there has been a steady rise in films depicting the Black American experience for the fraught, nuanced, dangerous life that it can be. This narrative isn’t entirely new, but this is the first time these films have gained critical acclaim and commercial attention. The reason is simple. Whatever the cause—social media, an increasingly diverse population—America can’t run from itself anymore. Our entertainment is finally asking the question that Black people have been asking for generations: In America, who is the real boogeyman?

Naturally, the discourse and critical analyses must follow suit. But it doesn’t stop there: the essays on this list span far and wide when it comes to subject matter, critical lens, and personal narrative. There are essays about Black friendship, the radical nature of Black people taking rest, and the affirmation of Black women writing for themselves, telling their own stories. Icons like Michelle Obama, Toni Morrison, and Gayle Jones get a deep dive, and we learn that we should always have been listening to Octavia Butler. This Juneteenth, I hope you’re taking a moment to reflect, on America’s troubled legacy, and to celebrate the ways that Black people continue to thrive.

Modern Horror Is the Perfect Genre for Capturing the Black Experience

Cree Myles writes about the contemporary Black creators rewriting the horror genre and growing the canon:

“Racism is a horror and should be explored as such. White folks have made it clear that they don’t think that’s true. Someone else needs to tell the story.”

Modern Narratives of Black Love and Friendship Are Centering Iconic Trios

Darise Jeanbaptiste writes about how Insecure and Nobody’s Magic illustrate the intricacy of evolving Black relationships:

“The power of the triptych is that it offers three experiences in addition to the fourth, which emerges when all three are viewed or read together.”

I Was Surrounded by “Final Girls” in School, Knowing I’d Never Be One

Whitney Washington writes that the erasure of Black women in slasher films has larger implications about race in America:

“Long before the realities of American life, it was slasher movies that taught me how invisible, ignored, and ultimately expendable Black women are. There was no list of rules long enough to keep me safe from the insidiousness of white supremacy… More than anything, slasher movies showed me that my role was to always be a supporting character, risking my life to be the voice of reason ensuring that the white girl makes it to the finish line.”

“Palmares” Is An Example of What Grows When Black Women Choose Silence

Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies , writes that Gayl Jones’ decades-long absence from public life illuminates the power of restorative quiet:

“These women’s silences should not be interpreted as a lack of understanding or awareness, but rather as an abundance of both, most especially the knowledge of what to keep close to the vest, and the implications for failing to do so. They know better than to explain themselves, their powers and their origins, their beliefs and reasons, their magic. These women are silent not because they don’t know anything. They are silent because they know better.”

Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” Showed Me How Race and Gender Are Intertwined

For the 50th anniversary of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye , Koritha Mitchell writes how the novel taught her that being a Black woman is more than just Blackness or womanhood:

“I didn’t have the gift of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of ‘intersectionality,’ but The Bluest Eye revealed how, in my presence, racism and sexism would always collide to produce negative experiences that others could dodge. It was not simply being Black or being dark-skinned that mattered; it was being those things while also being female.”

The Delicate Balancing Act of Black Women’s Memoir

Koritha Mitchell writes about how Michelle Obama’s Becoming illustrates larger tensions for Black women writing about themselves:

“In other words, when Black women remain enigmas while seeming to share so much, they create proxies at a distance from their psychic and spiritual realities because they are so rarely safe in public. Despite the release of her memoir, audiences will never be privy to who Michelle Obama actually knows herself to be, and that is more than appropriate.”

50 Years Later, the Demands of “The Black Manifesto” Are Still Unmet

Carla Bell writes about James Forman’s famous 1969 address, The Black Manifesto , and its contemporary resonances:

“But the Manifesto is as vital a roadmap in our marches and protests today as the day it was first delivered. We, black people in America, remain compelled by the power and purpose of The Black Manifesto, and we continue to demand our full rights as a people of this decadent society.”

You Should Have Been Listening to Octavia Butler This Whole Time

Alicia A. Wallace writes that Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower isn’t just a prescient dystopia—it’s a monument to the wisdom of Black women and girls:

Through her protagonist Lauren Olamina, Butler has been telling the world for decades that it was not going to last in its capitalist, racist, sexist, homophobic form for much longer. She showed us the way injustice would cause the earth to burn, and the importance of community building for survival and revolution. Through Parable of the Sowe r, we had a better future in our hands, but we did not listen.

The Book You Need to Fully Understand How Racism Operates in America

Darryl Robertson writes about Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning and its examination of the history of overt and covert bigotry:

“While How to Be an Antiracist is an informative and necessary read, it is his National Book Award-winning, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America that deserves extra attention. If we want to uproot the current racist system, it’s mandatory that we understand how racism was constructed. Stamped does just that.”

I Reject the Imaginary White Man Judging My Work

Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts turns to Black writers as inspiration for resisting white expectations:

“…it doesn’t only matter that I’m a Black woman telling my story. What matters is the lens through which I’m telling it. And sometimes, many times, that lens, if we’re not careful, can be tainted by the ever-present consciousness of Whiteness as the default.”

Toni Morrison Gave My Own Story Back to Me

The incomparable literary powerhouse showed Brandon Taylor how to stop letting white people dictate the shape of his narrative:

“That’s the magic of Toni Morrison. Once you read her, the world is never the same. It’s deeper, brighter, darker, more beautiful and terrible than you could ever imagine. Her work opens the world and ushers you out into it. She resurfaced the very texture and nature of my imagination and what I could conceive of as possible for writing and for art, for life.”

Art Must Engage With Black Vitality, Not Just Black Pain

Jennifer Baker writes that books like The Fire This Time give depth and nuance to a reflection of Blackness in America:

“These essays provided a deeper connection because Black pain was part of the story; Black identity, self-recognition, our own awareness brokered every page. Black pain was not the sole criterion for the anthology’s existence.”

When Black Characters Wear White Masks

Jennifer Baker writes that whiteface in literature isn’t a disavowal of Blackness, but a commentary on privilege:

“Whiteface stories interrogate the mentality that it’s better to be white while examining how societal gains as well as societal “norms” inflict this way of thinking on Black people. Being white isn’t better, but, for some of these characters, it seems a hell of a lot easier, or at least preferable to dealing with racism.”

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Black History

Civil Rights Movement Timeline

The civil rights movement was an organized effort by black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s.

Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Black History Month

February is dedicated as Black History Month, honoring the triumphs and struggles of African Americans throughout U.S. history.

Black History Milestones: Timeline

Black history in the United States is a rich and varied chronicle of slavery and liberty, oppression and progress, segregation and achievement.

Coretta Scott King

After her husband became pastor, Coretta Scott King joined the choir at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Hear two of her friends and members of the congregation remember Mrs. King’s legacy and her voice.

When Segregationists Bombed Martin Luther King Jr.’s House

On January 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.’s house was bombed by segregationists in retaliation for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Brown v. Board of Education

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement.

How the Montgomery Bus Boycott Accelerated the Civil Rights Movement

For 382 days, almost the entire African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses, a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

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In 1909 African American Matthew Henson trekked with explorer Robert Peary, reaching what they claimed was the North Pole. Who got there first?

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From jazz and blues to poetry and prose to dance and theater, the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century was electric with creative expression by African American artists.

This Day in History

Martin Luther King Jr. writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

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The Changing Definition of African-American

How the great influx of people from Africa and the Caribbean since 1965 is challenging what it means to be African-American

Some years ago, I was interviewed on public radio about the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation. I addressed the familiar themes of the origins of that great document: the changing nature of the Civil War, the Union army’s growing dependence on black labor, the intensifying opposition to slavery in the North and the interplay of military necessity and abolitionist idealism. I recalled the longstanding debate over the role of Abraham Lincoln, the Radicals in Congress, abolitionists in the North, the Union army in the field and slaves on the plantations of the South in the destruction of slavery and in the authorship of legal freedom. And I stated my long-held position that slaves played a critical role in securing their own freedom. The controversy over what was sometimes called “self-emancipation” had generated great heat among historians, and it still had life.

As I left the broadcast booth, a knot of black men and women—most of them technicians at the station—were talking about emancipation and its meaning. Once I was drawn into their discussion, I was surprised to learn that no one in the group was descended from anyone who had been freed by the proclamation or any other Civil War measure. Two had been born in Haiti, one in Jamaica, one in Britain, two in Ghana, and one, I believe, in Somalia. Others may have been the children of immigrants. While they seemed impressed—but not surprised—that slaves had played a part in breaking their own chains, and were interested in the events that had brought Lincoln to his decision during the summer of 1862, they insisted it had nothing to do with them. Simply put, it was not their history.

The conversation weighed upon me as I left the studio, and it has since. Much of the collective consciousness of black people in mainland North America—the belief of individual men and women that their own fate was linked to that of the group—has long been articulated through a common history, indeed a particular history: centuries of enslavement, freedom in the course of the Civil War, a great promise made amid the political turmoil of Reconstruction and a great promise broken, followed by disfranchisement, segregation and, finally, the long struggle for equality.

In commemorating this history—whether on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, during Black History Month or as current events warrant—African- Americans have rightly laid claim to a unique identity. Such celebrations—their memorialization of the past—are no different from those attached to the rituals of Vietnamese Tet celebrations or the Eastern Orthodox Nativity Fast, or the celebration of the birthdays of Christopher Columbus or Casimir Pulaski; social identity is ever rooted in history. But for African-Americans, their history has always been especially important because they were long denied a past.

And so the “not my history” disclaimer by people of African descent seemed particularly pointed—enough to compel me to look closely at how previous waves of black immigrants had addressed the connections between the history they carried from the Old World and the history they inherited in the New.

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which became a critical marker in African-American history. Given opportunity, black Americans voted and stood for office in numbers not seen since the collapse of Reconstruction almost 100 years earlier. They soon occupied positions that had been the exclusive preserve of white men for more than half a century. By the beginning of the 21st century, black men and women had taken seats in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as well as in state houses and municipalities throughout the nation. In 2009, a black man assumed the presidency of the United States. African-American life had been transformed.

Within months of passing the Voting Rights Act, Congress passed a new immigration law, replacing the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which had favored the admission of northern Europeans, with the Immigration and Nationality Act. The new law scrapped the rule of national origins and enshrined a first-come, first-served principle that made allowances for the recruitment of needed skills and the unification of divided families.

This was a radical change in policy, but few people expected it to have much practical effect. It “is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon Johnson intoned. “It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.”

But it has had a profound impact on American life. At the time it was passed, the foreign-born proportion of the American population had fallen to historic lows—about 5 percent—in large measure because of the old immigration restrictions. Not since the 1830s had the foreign-born made up such a tiny proportion of the American people. By 1965, the United States was no longer a nation of immigrants.

During the next four decades, forces set in motion by the Immigration and Nationality Act changed that. The number of immigrants entering the United States legally rose sharply, from some 3.3 million in the 1960s to 4.5 million in the 1970s. During the 1980s, a record 7.3 million people of foreign birth came legally to the United States to live. In the last third of the 20th century, America’s legally recognized foreign-born population tripled in size, equal to more than one American in ten. By the beginning of the 21st century, the United States was accepting foreign-born people at rates higher than at any time since the 1850s. The number of illegal immigrants added yet more to the total, as the United States was transformed into an immigrant society once again.

Black America was similarly transformed. Before 1965, black people of foreign birth residing in the United States were nearly invisible. According to the 1960 census, their percentage of the population was to the right of the decimal point. But after 1965, men and women of African descent entered the United States in ever-increasing numbers. During the 1990s, some 900,000 black immigrants came from the Caribbean; another 400,000 came from Africa; still others came from Europe and the Pacific rim. By the beginning of the 21st century, more people had come from Africa to live in the United States than during the centuries of the slave trade. At that point, nearly one in ten black Americans was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

African-American society has begun to reflect this change. In New York, the Roman Catholic diocese has added masses in Ashanti and Fante, while black men and women from various Carib­bean islands march in the West Indian-American Carnival and the Dominican Day Parade. In Chicago, Cameroonians celebrate their nation’s independence day, while the DuSable Museum of African American History hosts a Nigerian Festival. Black immigrants have joined groups such as the Egbe Omo Yoruba (National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America), the Association des Sénégalais d’Amérique and the Fédération des Associations Régionales Haïtiennes à l’Étranger rather than the NAACP or the Urban League.

To many of these men and women, Juneteenth celebrations—the commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States—are at best an afterthought. The new arrivals frequently echo the words of the men and women I met outside the radio broadcast booth. Some have struggled over the very appellation “African-American,” either shunning it—declaring themselves, for instance, Jamaican-Amer­icans or Nigerian-Americans—or denying native black Americans’ claim to it on the ground that most of them had never been to Africa. At the same time, some old-time black residents refuse to recognize the new arrivals as true African-Americans. “I am African and I am an American citizen; am I not African-American?” a dark-skinned, Ethiopian-born Abdulaziz Kamus asked at a community meeting in suburban Maryland in 2004. To his surprise and dismay, the overwhelmingly black audience responded no. Such discord over the meaning of the African-American experience and who is (and isn’t) part of it is not new, but of late has grown more intense.

After devoting more than 30 years of my career as a historian to the study of the American past, I’ve concluded that African-American history might best be viewed as a series of great migrations, during which immigrants—at first forced and then free—transformed an alien place into a home, becoming deeply rooted in a land that once was foreign, even despised. After each migration, the newcomers created new understandings of the African-American experience and new definitions of blackness. Given the numbers of black immigrants arriving after 1965, and the diversity of their origins, it should be no surprise that the overarching narrative of African-American history has become a subject of contention.

That narrative, encapsulated in the title of John Hope Franklin’s classic text From Slavery to Freedom , has been reflected in everything from spirituals to sermons, from folk tales to TV docudramas. Like Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery , Alex Haley’s Roots and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, it retells the nightmare of enslavement, the exhilaration of emancipation, the betrayal of Reconstruction, the ordeal of disfranchisement and segregation, and the pervasive, omnipresent discrimination, along with the heroic and ultimately triumphant struggle against second-class citizenship.

This narrative retains incalculable value. It reminds men and women that a shared past binds them together, even when distance and different circumstances and experiences create diverse interests. It also integrates black people’s history into an American story of seemingly inevitable progress. While recognizing the realities of black poverty and inequality, it nevertheless depicts the trajectory of black life moving along what Dr. King referred to as the “arc of justice,” in which exploitation and coercion yield, reluctantly but inexorably, to fairness and freedom.

Yet this story has had less direct relevance for black immigrants. Although new arrivals quickly discover the racial inequalities of American life for themselves, many—fleeing from poverty of the sort rarely experienced even by the poorest of contemporary black Americans and tyranny unknown to even the most oppressed—are quick to embrace a society that offers them opportunities unknown in their homelands. While they have subjected themselves to exploitation by working long hours for little compensation and underconsuming to save for the future (just as their native-born counterparts have done), they often ignore the connection between their own travails and those of previous generations of African-Americans. But those travails are connected, for the migrations that are currently transforming African-American life are directly connected to those that have transformed black life in the past. The trans-Atlantic passage to the tobacco and rice plantations of the coastal South, the 19th-century movement to the cotton and sugar plantations of the Southern interior, the 20th-century shift to the industrializing cities of the North and the waves of arrivals after 1965 all reflect the changing demands of global capitalism and its appetite for labor.

New circumstances, it seems, require a new narrative. But it need not—and should not—deny or contradict the slavery-to-freedom story. As the more recent arrivals add their own chapters, the themes derived from these various migrations, both forced and free, grow in significance. They allow us to see the African-American experience afresh and sharpen our awareness that African-American history is, in the end, of one piece.

Ira Berlin teaches at the University of Maryland. His 1999 study of slavery in North America, Many Thousands Gone , received the Bancroft Prize.

Adapted from The Making of African America , by Ira Berlin. © 2010. With the permission of the publisher, Viking, a member of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Essay on African American

Students are often asked to write an essay on African American in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on African American

Who are african americans.

African Americans are people in the United States whose ancestors come from Africa. They may also be called Black Americans. Many African Americans were brought to America as slaves long ago. Today, they are an important part of American society, culture, and history.

History of African Americans

The history of African Americans is filled with struggles and victories. They were slaves in America for about 250 years. After slavery ended in 1865, they fought for equal rights. This fight is known as the Civil Rights Movement.

African American Culture

African American culture is rich and diverse. It includes music, dance, art, and food that have African roots. Jazz, blues, and hip-hop music were all created by African Americans. Their culture has greatly influenced American society.

Famous African Americans

There are many famous African Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for equal rights. Barack Obama became the first African American president. Oprah Winfrey is a famous TV host. Their achievements inspire many people.

African Americans Today

Today, African Americans continue to contribute to American society. They are leaders, artists, scientists, athletes, and more. They face challenges, like racism, but they also celebrate their unique culture and history.

250 Words Essay on African American

African Americans are people in the United States who have ancestors from Africa. They are also called Black Americans or Afro-Americans. They are a big part of the population in the U.S. Many African Americans have made big contributions in different fields like science, arts, sports, and politics.

The history of African Americans started in the 16th century when Africans were brought to the U.S. as slaves. Slavery was a tough time for them. They had to work hard with no pay. They were not treated well. In 1865, slavery ended in the U.S. This was a big change for African Americans. But, they still faced many problems. They had to fight for their rights.

There are many famous African Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. was a leader who fought for the rights of African Americans. He gave a famous speech called “I Have a Dream”. Barack Obama is another famous African American. He was the first African American president of the U.S.

African Americans have a rich culture. They have their own music, dance, art, and food. Jazz and blues are types of music that were created by African Americans. Their culture has had a big effect on American culture.

In the end, African Americans have a rich history and culture. They have faced many challenges but have also achieved a lot. They have made the U.S. a better place with their contributions.

500 Words Essay on African American

African Americans are people in the United States who have roots in Africa. These people are often called “Black” and they form one of the largest ethnic groups in the country. Their ancestors were brought to America many years ago as slaves. Over time, they fought for their rights and freedom. Today, African Americans have made significant contributions to the culture, society, and history of the United States.

African American History

The history of African Americans is rich and complex. It starts from the 16th century when the first African slaves were brought to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. They were forced to work on plantations, growing crops like tobacco and cotton.

In the 19th century, a war was fought over slavery – the Civil War. After this war, slavery was ended with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. This was a big step towards freedom for African Americans. But, they still had to fight for equal rights. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement took place. African Americans, along with many others, protested against racial discrimination. They wanted equal treatment in schools, jobs, and public places. This movement led to laws that protected the rights of African Americans.

African American culture is a blend of African and American traditions. It is seen in music, food, language, and art. African Americans have had a big influence on music. They created jazz, blues, hip-hop, and R&B. Famous African American musicians include Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Michael Jackson.

In food, dishes like fried chicken, cornbread, and collard greens come from African American culture. They also have a unique style of speaking, known as African American Vernacular English. In art, African Americans have made beautiful paintings, sculptures, and films.

Today, African Americans are found in all walks of life. They are doctors, teachers, scientists, athletes, and politicians. They have achieved a lot, despite facing many challenges. Barack Obama, an African American, was elected as the President of the United States in 2008. This was a historic moment.

Yet, African Americans still face problems like racial discrimination and poverty. They are working hard to overcome these issues and continue to contribute in many ways to American society.

In conclusion, African Americans have a rich history and culture. They have faced many struggles but have also achieved a lot. They continue to shape the United States with their contributions and efforts. Their story is a vital part of American history.

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Stanford scholars reflect on Black history in their lives and work

Humanities and social sciences scholars reflect on “Black history as American history” and its impact on their personal and professional lives.

As Black History Month comes to a close, Stanford faculty reflect on the crucial contributions of Black Americans that should be studied and celebrated not only during February but also throughout the year. Whether examining the impact of writers like Toni Morrison, Civil War-era abolitionists or present-day political activists in Georgia, scholars from the humanities and social sciences emphasize that the history of Black Americans is essential to understanding our nation and our world.

Below, scholars from the School of Humanities and Sciences talk about how an understanding of Black history has shaped them personally and is integral to their research and work.

Hakeem Jefferson (Image credit: Harrison Truong)

Hakeem Jefferson Assistant Professor, Political Science

This year’s Black History Month comes on the heels of a white supremacist insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. With this tragic event in mind, I am reminded that Black people have long served as the conscience of nations around the world in moments of crisis. I am reminded of brave abolitionists and freedom fighters and artists and everyday people who, with everything to lose, including life itself, have stood as vanguards and safekeepers of our democracy. And as a political scientist whose work tries to highlight the diversity and complexity of Black politics, I am reminded of Black activists and organizers in places like Georgia and Texas and Arizona who are working right now to make real the promise of democracy not just for Black people but also for all of us.

As a community of scholars, we have an opportunity to join these efforts, and this Black History Month offers us another opportunity to recommit ourselves to the cause of democracy – a cause Black people in this country have been advancing for generations and continue to advance today. The real question is whether we have the courage to stand with them.

Tomás Jiménez (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Tomás Jiménez Associate Professor, Sociology

Black history is American history. At each step in our nation’s development, Black Americans have led the call and shown by example how to live out the promise in our founding documents. Living up to that promise is an ongoing project. Taking up the challenge of that project requires reckoning with the ways that institutions and individuals have subjugated Black Americans through direct action, inaction or both. It also requires honoring the contributions of Black Americans to every aspect of American life, from politics and science, to art and spirituality.

It is well worth honoring the widely known individuals who have made those contributions. But we should also lift up individuals for whom there will never be a monument or plaque, but who have worked in every facet of American life to make our country a better place. They too made and continue to make Black history; to make American history.

Paula M. L. Moya (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Paula M. L. Moya Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor in the Humanities Professor, English

I study literature written by people of African descent not just for its wisdom, profundity, sadness and humor, but also because not to do so would leave me ignorant of a crucial history that has contributed fundamentally to making our nation what it is.

Toni Morrison is, for me and so many others, a beacon of wisdom and truth. Her writings, along with those of Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara and James Baldwin (among others), have taught me important lessons about how I, as a human being and also as a woman of color, can live with generosity in this challenging but beautiful world. I treasure their words, I carry them around in my heart and I use them to guide me as I make difficult decisions about who to care for and how to love even those who might not seek to love me back.

Patrick Phillips (Image credit: Marion Ettlinger)

Patrick Phillips Professor, English Interim Director, Creative Writing Program

I see the history of Black Americans as another name for  real American history – for our full history as a nation. And I think more people are finally rejecting a whitewashed version of the past, designed to protect white people from ever facing the monumental crimes of our ancestors, and from ever acknowledging the central role of African Americans in building American prosperity.

I learned this firsthand when I was doing research for a book about my hometown’s long-hidden history of lynching, white-supremacist terror and land theft. It also chronicles the lives of heroic Black residents who, amid crushing injustice, built new lives in post-Emancipation Georgia.

As a white southerner, I see the study of Black history as an urgent corrective to white America’s long tradition of willful ignorance and complicit silence. For as James Baldwin said, “it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”

Steven O. Roberts (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Steven O. Roberts Assistant Professor, Psychology

“History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.” —James Baldwin

We, as individuals and as a collective, cannot understand ourselves if we do not understand Black history. And the term itself is important to contextualize. Black history is U.S. history. It is human history. To understand Black history is to know the strength and resilience necessary to affirm one’s humanity, as affirmed by Malcolm and Queen Nzinga and many others. To understand Black history is to feel the heart and depth necessary to sing in soul, as sang by Aretha and Cooke and many others. To understand Black history is to understand what has been and what should be.

There ain’t no history like Black history, and I’m so honored to carry that history with me.

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How Racist Is America?

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

One question lingers amid all the debates about critical race theory: How racist is this land? Anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows about the oppression of the Native Americans, about slavery and Jim Crow. But does that mean that America is even now a white supremacist nation, that whiteness is a cancer that leads to oppression for other groups? Or is racism mostly a part of America’s past, something we’ve largely overcome?

There are many ways to answer these questions. The most important is by having honest conversations with the people directly affected. But another is by asking: How high are the barriers to opportunity for different groups? Do different groups have a fair shot at the American dream? This approach isn’t perfect, but at least it points us to empirical data rather than just theory and supposition.

When we apply this lens to the African American experience we see that barriers to opportunity are still very high. The income gap separating white and Black families was basically as big in 2016 as it was in 1968 . The wealth gap separating white and Black households grew even bigger between those years. Black adults are over 16 times more likely to be in families with three generations of poverty than white adults.

Research shows the role racism plays in perpetuating these disparities. When, in 2004, researchers sent equally qualified white and Black applicants to job interviews in New York City, dressed them similarly and gave them similar things to say, Black applicants got half as many callbacks or job offers as whites.

When you look at the data about African Americans, the legacies of slavery and segregation and the effects of racism are everywhere. The phrase “systemic racism” aptly fits the reality you see — a set of structures, like redlining, that have a devastating effect on Black wealth and opportunities. Racism is not something we are gently moving past; it’s pervasive. It seems obvious that this reality should be taught in every school.

Does this mean that America is white supremacist, a shameful nation, that the American dream is just white privilege? Well, let’s take a look at the data for different immigrant groups. When you turn your gaze here, the barriers don’t seem as high. For example, as Bloomberg’s Noah Smith pointed out recently on his Substack page, Hispanic American incomes rose faster in recent years than those of any other major group in America. Forty-five percent of Hispanics who grew up in poverty made it to the middle class or higher , comparable to the mobility rate for whites.

Hispanics have lately made astounding gains in education. In 2000, more than 30 percent of Hispanics dropped out of high school. By 2016, only 10 percent did. In 1999, a third of Hispanics age 18 to 24 were in college; now, nearly half are. Hispanic college enrollment rates surpassed white enrollment rates in 2012.

The Hispanic experience in America is beginning to look similar to the experience of Irish Americans or Italian Americans or other past immigrant groups — a period of struggle followed by integration into the middle class.

A study by scholars from Princeton, Stanford and the University of California at Davis found that today’s children of immigrants are no slower to move up to the middle class than the children of immigrants 100 years ago. It almost doesn’t matter whether their parents came from countries from which immigrants are mainly fleeing misery and poverty, or from countries from which immigrants often arrive with marketable skills, children of poor immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than the children of the native-born.

This economic success obviously does not mean immigrant groups do not face hardship, bias and exploitation. Almost every immigrant group in American history has faced that. It just means that education and mobility can help overcome some of the effects of this bias. According to that same study, immigrant groups are largely doing well because they come to places where opportunity is plentiful. They are not so much earning more than those around them, but earning more along with those around them.

Economic progress is one thing. What about cultural integration?

A landmark 2015 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that the lives of immigrants and their children are converging with those of their native-born neighbors, in good ways and bad. This pattern applies to how well educated they are, where they live, what language they speak, how their health is and how they organize their families. A study by a Brown University sociologist, for example, found that Mexican immigrants are learning English at increasingly higher rates and growing less isolated from non-Mexican Americans.

Rising intermarriage rates are one product of this integration. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center report , about 29 percent of Asian American newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, along with 27 percent of Hispanic newlyweds. The intermarriage rates for white and Black people have roughly tripled since 1980. More than 35 percent of Americans say that one of their “close” kin is of a different race.

Blending identities is another sign of this integration. There was an idea going around a few years ago that America was about to become a majority-minority country. This would be true only if you rigidly divided Americans into white and (with one drop of nonwhite blood) nonwhite categories.

But real humans are very quick to adopt multiple and shifting racial identities. The researchers Richard Alba, Morris Levy and Dowell Myers suggest 52 percent of the people who self-categorize as nonwhite in the Census Bureau’s projections for America’s 2060 racial makeup will also think of themselves as white. Forty percent of those who self-categorized as white will also claim minority racial identity.

In an essay for The Atlantic, they conclude: “Speculating about whether America will have a white majority by the mid-21st century makes little sense, because the social meanings of white and nonwhite are rapidly shifting. The sharp distinction between these categories will apply to many fewer Americans.”

When you look at the data across groups, a few points stand out.

First, you can see why some people have issues with the phrase “people of color.” How could a category that covers a vast majority of all human beings have much meaning? The groups that the phrase attempts to bring together have different experiences and even face different kinds of bias. Perhaps this phrase covers over real identities instead of illuminating them.

Writing in GQ, Damon Young argues that the term “people of color” has become a linguistic gesture, “shorthand for white people uncomfortable with just saying ‘Black.’” In The New Yorker, E. Tammy Kim argues , “‘People of color,’ by grouping all nonwhites in the United States, if not the world, fails to capture the disproportionate per-capita harm to Blacks at the hands of the state.”

Second, it’s certainly time to dump the replacement theory that has been so popular with Tucker Carlson and the far right — the idea that all these foreigners are coming to take over the country. This is an idea that panics a lot of whites and helped elect Donald Trump, but it’s not true. In truth, immigrants blend with the current inhabitants, keeping parts of their earlier identities and adopting parts of their new identities. This has been happening for hundreds of years, and it is still happening. This kind of intermingling of groups is not replacing America; it is America.

Finally, it may not be accurate to say that America can be neatly divided into rival ethnic camps, locked in zero-sum conflict with each other. The real story is more about blending and fluidity. I’m just one guy with one (white) point of view. But my reading of the historical record suggests groups do well by mingling with everybody else while keeping some of their own distinct identities and cultures. “Integration without assimilation” is how Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks put it.

The interwoven reality of America defies simple binaries of white versus nonwhite. Over the last several years Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights have done much of the most celebrated work on income mobility. They find that, indeed, Black Americans and Native Americans have much lower rates of mobility because of historic discrimination.

But Chetty’s team emphasizes that these gaps are not immutable. If, for example, you use housing vouchers and other grants to help people move to high-opportunity neighborhoods with low poverty rates, low racial bias and more fathers in the neighborhoods, then you can help people of all races lead lives with higher incomes and lower rates of incarceration as adults.

The reality of America encompasses both the truth about structural racism and the truth that America is a land of opportunity for an astounding diversity of groups from around the world. There’s no way to simplify that complexity.

Last week I saw a young Black woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” I took her message as a statement of defiance, pride, determination and hope. If you can keep discordant emotions like that in your head, you can get a feel for this discordant land.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author of “The Road to Character” and, most recently, “The Second Mountain.” @ nytdavidbrooks

Handout A: Background Essay: African Americans in the Gilded Age

Background Essay: African Americans in the Gilded Age

Directions: Read the essay and answer the review questions at the end.

In the late nineteenth century, the promise of emancipation and Reconstruction went largely unfulfilled and was even reversed in the lives of African Americans. Southern blacks suffered from horrific violence, political disfranchisement, economic discrimination, and legal segregation. Ironically, the new wave of racial discrimination that was introduced was part of an attempt to bring harmony between the races and order to American society.

Constitutional amendments were ratified during and after the war to protect the natural and civil rights of African Americans. The Thirteenth Amendment forever banned slavery from the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment protected black citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African-American males. In addition, a Freedmen’s Bureau was established to help the economic condition of former slaves, and Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1875.

Roadblocks to Equality

Despite these legal protections, the economic condition of African Americans significantly worsened in the last few decades of the nineteenth century. Poor southern black farmers were generally forced into sharecropping whereby they borrowed money to plant a year’s crop, using the future crop as collateral on the loan. Often, they owed so much of the resulting crop that they fell into debt for the following year and eventually into a state of debt peonage. Since 90 percent of African Americans lived in the rural South, most were sharecroppers. The story was not much different as African Americans moved to southern and northern cities. Black women found work as domestic servants and men in urban factories, but they were usually in menial, low-paying jobs because white employers discriminated against African Americans in hiring. Black workers also faced a great deal of racism at the hands of labor unions which severely limited their ability to secure high-paying, skilled jobs. While the Knights of Labor and United Mine Workers were open to blacks, the largest skilled-worker union, the American Federation of Labor, curtailed black membership, thereby limiting them to menial labor.

African Americans throughout the country suffered from violence and intimidation. The most infamous examples of violence were brutal lynchings, or executions without due process, by angry white mobs. These travesties resulted in hangings, burnings, shootings, and mutilations for between 100 and 200 blacks—especially black men falsely accused of raping white women—annually. Race riots broke out in southern and northern cities from New Orleans and Atlanta to New York and Evansville, Indiana, causing dozens of deaths and property damage.

Although African Americans were elected to Congress and state legislatures during Reconstruction, and enjoyed the constitutional right to vote, black civil rights were systematically stripped away in a campaign of disfranchisement. One method was to charge a poll tax to vote, which precious few black sharecroppers could afford to pay. Another strategy was the literacy test which few former slaves could pass. Furthermore, the white clerks at courthouses had already decided that any black applicant would fail, regardless of his true reading ability. Since both of those devices at times excluded poor whites as well, grandfather clauses were introduced to exempt from the literacy test anyone whose father or grandfather had the right to vote before the Civil War. Moreover, the Supreme Court declared the 1875 Civil Rights Act guaranteeing equal access to public facilities and transportation to be unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) because the law regulated the private discriminatory conduct of individuals rather than government discrimination.

Segregation

One of the most pervasive and visible signs of racism was the rise of informal and legal segregation, or separation of the races. In a wholesale violation of liberty and equality, southern state legislatures passed “Jim Crow” segregation laws that denied African Americans equal access to public facilities such as hotels, restaurants, parks, and swimming pools. Southern schools and public transportation had vastly inferior “separate but equal” facilities that left the black minority subject to unjust majority rule. Housing covenants and other devices kept blacks in separate neighborhoods from whites. African Americans in the North also suffered informal residential segregation and economic discrimination in jobs.

In one of its more infamous decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation statutes were legal in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In Plessy, the Court decided that “separate, but equal” public facilities did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or imply the inferiority of African Americans. Justice John Marshall Harlan was one of the two dissenters who wrote, “Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”

Progressive and Race Relations

One of the great ironies of the series of reforms instituted in the early twentieth century known as the Progressive Era was that segregation and racism were deeply enshrined in the movement. Progressives were a group of reformers who believed that the industrialized, urbanized United States of the nineteenth century had outgrown its eighteenth-century Constitution. That Constitution did not give government, especially the federal government, enough power to deal with unprecedented problems. Many Progressives embraced Social Darwinism and eugenics which was part of the most advanced science and social science taught in universities and scientific circles. Social Darwinism ranked various groups, which its proponents considered “races,” according to certain characteristics and labelled Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic peoples as superior and Southeastern Europeans, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, and Africans as inferior races. Therefore, there was a supposed scientific basis for segregation as the “higher” races ruled the “lower.” Moreover, Progressives generally endorsed segregation as a means of achieving their central goal of social order and harmony between the races. There were notable exceptions, such as Jane Addams, black Progressives such as W.E.B. DuBois, and the Progressives of both races who founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but Progressive ideology contributed to the growth of segregation.

Progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson generally supported the segregationist order. While Roosevelt courageously invited African-American leader Booker T. Washington to dinner in the White House and condemned lynching, he discharged 170 black soldiers because of a race riot in Brownsville, Texas in 1906. Wilson had perhaps a worse record on civil rights as his administration fired many black federal employees and segregated federal departments.

Black Leadership

Several black leaders advanced the cause of black civil rights and helped organize African Americans to defend their interests through self help. The highly-educated journalist, Ida B. Wells, launched a crusade against lynching by exposing the savage practice. She also challenged segregation by refusing to change her seat on a train because it was in an area reserved for white women. Other African Americans unsuccessfully boycotted segregated streetcars in urban areas but utilized a method that would prove successful in the mid-twentieth century.

A debate took shape between two African-American leaders, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Washington was a former slave who founded the Tuskegee Institute for blacks in the 1880s and wrote Up from Slavery. He advocated that African Americans achieve racial equality slowly by patience and accommodation. Washington thought that blacks should be trained in industrial education and demonstrate the character virtues of hard work, thrift, and self-respect. They would therefore prove that they deserved equal rights and equal opportunity for social mobility. At the 1895 Atlanta Exposition, Washington delivered an address that posited, “In the long run it is the race or individual that exercises the most patience, forbearance, and self-control in the midst of trying conditions that wins…the respect of the world.”

DuBois, on the other hand, was a Harvard and Berlin-educated intellectual who believed that African Americans should win equality through a liberal arts education and fighting for political and civil equality. He wrote the Souls of Black Folk and laid out a vision whereby the “talented tenth” among African Americans would receive an excellent education and become the teachers and other professionals who would uplift fellow members of their race. He and other black leaders organized the Niagara Movement that fought segregation, lynching, and disfranchisement. In 1909 the movement’s leaders founded the NAACP, which fought for black equality and initiated a decades-long legal struggle to end segregation. DuBois edited its journal named The Crisis and wrote about issues affecting African Americans. He had the simple wish to “make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”

Wartime Changes

American participation in the Spanish-American War and World War I initiated a dramatic change in the lives of African Americans and in the demography of American society. In both wars, black soldiers were relegated to segregated units and generally assigned to menial jobs rather than front-line combat. However, black soldiers had opportunities to fight in the charges against the Spanish in Cuba and against the Germans in the trenches of France. They demonstrated that they were just as courageous as white men even as they fought for a country that excluded them from its democracy. Moreover, travel to the North and overseas showed thousands of African Americans the possibility of freedom and equality that would be reinforced in World War II while fighting tyranny abroad.

Wartime America witnessed rapid change in the lives of African Americans especially in the rural South. Hundreds of thousands left southern farms to migrate to cities in the South such as Birmingham or Atlanta, or to northern cities in a mass movement called the Great Migration. This internal migration greatly increased the number of African Americans living in American cities. As a result, tensions grew with whites over jobs and housing that led to deadly race riots during and immediately after the war. However, a thriving black culture in the North also resulted in the Harlem Renaissance and the celebration of black artists.

The Great Migration eventually led to over six million African Americans following these migration patterns and laying the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century. Blacks resisted segregation when it was instituted and continued to organize to challenge its threat to liberty and equality in America.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

• What constitutional protections did the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments give African Americans?
• What economic conditions did African Americans face in the south and north in the late nineteenth century?
• What kinds of violence did African Americans suffer during the late nineteenth century?
• Despite the amendments to the Constitution protecting the rights of African Americans, what discriminatory devices systematically took away these rights?
• What was the ruling in the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case? Did the case result in the advance or reversal of the rights of African Americans? Explain your answer.
• Did African Americans make gains or suffer setbacks to their rights during the Progressive Era? Explain your answer.
• Compare and contrast the means and goals of achieving black equality for Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.
• How did World War I and the Great Migration change the lives of African Americans?

• Lesson Plans
• Teacher's Guides
• Media Resources

African American History and Culture in the United States

Mural of Carter G. Woodson on 9th St NW in Washington, D.C.

Wikimedia Commons

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” ―Carter G. Woodson

Our Teacher's Guide offers a collection of lessons and resources for K-12 social studies, literature, and arts classrooms that center around the achievements, perspectives, and experiences of African Americans across U.S. history.  Below you will find materials for teaching and learning about the perspectives of slaves and free African Americans during the American Revolution, the work of the Freedman’s Bureau during and after Reconstruction, the artistry of Jacob Lawrence, the reality faced by African American soldiers returning home after fighting in WWI, the songs and efforts of the Freedom Riders during the long civil rights movements, and the works of Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Maya Angelou.

Guiding Questions

Who is included in your curriculum and who can be added when teaching African American history?

What are the lasting contributions of African Americans to the culture and history of the United States?

How has change come about during the long civil rights movement?

The first national Negro History Week was organized by Carter G. Woodson in February 1926 to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass . As interest and advocacy for expanding the study of African American history developed, a desire to expand beyond just one week also grew. In 1970, students at Kent State University celebrated Black History Month from January to February of that year, and since 1976, each President of the United States has endorsed commemorating February as Black History Month across the country.

The resources and lessons provided below are organized chronologically to illustrate that the achievements, perspectives, and experiences of African Americans are important to social studies and history curricula all year long. Users will find connections between these materials and those provided in subsequent sections of this Teacher's Guide to develop cross-disciplinary learning activities and projects. 

Slavery and the Early Republic

Taking Up Arms and the Challenge of Slavery in the Revolutionary Era :  This lesson is designed to help students understand the transition to armed resistance and the contradiction in the Americans' rhetoric about slavery through the examination of a series of documents.

Slavery and the American Founding: The “Inconsistency not to be excused” :  Framed by the compelling question " How did the American founders' views on slavery shape the creation of the republic?", this lesson asks students to examine the views of American founders regarding slavery and evaluate the extent to which they reflect the principles of the American Revolution.  After the American Revolution: Free African Americans in the North :  What were the experiences of African-American individuals in the North in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War? To what extent were freed slaves citizens in the newly independent nation? This lesson provides primary sources for students to analyze in order to evaluate these questions. 

Slavery in the Colonial North :  Philipsburg Manor, located in Sleepy Hollow, New York, is a historic site owned and operated by Historic Hudson Valley. The site tells the story of the 23 enslaved Africans who were the only full-time, year round residents of the Manor, and whose forced labor was the backbone of the Philipse’s international trading empire.

Twelve Years a Slave: Analyzing Slave Narratives :  What does Solomon Northup’s narrative reveal about the relation between slavery and social institutions such as marriage and the family? Why are slave narratives’ authenticity and truthfulness questioned? Examine the primary sources that became the basis for a major motion picture. 

Perspectives on the Slave Narrative :  Working with primary sources that provide insight into the lives of slave owners, slaves, abolitionists, students gather evidence to respond to the compelling question "What role did the slave narrative have both in historical and in literary traditions?"

Abolition and Reconstruction

Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad :  In this lesson, students will comprehend the organizational structure of the Underground Railroad; learn about one of its most famous conductors, Harriet Tubman; and consider the legacy of the heroines and heroes of slavery resistance. 

Frederick Douglass's Narrative : Myth of the Happy Slave :  In this lesson, students analyze Douglass's first-hand account to see how he successfully contrasts myths with the reality of life under slavery.

From Courage to Freedom: Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Autobiography :  Frederick Douglass's 1845 narrative of his life is a profile in both moral and physical courage. In this lesson sequence, students examine how he contrasts reality with romanticism and powerfully uses imagery and rhetorical appeals to persuade the reader of slavery's evil. 

"I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common." —Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?"

Frederick Douglass What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? :  This student activity brings together video and audio media, along with the text of Douglass's speech, to give students opportunities to discuss and deliberate who the 4th of July is for and the extent to which Douglass is justified in his position. 

David Walker vs. John Day: Two Nineteenth-Century Free Black Men :  David Walker, a free African American, invoked the Bible and the Declaration of Independence to challenge the inequities of American slavery in his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World  (1829). John Day, also a free African American, was a major proponent of colonization and an early Liberian colonist who argued that African Americans would never achieve equality in the United States. Through this lesson, students examine the conflicting perspectives over slavery, abolition, and equality.

Mission US 2: Flight to Freedom :  In Mission 2: “Flight to Freedom,” players take on the role of Lucy, a 14-year-old slave in Kentucky. As they navigate her escape and journey to Ohio, they discover that life in the “free” North is dangerous and difficult.

Teacher’s Guide: The Reconstruction Era :  This Teacher’s Guide provides compelling questions to frame a unit of study and inquiry projects, along with activity ideas on Reconstruction that include use of newspapers from the era and resources for social studies, ELA, and music education.

Jim Crow and War

Birth of a Nation, NAACP, and Balancing of Rights : Why did the NAACP challenge the showing of  Birth of a Nation ? The lesson asks students to analyze the efforts of the NAACP and evaluate the decision to not censor the film.  

NAACP's Anti-Lynching Campaigns in the 1920s : This lesson sequence engages students with the deeply serious issues of Jim Crow and lynching in the United States during the inter-war period. 

African American Soldiers in World War I: The 92nd and 93rd Division : Students combine their research using a variety of sources, including firsthand accounts, to develop a hypothesis evaluating contradictory statements about the performance of the 92nd Infantry Division in World War I.

African American Soldiers after WWI: Had Race Relations Changed? : Analyze archival photographs and archival newspaper accounts about race relations in the United States to evaluate different points of view about post-war riots in Chicago.

African Americans and the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corp : Students considers documents that present the CCC from the perspective of black participants in order to evaluate the impact of this New Deal program on race relations in America.

Civil Rights and Now

The Green Book: African American Experiences of Travel and Place in the U.S. :  How have the intersections of race and place impacted U.S. history and culture? This inquiry-based lesson combines individual investigations with whole or small group analysis of primary sources and visual media.

Civil Rights and the Cold War :  This lesson plan attempts to dissolve the artificial boundary between domestic and international affairs in the postwar period to show students how we choose to discuss history. 

The Freedom Riders and the Popular Music of the Civil Rights Movement :  Through collaborative activities and presentations, students will find the meaning behind the music, and compare and contrast the major figures, documents, and events of the day to better understand the political and cultural messages. 

Malcolm X: A Radical Vision for Civil Rights : This essay examines the conflicting points of view surrounding how best to advance the civil rights movement in the U.S. during the 1960s with a comparative analysis of the philosophies of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. 

Black Separatism and the Beloved Community: Malcolm X :  This lesson will contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to evaluate how best to achieve black American progress in the 1960s.

JFK, Freedom Riders, and the Civil Rights Movement : Resources provided in this lesson support student analysis of t he critical role of activists in pushing the Kennedy Administration to face the contradiction between its ideals and the realities of federal politics.

Grassroots Perspectives on Civil Rights: Focus on Women : This essay not only looks at the work of the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC), but specifically the role of women within the activism of this student-led civil rights organization. 

Revolution 67: Protest Why & How? : The intent of this lesson sequence is to help students comprehend and explain the changes in how the people of Newark, New Jersey viewed government and how those attitudes affected political change in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Competing Voices of the Civil Rights Movement : This lesson sequence presents the views of several important black leaders who shaped the debate over how to achieve freedom and equality in a nation that had long denied a portion of the American citizenry the full protection of their rights.

Let Freedom Ring: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. : Students will learn about the life and work of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. by listening to a brief biography, viewing photographs of the March on Washington, and reading a portion of King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

The Election of Barack Obama : This lesson focuses on the relationship between the Civil Rights Movement and Obama's election, but it also asks students why they think Barack Obama's election is "historic."

Poetry, literature, and plays make up the collection of resources and lessons provided below for K-12 literature and language arts courses. Users will find connections between these materials and those provided in subsequent sections of this Teacher's Guide to develop cross-disciplinary learning activities and projects. 

Teacher's Guide: The Works of Langston Hughes : This Teacher's Guide includes video of public readings, access to NEH supported projects dedicated to the work of Langston Hughes, and classroom ready materials for teaching his poetry.

The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You : This lesson asks students to consider what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for so many people?

Teacher's Guide: Maya Angelou: A Phenomenal Woman :  This Teacher's Guide provides access to collections of poetry, lesson activity ideas, and multimedia resources to hear and see Dr. Angelou perform her poetry. 

Gwendolyn Brooks' Poem "We Real Cool" : In this lesson, students will closely analyze the poem's line breaks and the effect of enjambment on their reading and interpretation of the poem.

                The Pool Players.         Seven at the Golden Shovel.         We real cool. We            Left school. We         Lurk late. We         Strike straight. We         Sing sin. We            Thin gin. We         Jazz June. We            Die soon.

"A Raisin in the Sun": Whose American Dream? :  This interdisciplinary lesson includes a critical reading and analysis of the play, close examination of biographical and historical documents produced at different times during the long civil rights movement, and a variety of assessment options.

Toni Morrison's Beloved : For Sixty Million and More : Close reading and reflective activities guide thoughtful inquiry into the novel and its major themes, while also providing teachers and students with creative outlets for making connections with one of the great novels of the twentieth century.

Scottsboro Boys and  To Kill a Mockingbird : Two Trials for the Classroom : In this lesson, students will perform a comparative close reading of select informational texts from the Scottsboro Boys trials alongside sections from  To Kill a Mockingbird  to see how fictional “truth” both mirrors and departs from the factual experience that inspired it.

The resources and lessons provided below are designed for the study of art, music, and culture in K-12 classrooms. Users will find connections between these materials and those provided in subsequent sections of this Teacher's Guide to develop cross-disciplinary learning activities and projects. 

The Music of African American History : This lesson traces the long history of how African Americans have used music as a vehicle for communicating beliefs, aspirations, observations, joys, despair, resistance, and more across U.S. history.

Learning the Blues : Students take a virtual field trip to Memphis, Tennessee, one of the prominent centers of blues activities, and explore the history of the blues in the work of W. C. Handy and a variety of country blues singers whose music preserves the folk origins of this unique American art form.

Martin Puryear's Ladder for Booker T. Washington : Students examine Booker T. Washington’s life and legacy through Martin Puryear’s sculpture and consider how the title of Puryear’s sculpture is reflected in the meanings we can draw from it. 

Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series: Removing the Mask :  Focusing on composition, image, setting, characterization, and tone, while also analyzing the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Helene Johnson, students are invited to compare and contrast the works while considering how each work represents the life and changing roles of African Americans from the late nineteenth century to the Harlem Renaissance and The Great Migration. 

Romare Bearden's  The Dove : A Meeting of Vision and Sound : How do art and music reflect & inspire change in American society? This lesson asks students examine this and other questions about history, art, and culture.

Picturing Freedom: Selma to Montgomery in March, 1965 : After analyzing photojournalist James Karales's iconic photograph of the march, reading background material on it, and considering what the marchers might have thought and felt, students write and illustrate a postcard describing this civil rights event from a marcher's viewpoint.

The forced migration of Africans reshaped cultural practices, traditions, and identities. In this country, Black community building and identity formation have created a heritage found in music, language, cuisine, art, and more. This heritage is also apparent in the physical spaces built by Black Americans and significant to Black culture.   

Historically Black Towns and Settlements

The town of  Princeville, North Carolina  reflects a cultural landscape of the Black community following the  end of the Civil War . Founded in 1865 by formerly enslaved people, many of these refugees remained in the area and created their own settlement called Freedom Hill, a name derived from the location where a Union solider shared news about the  Emancipation Proclamation . In 1885, a Black carpenter named Turner Prince led the formal incorporation of the town, making Princeville  the first Black incorporated town in the United States. 

A flooded Princeville, North Carolina in the aftermath of destruction wrought by the Tar River in September 1999. 

Photo by Dave Saville/FEMA News Photo

For over a century, the town has symbolized African American determination and endurance. Despite Princeville’s continued adversity in the face of natural disasters, lack of government support, and white supremacy, residents share a strong sense of pride in their history and community. The town’s location in a floodplain has resulted in numerous destructive floods, and after each of these events residents have chosen to rebuild in the interest of communal preservation.  Although many of the town’s historic buildings have been destroyed by flooding, the cultural landscape of Princeville retains its historical significance through its ability to evoke a sense of place.

Schools and HBCUs

Schools offer not only a physical space for building community but also a framework for exploring identity. In segregated public school systems, educational facilities for Black children were underfunded compared to their white counterparts. Beginning in 1917, educator and Tuskegee Institute co-founder, Booker T. Washington, and Julius Rosenwald, philanthropist and president of Sears Roebuck, built more than 5,000 schools for African American children across the rural South. By 1928, one-third of the South’s rural Black school children and teachers attended or worked at a  Rosenwald School .6 When the landmark Supreme Court decision  Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka I and II (1954)  found  segregation in schools unconstitutional , Rosenwald Schools became obsolete as classrooms integrated.

Founded in 1870, Dunbar High School is the country’s first public high school for African Americans. Throughout the 20th century, Dunbar became renowned for its excellent academics, and some parents moved to Washington, D.C. specifically so their children could attend the school. Noted faculty include educator and activist  Mary Church Terrell , father of Black History Month  Dr. Carter G. Woodson , and Dunbar graduate Julia Evangeline Brooks, who was one of the pioneers of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Other celebrated graduates include businessman H. Naylor Fitzhugh, educator and activist Nannie Helen Burroughs, surgeon Charles R. Drew, lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, and Air Force General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Dunbar High School continues to educate generations of Black leaders to this day. 

Built in 1913, the Shiloh-Rosenwald School in Notasulga, Alabama was one of the six initial Rosenwald schools to provide education to African American children in the rural South. 

Photo by Rivers Langley

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are higher education institutions that primarily serve African American students. Although most of these colleges and universities are found in the South, there are over one hundred HBCUs in locations across the United States, both public and private institutions. Established in 1837, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania is the country’s oldest HBCU. Other HBCUs include Spelman College, Howard University, Xavier University, Tuskegee University, Hampton University, and Morehouse College. 

Burial Grounds

One of the country’s earliest and largest known Black cemeteries was rediscovered in 1991 in New York City. Before construction began for a thirty-four-story federal office building, the area was archeologically surveyed to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The excavation uncovered the burial site of more than 419 free and enslaved Africans laid to rest during the late 17th and 18th centuries. Recognizing the historical significance of the site, the Secretary of the Interior designated the  African Burial Ground  to the  National Register of Historic Places . In 2006, the site became a national monument. 

Historic Preservation

Although Black cultural landscapes are ubiquitous throughout the country, they are often neglected and erased from historical narratives. The lack of national recognition given to Black cultural landscapes stems from trends within the field of historic preservation that favor architectural significance over social histories embedded within a place. Even with recent additions, fewer than 8% of the sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States are associated with women, African Americans, Latinx Americans and other minority groups combined.  

Prior to 1973, there were only three Black historic sites designated across the entire United States:  the Frederick Douglass House in Washington, D.C. ,  the Booker T. Washington House in Virginia , and  the George Washington Carver House in Missouri . Following the Civil Rights Movement and leading up to the Bicentennial, activist groups like the  Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation  argued for the inclusion of Black history in the preserved, built environment and American history more broadly. Through a contract with the National Park Service, the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation drastically increased Black representation in the National Register of Historic Places, designating historic sites such as the  Mary McLeod Bethune House  in Washington, D.C. and  W. E. B. Du Bois Boyhood Home  in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. 

The National Endowment for the Humanities continues to fund a wide array of projects, programs, and publications focused on telling the many stories of African Americans in the United States. The following collection supplements the resources provided above and extends the work that can be done across K-12 classrooms when teaching African American history and culture. 

Colored Conventions Project : From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these “Colored Conventions” brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights.

The Right to Love: The Case of Loving v. Virginia : This Humanities  magazine article tells the story of how  t he freedom to marry across racial lines was tested by a shy Virginia couple, who were very much in love.

August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand : This 2005 documentary tells the story of legendary playwright and 1999 NEH Humanities Award Medal recipient August Wilson. 

Voyages: The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database : Track the journeys of over 10-12.5 million Africans forced into slavery with this searchable database of passenger records from 36,000 trans-Atlantic slave ship voyages.

W.E.B. Du Bois Papers : This digitized collection of almost 95,000 items was completed by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with the support of a  grant from the NEH .

Afropop Worldwide : This Peabody award-winning radio program and online magazine is dedicated to music from Africa and the African diaspora.

Thurgood Marshall Before the Court : Stephen Smith presents the story of Thurgood Marshall's remarkable career in this American Radio Works podcast and website.

Related on EDSITEment

The green book: african american experiences of travel and place in the u.s., jacob lawrence's migration series: removing the mask, the works of langston hughes, a raisin in the sun: whose "american dream", voices of democracy: women leaders of the civil rights struggle, blues reflections, music of the harlem renaissance, the long road to freedom: biddy mason’s remarkable journey, naacp's anti-lynching campaigns: the quest for social justice in the interwar years, maya angelou: a phenomenal woman, thurgood marshall before the court, toni morrison's beloved : for sixty million and more.

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Essays on African American History

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Black History Month and Reasons to Celebrate It

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History of African Americans began when "twenty and odd" Africans were landed in the English colony of Virginia in 1619. The majority of African Americans are the descendants of Africans who were forced into slavery. In 1790 Black people numbered almost 760,000. During that time, they were considered an inferior race with heathen culture.

The blacks were documented into slavery in Virginia in 1661 and in all the English colonies by 1750. They were forced to work in the farmlands of the New World. They were sold as merchandise by European traders on slave ships. During the period of the 17th and 18th centuries, they were forced to work as slaves on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. In 1807 Thomas Jefferson signed legislation that officially ended the African trade of enslaved peoples. However, this act did not presage the end of slavery.

Abolitionists in the United States in the 1840-1860 period developed large propaganda campaigns against slavery. At the beginning of 1861, a movement, known as the Civil War, was launched in an attempt to liberate all the country's slaves. In September 1862 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, stating that all slaves were to be free. After the Civil War, nearly four million slaves were freed.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made Black people full U.S. citizens. Ratification of the 15th amendment in 1870 extended the right to vote to Black males. However, in the post-Reconstruction years, African Americans struggled to find a job, so many of them decided to migrate westward.

In 1900, nearly 8 million African Americans still lived in the South, however, due to economic depression, more African Americans moved Northwards and were then embroiled in WWI. Between 1910 and 1920 an estimated 500,000 African Americans left the South. During the war thousands of black officers were commissioned and many served abroad in labour battalions and service regiments.

The Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the already bleak economic situation of African Americans. During that period, a large number of African Americans lost their jobs amidst inherent discrimination. African Americans were aided with low cost public housing, education and more jobs.

In World War II as in World War I, there was a mass migration of Blacks from the South. Abbout 1.5 million African Americans left the South during the 1940s. During the war, an African American soldiers were in service units, and combat troops remained segregated.

The Civil Rights Movement was the persistent and deliberate step of African Americans in the 1940s and 1950s. The culmination of the Civil Rights Movement was in 1963, which aided in securing the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in voting, public accommodations, and employment.

The post-civil rights era is notable for the New Great Migration, in which millions of African Americans have returned to the South, often to pursue increased economic opportunities in now-desegregated southern cities. Politically and economically, Black people have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era. The dramatic political breakthrough came in the 2008 election, with the election of Barack Obama.

Relevant topics

• Civil Rights Movement
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What it means to be black in the American educational system

Professor of Educational Psychology and African and African Diaspora Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

Disclosure statement

Kevin O'Neal Cokley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Many people still think that racism is no longer a problem in America. After the election of President Obama, academic John McWhorter argued that racism in America is, for all intents and purposes, dead . The prominent conservative scholar and African-American economist Thomas Sowell has argued that “ racism isn’t dead, but it is on life support .” Harvard professors William Julius Wilson and Roland Fryer too have argued about the declining significance of race and discrimination.

However, as we wind down the final months of Obama’s presidency, the declining significance of race and discrimination narratives seem to be at odds with the lived realities for African-Americans. President Obama himself has faced racist treatment, such as the birther controversy and a member of Congress saying “you lie.” And then, one incident after another has highlighted the painful reality that black men are disproportionately likely to die at the hands of the police in comparison to any other demographic group.

Sadly, racism and discrimination are facts of life for many black Americans. As an African-American scholar who studies the experiences of black college students, I am especially interested in this issue. My research has found that black college students report higher levels of stress related to racial discrimination than other racial or ethnic groups. The unfortunate reality is that black Americans experience subtle and overt discrimination from preschool all the way to college.

Here’s what studies show

The results of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center underscore this point. The survey found that black Americans with some college experience are more likely to say that they have experienced discrimination compared to blacks who did not report having any college experience.

Additional survey results revealed several differences between blacks with college experience versus blacks without college experience. For example, in the past 12 months, 55 percent of people with some college experience reported people had acted suspicious of them, compared to 38 percent of those with no college experience.

Similarly, 52 percent of people with some college experience reported people had acted as if they thought the individual wasn’t smart , compared to 37 percent of people with no college experience.

So, what are the race-related struggles experienced by African-American students throughout their schooling?

Story of Tyrone

Let’s consider the case of Tyrone. Tyrone is a four-year-old black male raised in a two-parent household. Like most four-year-olds, Tyrone is intellectually curious, and has a vivid imagination. He loves books, loves to color and paint, and also loves physical activities such as running, jumping and playing games with his friends.

Behaviorally, Tyrone is also similar to many four-year-olds in that he often likes to talk more than listen, and he can be temperamental. He can engage in hitting, kicking and spitting behaviors when he is angry.

One day Tyrone was playing a game with a friend and he lost. Tyrone got angry and threw the ball at his friend. A teacher witnessed that and immediately confronted Tyrone about his behavior.

Angry about being confronted, Tyrone started to walk away. The teacher grabbed his arm. Tyrone reacted by pushing the teacher away. The teacher sent Tyrone to the principal’s office. After consultation with the principal, Tyrone was deemed to be a danger to students and staff.

He was consequently suspended.

Early years of schooling

On the surface this looks like a simple case of meting out the appropriate punishment for perceived serious student misbehavior. There does not appear to be anything explicitly racial about the interaction.

However, consider the fact that there have been many instances of white students engaging in the same behavior, none of which ever result in suspension. This is the racialized reality black students experience every day in American schools.

Black boys are almost three times as likely to be suspended than white boys, and black girls are four times as likely to be suspended than white girls. Black students’ (mis)behavior is more often criminalized compared to other students.

While black kids make up 18 percent of preschool enrollment, they represent 48 percent of students receiving one or more suspensions. Getting suspended matters because it is correlated with being referred to law enforcement and arrested. Black students account for 27 percent of students who are referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students who are arrested, while they only make up 18 percent of enrolled students. As a general rule, black students do not often receive the benefit of the doubt when they engage in bad or questionable behavior.

School experience

When Tyrone entered fourth grade, teachers noticed a change in his demeanor. His enthusiasm for school and learning had diminished considerably. He no longer eagerly raised his hand to answer questions. He no longer appeared to love books and listening to stories. He appeared to have little joy participating in class activities. His teachers characterized Tyrone as “unmotivated,” “apathetic,” having “learning difficulties” and “a bad attitude.”

Educators and researchers have referred to this phenomenon as “ the fourth grade failure syndrome ” for black boys. Early childhood educator Harry Morgan suggested that this phenomenon occurred during this time because the classroom environment changes between the third and fourth grade from a socially interactive style to a more individualistic, competitive style.

This change in style is counter to the more communal and cooperative cultural learning environment which, according to research, black students tend to prefer . The fourth grade failure syndrome refers to a bias in schools (e.g., cultural insensitivity, disproportionately harsh discipline, lowered teacher expectations, tracking black students into special education or remedial classes) that has the cumulative effect of diminishing black students’ (especially boys’) enthusiasm and motivation for school.

By high school Tyrone no longer identified with school. His sense of pride and self-esteem increasingly came from his popularity and his athletic abilities rather than his intelligence. Psychologist Claude Steele has referred to this as “academic disidentification,” a phenomenon where a student’s self-esteem is disconnected from how they perform in school.

Tyrone is not alone. According to one study based on national data from almost 25,000 students black males were the only students that showed significant disidentification throughout the 12th grade. My research too has confirmed this, although I did not find evidence among black females, white males or white females.

What’s the college experience?

While the narrative of more black men being in prison than in college has been thoroughly debunked by psychologist Ivory Toldson , it is still the case that black men are underrepresented in college. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 887,000 black women enrolled in college compared to 618,000 black men.

Owing in large part to the emphasis of education by his family, Tyrone is fortunate enough to be accepted to college. Excited and nervous about being away from home, Tyrone looks forward to starting his college experience.

Like many college students , Tyrone likes to go to parties thrown by Greek organizations, and he frequently attends parties thrown by black fraternities. While attending one party, Tyrone and his friends became upset when campus police broke up the party because of complaints of loud music and threaten to arrest the attendees.

Tyrone has partied with white friends and knows firsthand that their parties often involve drugs and reckless behavior , yet, as my students tell me, police almost never break up their parties. As it turns out, white fraternities are frequently the perpetrators of racist incidents , which cause Tyrone and other black students to engage in campus protests.

For example , in 2014, Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity at Arizona State University, was suspended for having a racist Martin Luther King Jr. party at which they drank from watermelon cups, held their crotches, wore bandannas and formed gang signs with their hands.

To add insult to injury, Tyrone and other black students read opinion pieces in the student paper complaining how affirmative action discriminates against white students and allows less qualified “minority” students on campus.

Tyrone finds refuge in black studies classes, where he learns about theories such as “critical race theory” and terms such as “institutional racism,” “white privilege” and “hegemony.” Exposure to these classes provides Tyrone with the vocabulary and critical analytical tools to better understand the challenges facing black people.

So it is not surprising that college-educated blacks like Tyrone are more likely to report experiencing discrimination in college than blacks with no college experience in college environments where racist incidents and racial microagressions are frequently reported. In spite of the desire among many for America to be colorblind, at every level of education black students experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination.

In many ways my research on African-American students reflects my own experiences as a black male negotiating the challenges of being in predominantly white academic environments. The silver lining to this story is that black students are incredibly resilient and there are positive things to report.

In 2016, for example, enrollment at historically black colleges and universities has increased . It is difficult to know if this increase is related to the negative experiences of discrimination black students often experience on predominantly white campuses, but it does suggest that interest among black students in obtaining a college education remains high. According to 2016 data reported in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, black women now have the highest graduation rate of any demographic group at the University of Georgia.

For every positive outcome for students like Tyrone, there are unfortunately also too many negative outcomes for other similar students. The educational experiences of Tyrone and all black students matters should be of concern to everyone.

While education is not a cure all for experiences with racism and discrimination, education can equip us with the tools to better understand, analyze and ultimately find solutions to the tragic incidents we are seeing too frequently involving police killings of black people.

• Discrimination
• White privilege
• Institutional racism
• Racism on campus
• Fraternities
• Microaggression
• African American police killings
• Race on campus
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities
• African American children
• Black Americans
• African American students
• School to prison pipeline
• Black college students
• Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK)
• Greek culture

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The growing diversity of black america, 46.8 million people in the u.s. identify as black.

The analysis presented in this report and the accompanying fact sheet about the Black population of the United States combines the latest data available from multiple data sources. It is mainly based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006-2019 American Community Surveys (ACS) and the following U.S. decennial censuses provided through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota: 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970 (form 2), 1980, 1990 and 2000. The ACS is used to present demographic and economic characteristics for each group.

This data was collected before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report relies on self-identification of race and ethnicity in U.S. Census Bureau products (decennial censuses and iterations of the American Community Survey) to identify the nation’s Black population. However, an individual’s racial and ethnic self-identification may not be fixed and instead can change over time . In addition, the racial and ethnic categories used by the U.S. Census Bureau can change as the way the nation sees itself changes (see the “Measuring ethnic and racial identity” section of this report for more details on census years). These changes may impact how many people identify as Black (or any other race).

Unless otherwise noted, adults are those who are ages 18 and older.

U.S. Black population or total Black population refers to all people who self-identify as Black in the United States. This includes those who say their race is only Black; those who say Black is one of two or more races in their background; and those who say they their race is Black, or that one of their races is Black but also indicate they are of Hispanic or Latino or Black origin. The terms Black population and Black people are used interchangeably in this report.

The terms single-race Black and Black alone are used interchangeably throughout the report to refer to the same population. This population is made up of individuals who self-identify only as Black and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino.

The term multiracial Black is used to refer to people who self-identify as two or more races and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino.

The term Black Hispanic is used to refer to those who self-identify as Black and Hispanic or Latino, as well as those who self-identify as multiracial Black and Hispanic or Latino.

The terms Hispanic or Latino are used interchangeably throughout this report.

White refers to people who self-identify as White only (single race) and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Asian refers to people who self-identify as Asian only (single race) and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino.

U.S. born refers to people who are U.S. citizens at birth, including those born in the United States, Puerto Rico, U.S. territories and those born in other countries to parents at least one of whom was a U.S. citizen.

Foreign born refers to people born outside of the United States to parents neither of whom was a U.S. citizen. The terms foreign born and immigrant are used interchangeably in this report.

In this report, we refer to several generations . These are defined by their birth years and ages in 2019 as follows:

The Black population of the United States is diverse. Its members have varied histories in the nation – many are descendants of enslaved people, while others are recently arrived immigrants. The Black population also has nuanced ethnic and racial identities reflecting intermarriage and international migration. As a result, there are key distinctions in demographic and economic characteristics between different parts of the national Black population, highlighting its diverse multitude of backgrounds.

The U.S. Black population is also growing. In 2019, 46.8 million people in the U.S. identified their race as Black, either alone or as part of a multiracial or ethnic background. That is up from 36.2 million in 2000. 1 The Black share of the U.S. population is higher today than in 2000 as well. About 14% of the national population said they were Black in 2019, up from 13% who did so in 2000.

At the same time, the Black population’s racial self-identification is changing. Among those who self-identify as “Black or African American,” the share who say it is their only racial or ethnic identification has declined over the past two decades. In 2019, 40.7 million, or 87%, identified their race as Black alone and their ethnicity as non-Hispanic, while around 3.7 million, or 8%, indicated their race was Black and another race (most often White) and not Hispanic. Another 2.4 million, or 5%, self-identified as both Black and Hispanic, or Black Hispanic. 2 But these shares have changed since 2000. Then, 93% identified their race and ethnicity as Black alone.

The nation’s Black population is changing in other ways too. A growing share are foreign born, the population is aging (though some segments are significantly younger), and a growing share are college graduates. These trends and more are explored in this report. Accompanying it is a fact sheet showing the demographic and economic characteristics of the nation’s Black population in 2019, based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey. Findings for all Black people, non-Hispanic single-race Black people, non-Hispanic multiracial Black people and Black Hispanics are shown separately. A downloadable spreadsheet of findings is also available.

Measuring racial and ethnic identity

Racial identity – as measured by the U.S. decennial census – has changed over time. The census has drastically changed since its first administration in 1790. Then, only two racial categories were included: free (which mostly included White people) and slaves (who were mostly enslaved Black people). The Census Bureau has modified terms used to refer to people of non-White racial identities throughout the years, in accordance with the politics and sensibilities of the times. For example, in the 2020 census, those who selected “Black or African American” as their race were asked to write more about their origins, reflecting a more nuanced understanding of Black racial identity. (For more about how racial and ethnic categories have changed over time, see “ What Census Calls Us .”)

Today, decennial census and American Community Survey data is collected in a different manner than for most of the nation’s history. Respondents choose their racial response categories themselves. This was not true for over a century of censuses. Prior to 1960, one’s racial identification was selected by a census-taker – a Census Bureau employee who administered the survey on paper and chose a racial category on a person’s behalf. However, starting that year, some respondents could self-identify, or chose their own racial category. Self-identification was expanded in subsequent censuses to include virtually all respondents. Additionally, starting in 1980, census data included information from the entire population on Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity in addition to their racial identification.And the 2000 census marked the first time respondents were able to include themselves in more than one racial category; prior to that year, multiracial respondents could select only one racial category.

It’s important to note that racial and ethnic self-identification is highly personal and can change as one’s relationship with their identity changes. For example, an analysis of 168 million Americans’ census forms linked between 2000 and 2010 indicated that 10 million people identified their racial and/or ethnic background differently between the two census forms. Multiracial Americans were one of the population groups that were more likely to change their racial identification between the two decennial census years.

One-in-four Black people are members of Gen Z

The age structure of the Black population has also changed since 2000. As of 2019, the median age of single-race, non-Hispanic Black people is 35, compared with 30 in 2000. This makes the nation’s Black population younger than the nation’s single-race, non-Hispanic White population (with a median age of 43) and the single-race, non-Hispanic Asian population (38), and slightly older than the nation’s Hispanic population (29).

The median age for the entire Black population is 32, though it varies across the differing identities among the Black population. Among Black Hispanic people, it is 22 years. Meanwhile, multiracial Black people are the youngest group, with a median age of 16.

A quarter (25%) of those in the U.S. Black population are members of Generation Z – born between 1997 and 2012 and ages 7 to 22 in 2019. A further one-in-ten were under the age of 7 that year. Together, 35% of the U.S. Black population is age 22 or younger. Another 23% are Millennials, meaning that over half (59%) of the nation’s Black population were Millennials or younger (under age 38) in 2019.

The majority (63%) of multiracial Black people were age 22 or younger in 2019, reflecting the youth of this demographic subgroup. Roughly half (51%) of Black Hispanics were 22 or younger as well.

Over half of the Black population lives in the South

In 2019, the South was the region with the highest share of the country’s Black population, with 56% of this population living there. The Midwest and Northeast each held 17% of this population, while the West was home to one-tenth of the Black population.

Regionally, the share of the national Black population living in the South has grown. In 2000, over half (54%) of Black people in the U.S. lived in the South, a very similar share to 2019 (56%). Meanwhile, somewhat higher shares lived the Midwest and Northeast in 2000 than in 2019. Back then, 19% of the national Black population lived in the Midwest and 18% in the Northeast. Over the past two decades, the share of Black people living in Western states was unchanged, at 10%.

The growth of the Black population in the South suggests a departure from previous Black migration patterns. The first half of the 20th century featured increasing shares of the population residing in regions of the U.S. outside of the South, primarily after the start of the Great Migration in the late 1910s. Consequently, each decade featured decreasing shares of the Black population living in the South.

Starting in 1970, shares of the Black population who live in the South have grown. There has been a 4 percentage point increase in the shares of the Black population who live in the South between 1970 (52%) and 2019 (56%).

Texas has the largest Black state population

With more than 3.9 million Black people in 2019, Texas is home to the largest Black population in the U.S. Florida has the second largest population at 3.8 million, and Georgia is home to 3.6 million Black people. Other top states of residence include New York (3.4 million) and California (2.8 million). Together, these five states hold 37% of the national Black population.

Although the top five states of residence have remained the same for Black people as in 2000, the order shifted substantially, with New York and California dropping from the two largest to fourth and fifth in 2019. In 2000, New York (3.2 million), California, Texas, Florida (each 2.5 million) and Georgia (2.4 million) rounded out the top five, together holding 36% of the total Black population.

Top states of residence differ by racial subgroup. Among non-Hispanic single-race Black people, Texas has the largest population, followed by Georgia, Florida, New York and North Carolina. But among non-Hispanic multiracial Black people, the state with the largest population is California, followed by Texas, Florida, Ohio and New York. Among Black Hispanics, meanwhile, New York has the largest population, followed by Florida, California, Texas and New Jersey. Notably, Texas, New York and Florida make the top five for all subgroups.

The New York metropolitan area has the largest Black metropolitan population

The metropolitan area with greatest number of Black people is the New York metropolitan area, with roughly 3.8 million in 2019. The New York City area has been the top urban center since at least 2000 for Black people, though other metro areas are on the rise. In 2019, the Atlanta metropolitan area came in a distant second, with 2.2 million Black people, and the Washington, D.C., area was next, with 1.7 million. By comparison, in 2000, the Chicago metropolitan area had the second largest Black metro population and Atlanta had the fourth largest.

The New York City metropolitan area has the largest Black population across the three Black racial and ethnic subgroups, but the other top large metropolitan areas differ across categories. The list of top five metropolitan areas for those who say their racial identity is only Black is the same as it is for the Black population overall, reflecting their majority (87%) share of the population. However, the top metropolitan areas for multiracial Black people and Black Hispanics differ.

Besides New York City, the top urban centers for those identifying as multiracial Black are the Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago metropolitan areas. By contrast, for Black Hispanics, Miami is second, followed by the Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia metro areas.

A growing share of Black adults have a college degree

The number of Black adults with a college degree or more education has more than doubled since 2000. That year, roughly 3 million Black adults ages 25 and older, or 15%, had earned at least a bachelor’s degree. That number grew to 6.7 million (23%) in 2019.

Notably, the share of the Black population with at least a college degree has risen at a similar rate to that of the general population. In 2000, roughly a quarter (24%) of the entire U.S. population ages 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher. In 2019, that share rose to 33%, an increase of 9 percentage points. The share of Black adults who earned a bachelor’s degree or higher also grew nearly 9 points over the same time period, from 15% to 23%.

There has been a similar upward trend specifically among Black adults with a master’s degree or higher. While roughly 1 million Black adults in 2000 (5% of the population over 25) had an advanced degree, that number rose to almost 2.6 million, or 9% in 2019.

There were differences in educational attainment in 2019 among different subgroups of the Black population. Among these groups, the multiracial Black population has the highest shares of adults 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree (20%) and advanced degree (12%). Single-race Black adults and Black Hispanics 25 and older have similar, but lower, shares with a bachelor’s degree (14% and 15%, respectively) as well as an advanced degree (9% and 8%).

The share of Black adults 25 and older without a high school diploma (or its equivalent, such as a GED certificate) has dropped substantially – by more than half – since 2000. Then, roughly three-in-ten adults in that age range (28%) had not earned a high school diploma. In 2019, that share had dropped to 13%, signifying a 15 percentage point drop over almost two decades.

The Black immigrant population has grown in number and share

Immigrants are a part of the nation’s Black population that has grown over time. The foreign-born Black population has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7% then to 10% in 2019. In numbers, 2.4 million Black people were born in another country in 2000, and by 2019, that had risen to 4.6 million.

Black immigrants are mostly from just two regions of the world. Almost nine-in-ten (88%) were born in African or Caribbean countries. Of that group, a little less than half (46%) were born in Caribbean nations, while a slightly lower share (42%) are from African countries. The remaining 12% of Black immigrants are from other parts of the world, with Guyana, Mexico and Honduras as the top three countries of origin.

The majority of Black immigrants identify as single-race Black (87%) and non-Hispanic, while 10% identify as Black and Hispanic and 3% say their racial background is multiracial.

Black household incomes since 2000

Since 2000, the U.S. Black population has not seen significant increases in median household income. The median income for households headed by a Black person was $44,000 in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic-induced recession). But household income of Black households varies. Roughly three-in-ten Black households (29%) made less than $25,000 in 2019, while a quarter earned between $25,000 and $49,999 – which means that more than half (54%) of Black households made less than $50,000 in 2019. About one-in-six Black households (17%) made $50,000 but below $75,000, 10% earned at least $75,000 but less than $100,000, and 18% earned $100,000 or more in 2019.

The 2019 shares represent an improvement over the distribution of Black household income in 2000. In 2000, roughly three-in-ten (31%) Black-headed households made $25,000 or less (in 2019 U.S. dollar adjusted value), and a quarter (25%) made between $25,000 and $49,999, meaning that 56% of Black households earned less than $50,000 in 2000. In that same year, roughly three-in-ten Black households (28%) made at least $50,000 but less than $100,000, and 16% made $100,000 or more.

The median income among Black households in 2019 was roughly $44,000, representing a slight inflation-adjusted increase over the median household income for Black people in 2000 ($43,581 after adjusting for inflation).

Income inequality within the Black population remains one of the widest within a major racial or ethnic group. In 2019, Black-headed households with income in the 90th percentile among the population of Black households earned 14 times that of Black households with income in the 10th percentile. The 90th percentile of households in the overall 2019 population, by contrast, earned 12 times that of households with incomes in the 10th percentile.

CORRECTION (March 2, 2023): A previous version of the chart “Among the U.S. Black population, both multiracial and Hispanic numbers have grown since 2000” displayed incorrect estimates for the total Black and multiracial Black populations in the U.S. for 2010. None of the study findings or conclusions are affected .

CORRECTION (Aug. 4, 2021): The “Black household incomes” section has been updated to reflect the 2019 inflation-adjusted distribution of Black household incomes in 2000, which was mischaracterized in a previous version. Related changes have been made to any references in the text of the report. These changes do not substantively affect the report’s findings.

• The 2000 decennial census is the first to allow Americans to select more than once race when asked about their racial background (for more, see “ Race and Multiracial Americans in the U.S. Census ”). Prior to 2000, decennial censuses allowed for only one race selection. ↩
• The terms “Black Hispanic” and “Black Latino” are used interchangeably in this report to refer to all people who self-identify as Black and Hispanic or Latino, or as Black and another race as well as Hispanic or Latino, on U.S. Census Bureau surveys. Not all Black Hispanics identify as Afro-Latino. For more, read “ Afro-Latino: A deeply rooted identity among U.S. Hispanics .” ↩

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The importance of being an American to African Americans and Progressive Reformers. (1)

The Complex Legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and the African American Community

This essay about J. Edgar Hoover’s complex legacy examines his relationship with the African American community during his tenure as the FBI Director. It discusses Hoover’s ambivalent and often antagonistic stance towards civil rights leaders and movements, highlighting the extensive surveillance and harassment of figures like Martin Luther King Jr. under the COINTELPRO program. While acknowledging the FBI’s role in investigating crimes against African Americans, the essay critiques Hoover’s lackluster commitment to civil rights, suggesting his actions were more about fulfilling legal obligations than genuine support for racial equality. It concludes by reflecting on Hoover’s impact on the Civil Rights Movement, emphasizing the need for continued vigilance in protecting the rights and freedoms of all citizens in the ongoing struggle for racial equality and justice in America.

How it works

In the chronicles of American history, J. Edgar Hoover, the inaugural Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), casts a formidable shadow. His tenure, spanning from 1924 until his demise in 1972, left an indelible imprint on the FBI and its methodologies. However, Hoover’s legacy is a tapestry woven with intricate threads, particularly concerning his relationship with the African American populace. This discourse delves into Hoover’s actions and directives vis-a-vis African Americans, illuminating a nuanced facet of American civil rights chronicles.

During Hoover’s stewardship, the FBI’s stance towards African American luminaries and factions oscillated between ambivalence and overt antipathy. His reign unfolded amidst the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, an era characterized by escalating vocalization and organization among African Americans in their quest for parity. Rather than safeguarding the rights of these individuals, Hoover regarded many civil rights luminaries and factions through a lens of skepticism and disdain. This perspective stemmed from the broader milieu of the Cold War and the Red Scare, with Hoover and his cohorts at the FBI apprehensive about communist influences permeating civil rights movements.

Foremost among Hoover’s approaches to black activism was his surveillance and persecution of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a towering figure in the civil rights milieu of the epoch. Hoover greenlit extensive wiretapping and clandestine surveillance of King’s communications and accommodations, a stratagem aimed at eroding King’s moral authority and leadership. This crusade was a constituent of the FBI’s broader COINTELPRO initiative, which targeted sundry political factions and activists deemed subversive. The FBI’s actions against King and other civil rights stalwarts constituted not merely invasions of privacy but concerted efforts to stifle the quest for racial parity and rectitude.

Hoover’s FBI also engaged with African American enclaves in manners that were occasionally contradictory. For instance, the Bureau partook in investigations of racially motivated transgressions perpetrated against blacks, including atrocities committed by the Ku Klux Klan. However, these endeavors often drew censure for their belatedness or lukewarm execution. Historians have portrayed the FBI’s commitment to civil rights under Hoover as perfunctory, fulfilling statutory obligations but bereft of genuine dedication to the cause of justice.

The legacy of J. Edgar Hoover vis-a-vis the African American community epitomizes the convolutions of power, race, and politics in 20th-century America. While Hoover’s FBI undertook actions ostensibly aimed at safeguarding certain civil rights, his deep-seated distrust of black leaders and movements, coupled with his draconian surveillance methodologies, left an enduring imprint on the quest for racial parity. It serves as a poignant reminder of the hurdles confronted by civil rights activists in the face of governmental opposition and underscores the imperative of vigilance in safeguarding the rights and liberties of all citizens.

In summation, Hoover’s interaction with the African American populace exposes a somber facet of his legacy, characterized by surveillance, suspicion, and a reluctance to wholeheartedly champion the struggle for civil rights. Grasping this facet of Hoover’s tenure at the FBI furnishes invaluable insights into the impediments encountered by the Civil Rights Movement and the broader saga of racial dynamics in the United States. As we contemplate Hoover’s legacy, it is imperative to acknowledge the strides made since his era while remaining cognizant of the ongoing endeavor required to actualize genuine parity and justice for all Americans.

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Essay on African-American Fiction

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African American literature is ‘the body of literature written by Americans of African descent.’ African American literature began in the latter half of the 18th century with some of the members of this community expressed their ideas and feelings in literary form. The history of African American literature can even be looked at as the history of African American people in America as it gave a faithful depiction of the many ups and downs in the personal, social, cultural and political lives of these people. Though it was only after 1970s that this literature was widely acclaimed for its richness, it was there for more than two centuries, attempting to come on the surface of American mainstream literature.

History of African Americans in America shows that they were enslaved since their arrival in America. These slaves were regarded as subhuman and incapable of mastering the arts and sciences. It is shocking to the civilized readers like us to read the words of great philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Hume who considered ‘negroes . . . to be naturally inferior to the whites’ with no ‘ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences’. Naturally the aim of the African American writers was first to prove their skills in writing their works following the norms of White literature. They were sure that unless until they demonstrated their mastery of the norms of the White literature, the Whites will not consider Blacks to be human and equal to them. That is why, the writers of the first generation toiled to master the literary skills of the Whites. Actually, it was not an easy task for them as they were not even considered to be the full and equal members of society. Naturally, it was a Herculean task for the African American writers to get recognized as writers in the American society. It can be seen from the ordeal Phillis Wheatley, the first African American poet, had to undergo to be recognized as a poet. She was forced to approach to the court of law to prove that she was the author of her poems collected in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). Even though the court verified her authorship, it did not help her much. Finally, she had to get her poems published in London. In these poems, Wheatley has exhibited remarkable mastery of the various poetic forms practiced by the mainstream American writers.

As the socio-political conditions of the time were unfavourable for the existence of the Black people, they had to fight for every single necessity of their life. Their lives were full of sufferings and atrocities. Naturally, these writers expressed their personal emotions along with the agonies of their community. Their attempts were directed to establish their self-identity as an individual as well as the identity of the African American community. With the hard efforts of these writers, they succeeded in demonstrating their intellectual capabilities.

Though the declaration of American independence brought equality to all, African Americans were not treated as such by the racist Whites. It led to the Civil War and the authorities were forced to announce the abolition of slavery. Yet, the mindset of the Whites did not change much and there was not improvement in social and economic conditions of the African Americans. Though African Americans had continued to contribute much to the progress of the United States, in return they could only get disappointment, discrimination, and danger. Yet the African Americans bravely continued their battle against the injustice of their life and emerged victorious, forcing their enemy to accept them on equal terms.

Even though African Americans did not get equal opportunities and were discriminated in every walk of life, they continued to march towards excellence with their hard labour. Their achievement in the field of literature is one of the most remarkable aspects of the post-Civil War period. African American writers like Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, and others tried their hands at almost every literary genre; principal amongst them were poetry and autobiographies.

The early 19th century African American literature emphasized the urgent need of abolition of slavery. The writers of this period focused upon the inhuman conditions in the lives of Black people and tried to attract the attention of the world towards the problem of slavery in America. To fulfill their purpose these writers tried their hands at the writing of essays, poetry, fiction, and journalism. For example, through his Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, David Walker made it very clear that if the inhuman system of slavery is not abolished, there was the danger of racial violence in the country. David Walker was immediately followed by like-minded writers and activists like Maria W. Stewart, Jarena Lee and others.

Towards the end of the first half of the 19th century, there started the tradition of writing slave narratives. This movement had got impetus from the antislavery movement of the South. The slave narratives dominated the literary output of the country in terms of both quality and enormous interest of the native as well as foreign readers. Frederick Douglass became the well-known figure after the publication of his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. In this life-story, Douglass narrated his efforts to get education and buy his freedom. This work portrayed him as a self-made man. Douglass was soon followed by Harriet Jacobs who wrote her life-story, entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In her autobiography, Harriet depicted the incidents from the life of African American slave woman who was sexually exploited by her master.

After the end of the Civil War, though Blacks were declared equal, in reality, there were many complex issues that needed urgent attention. Though there were large scale efforts establish a stronger and better country, the African Americans faced many impediments in their path of progress. The passing of the Reconstruction Act in 1867 was an effort to protect freed slaves from the racist Whites. The law also helped to establish many schools for the African Americans. Even some legal measures were taken to make slavery illegal. However, there were certain loopholes to the law which allowed the states to pass their own laws regarding slavery. It worsened the condition of the Negroes. It gave rise to the violence and many Negroes were lynched in the South. Though the conditions of the Negroes had worsened, many of them continued writing and get it published in magazines and newspapers. The literature of this period was marked by stories in which the writers spoke about their difficulties in publishing their works. During this period there came to existence the National Baptist Publishing Company, a Black enterprise that published songs, poems, fiction, and autobiographies of many Black writers.

With the arrival of the 20th century, there came Harlem Renaissance. It celebrated blackness of the skin as well as blackness of the art. Many African American literary and artistic forms were imitated. The Black literature could not keep itself detached from the politics. Richard Wright’s Native Son set the tone of this period. This work changed American culture and African American writing. Richard Wright was effectively followed by the writers like William Attaway and Chester Himes.

The study of Black writing of this period shows that it was proletarian in nature and attempted to raise social consciousness. It was the period of Great Depression and many writers had started writing on nonracial subjects. For example, Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Seraph on the Suwanee was called as ‘non-Negro’ novel because it tells the story of White characters. In his Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison is seen influenced not only by the Black writers but equally so by the White writers for which he was harshly criticized by other African American writers.

By the close of the 20th century, African American fiction immensely represented the Black culture. It had become a force in itself. Toni Morrison had won Nobel Prize for literature. Other outstanding African American authors include Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman, and Alice Walker. Through their works, these writers acknowledged the multiplicity of African American identities and renewed interest in history. As writers, they successfully imagined the psychological and spiritual lives of African Americans during slavery and segregation.

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The African American Family Essay

Human beings are social creatures spending a lot of time socializing, interacting and participating in activities that involve others. A family is a unit, a close organization of people who are related by blood and genes and so have a unique common trait that makes them a single “organism”, with own culture, beliefs and traditions. Families and life partners get each other through some of the roughest times, and this is especially true for African-American families.

The African American society has been the target of discrimination, stereotyping and racism for a long time. They are still suffering from the fact that their families and relatives grew up in a segregated and separated America, but the support that was between the community members has shown to be of great strength.

It helped people to have some joy in their lives and health to fight for freedom that still continues today. One of the greatest problems was the system that treated African-Americans in a predisposed and stereotypical manner. Very often, law authorities resorted to racial profiling and thus, contributed and reinforced the negative statistics and views of the rest of society.

The work market was also slanted to the negative side, so the support of families was the only counter action that could be taken. As such, African-American couples stayed closer together, tried to raise strong and proud children. As described in the “The Union of Two for Life and Jake” men and women were together, went through joy and sadness, tears and hardships, but managed to survive and look into the future.

Marriage was another supporting factor for the Afican-American community. It is a union between two people, which is unique through the qualities that each person brings into the relationship. This helps people to put their strengths and knowledge together and get through the hard and oppressing times.

Even though every marriage will definitely have points of conflict, which will test the strength of each person’s feelings towards their partner and the marriage in general, a strong bond is unlike anything else. “The Bean Eaters” talks about a couple who grew old together, and simply because dinners have become routine, and the time spent together is expected, the union still exists. This shows that people are meant to be more resistant to the hardships of life as a unit.

Unfortunately, children who are the future creators of families and couples are susceptible to the bad influences of the community and society. When a person sees how their family suffers, they feel the need to do something. Often, a single parent experiences difficulty in raising a child. While paying for food and shelter, spending many hours working, it makes evident the fact that there is very little time to spend child-rearing.

The values and behaviors that a child learns early on are very important. Character forms in the beginning years of life and it is very hard to change later. The ghettos of African-Americans who were forced into segregated areas with little or no employment and poor housing slowed down the process of children becoming successful in life. This led to couples having several children, so that they could support each other, and be more productive as a family.

The interconnection between siblings can be seen from Toni Morrison’s “Sula” and how the two children support each other. One is emotional and the other controls feelings, but their bond is just as strong. Even when a traumatic event of a boy drowning takes place, the stay as one, and do not let each other fall into psychosis. Once again, this proves that the ties between siblings and families are inseparable.

A major breakthrough happened in the 1980’s, which is sometimes called the “golden ages”. This was the active time in the fight for the rights and freedoms of black community. There was a great involvement from the American society, where African American history became a study of the society and the unfair treatment they have been experiencing. Their culture was recognized as a key part of the United States.

There were a number of reforms in the education system that limited and regulated any form of discrimination. There was a lot of African American women’s publishing about the history of the people. And because families have been around since the beginning of human history, individuals in secluded African-American communities depended on family, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and even far off relatives. The only way to survive was though the cooperation and unity.

They lived together, worked and were the first people who would offer help in case of need. The more friendly, healthy and close a family is, the more they can achieve, because with a shared goal they become more productive and directed, as everyone contributes to the matter.

Throughout time African-American family has stayed one of the strongest building units of their society. It carries its unique originality and culture which is of great importance not only on a personal level but public as well.

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IvyPanda . 2019. "The African American Family." February 8, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-african-american-family/.

1. IvyPanda . "The African American Family." February 8, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-african-american-family/.

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A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, hundreds of thousands of African Americans newly freed from the yoke of slavery in the South began to dream of fuller participation in American society, including political empowerment, equal economic opportunity, and economic and cultural self-determination.

Unfortunately, by the late 1870s, that dream was largely dead, as white supremacy was quickly restored to the Reconstruction South. White lawmakers on state and local levels passed strict racial segregation laws known as “Jim Crow laws” that made African Americans second-class citizens. While a small number of African Americans were able to become landowners, most were exploited as sharecroppers, a system designed to keep them poor and powerless. Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) perpetrated lynchings and conducted campaigns of terror and intimidation to keep African Americans from voting or exercising other fundamental rights.

With booming economies across the North and Midwest offering industrial jobs for workers of every race, many African Americans realized their hopes for a better standard of living—and a more racially tolerant environment—lay outside the South. By the turn of the 20th century, the Great Migration was underway as hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world. Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.

The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds and brightest talents of the day, an astonishing array of African American artists and scholars. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation’s history—the Harlem Renaissance. Yet this cultural explosion also occurred in Cleveland, Los Angeles and many cities shaped by the great migration. Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated writer, critic, and teacher who became known as the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, described it as a “spiritual coming of age” in which African Americans transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.”

The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves,” as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.

Among the Renaissance’s most significant contributors were intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, and Walter Francis White; electrifying performers Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora Neale Hurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee Cullen; visual artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; and an extraordinary list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and countless others.

Josaphine Baker

At the height of the movement, Harlem was the epicenter of American culture. The neighborhood bustled with African American-owned and run publishing houses and newspapers, music companies, playhouses, nightclubs, and cabarets. The literature, music, and fashion they created defined culture and “cool” for blacks and white alike, in America and around the world.

As the 1920s came to a close, so did the Harlem Renaissance. Its heyday was cut short largely due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression, which hurt African American-owned businesses and publications and made less financial support for the arts available from patrons, foundations, and theatrical organizations.

However, the Harlem Renaissance’s impact on America was indelible. The movement brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience.

Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance instilled in African Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination and pride, a new social consciousness, and a new commitment to political activism, all of which would provide a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it validated the beliefs of its founders and leaders like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes that art could be a vehicle to improve the lives of the African Americans. 

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