African-American history: Difference between revisions

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
imported>Richard Jensen
(add text)
imported>John Stephenson
(title in lede)
(24 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{subpages}}
{{subpages}}
What has come to be known as '''African-American history''' developed out of the same forces that shaped the [[Civil Rights Movement]].


What has come to be known as "Black history" (also known as African-American history) developed out of the same forces that shaped the Civil Rights Movement.
==Colonial era==
==Colonial era==
Africans first arrived in 1619, a Dutch ship sold 19 blacks as indentured servants to Englishmen at Jamestown, Virginia. About 10-12 million Africans were transported to Western Hemisphere, The vast majority of these people came from that stretch of the West African coast extending from present-day Senegal to Angola; a small percentage came from Madagascar and East Africa. Only 3% (about 300,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, good medical care, and lighter work loads. Coming as they did from such an extensive area in Africa, they were not of one physical or cultural type. Significant differences existed among them, but they shared a general set of characteristics. They were tall and had dark skin, tight woolly hair, full lips, broad noses, and limited facial and body hair.  
{{see also|Slavery, U.S.}}
 
Africans first arrived in 1619, a Dutch ship sold 19 blacks as indentured servants to Englishmen at Jamestown, Virginia. About 10-12 million Africans were transported to Western Hemisphere, The vast majority of these people came from that stretch of the West African coast extending from present-day Senegal to Angola; a small percentage came from Madagascar and East Africa. Only 3% (about 300,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, good medical care, and lighter work loads. Coming as they did from such an extensive area in Africa, they were not of one physical or cultural type. Significant differences existed among them, but they shared a general set of characteristics. They were tall and had dark skin, tight woolly hair, full lips, broad noses, and limited facial and body hair. Gomez (1998) suggests that Africans, upon arriving in America, were dispersed along ethnic and cultural lines. While they eventually dropped their African ethnic identities, they retained some of their original cultures. For example, runaway-slave advertisements sometimes identified the slaves by their ethnic roots ("Dinah, an Ebo wench that speaks very good English").  


At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Britain. They avoided the plantations. With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers,  plantation owners turned to lifetime slaves who worked for their keep but were not paid wages and could not easily escape. Slaves had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill a slave, and whites were hung for it.) Generally the slaves developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs.
At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Britain. They avoided the plantations. With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers,  plantation owners turned to lifetime slaves who worked for their keep but were not paid wages and could not easily escape. Slaves had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill a slave, and whites were hung for it.) Generally the slaves developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs.
By 1700 there were 25,000 slaves in the American colonies, about 10% of the population. A few had come from Africa but most came from the West Indies (especially Barbados), or, increasingly, were native born. Their legal status was now clear: they were slaves for life and so were the children of slave mothers. They could be sold, or freed, and a few ran away. Slowly a free black population emerged, concentrated in port cities along the Atlantic coast from Charleston to Boston. Slaves in the cities and towns had many more privileges, but the great majority of slaves lived on southern tobacco or rice plantations, usually in groups of 20 or more.
The most serious slave rebellion was the Stono Uprising, in September 1739 in South Carolina. The colony had about 56,000 slaves, who outnumbered whites 2:1. About 150 slaves rose up, and seizing guns and ammunition, murdered twenty whites, and headed for Spanish Florida. The local militia soon intercepted and killed most of them.<ref> Wood (1974)</ref>


All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually the form of personal servants in the North (where 2% of the people were slaves), and field hands in plantations in the South (where 25% were slaves.)  
All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually the form of personal servants in the North (where 2% of the people were slaves), and field hands in plantations in the South (where 25% were slaves.)  


==Revolution and early republic: 1775-1840==
==Revolution and early republic: 1775-1840==
By 1800 most slaves had become Christians. However few followed the Episcopal or Presbyterian affiliations of most masters; rather by the 1830s most had become Baptists or Methodists, but with a distinctive difference.  Genovese (1974) identified the key features of the black version of Christianity as its raucous emotionalism, an absence of a sense of original sin or depravity, an emphasis on the role of Moses (who at times rivaled in importance Jesus), and an uneasy comingling with magic and conjuring. Genovese argued religion was increasingly central to the lives and self-identity of the slaves. "The religion practiced in the quarters gave the slaves the one thing they absolutely had to have if they were to resist. . . . It fired them with a sense of their own worth before God and man."<ref> Eugene Genovese, ''Roll Jordan Roll'' (1974) p. 283</ref>
==Age of abolition, 1840-1877==
==Age of abolition, 1840-1877==
==Age of Jim Crow, 1877-1964==
{{see also|U.S. Civil War|Reconstruction}}
==Age of Civil Rights, 1964 to present==
 
Over 1 million slaves were moved from the older seaboard slave states, with their declining economies to the rich cotton states of the southwest; many others were sold and moved locally.<ref> Rothman (2005)</ref> Berlin (2003) argues that this "Second Middle Passage shredded the planters' paternalist pretenses in the eyes of black people and prodded slaves and free people of color to create a host of oppositional ideologies and institutions that better accounted for the realities of endless deportations, expulsions and flights that continually remade their world.
 
==Age of Jim Crow, 1877-1954==
{{see also|Jim Crow}}
 
The most dramatic demographic change came after 1940, as most backs left the rural South--some for nearby southern cities, and most headed to large cities in the North and West. In the decade of the 1940s 1.6 million left the South; in the 1950s, 1.5 million, and in the 1960s 1.4 million.  By 1970 there were very few back farmers left. Politically it was a movement from a white dominated rural South where few blacks could vote or speak out, to a pluralistic political environment where northern central cities were controlled by liberals and their allies in the labor unions.
 
==Age of Civil Rights, 1954 to present==
In 1955 blacks in Montgomery, Alabama undertook a boycott of the segregated city buses and chose a local pastor [[Martin Luther King]] as their leader, and [[Rosa Parks]] as a symbolic actor. Drawing on [[Gandhi]]'s teachings, King
directed a nonviolent boycott designed both to end an injustice and to redeem
his white adversaries through love. Love, he said, not only avoided the internal
violence of the spirit but also severed the external chain of hatred that only
produced more hatred. Somebody, he argued, must be willing to break this chain
so that "the beloved community" could be restored and true brotherhood could
begin. In November 1956, the boycotters had won a resounding moral victory when the United States Supreme Court nullified the Alabama laws that enforced segregated buses.  The Montgomery protest captured the imagination of the world over and marked the beginning of a southern black civil rights movement that rocked the Jim Crow South to its foundations. King, with extraordinary oratorical powers and rich religious imagery, emerged as the most inspiring new moral voice in civil rights.  In August 1957 King and 115 other black leaders met in Montgomery and formed the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC), with King as leader.  Working through southern churches, the SCLC enlisted the religious black community in the freedom struggle by expanding "the Montgomery way" across the South.
 
In 1960 southern black college and high school students launched the sit-in movement, forming the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC).
 
Through 1961 and 1962 civil rights leaders pressured the [[John F. Kennedy]] administration to support a tough civil rights bill, seeking a sort of second Emancipation Proclamation that would employ federal power to wipe out segregation just as Lincoln's 1863 decree had abolished slavery. Kennedy, basically conservative and unwilling to offend his base of Southern white voters, refused to act.  Civil rights groups thereupon launched multiple mass demonstrations throughout the South. King and the SCLC staff would single out some notoriously segregated city with officials who tolerated violence; mobilize the local blacks with songs, Bible readings, and rousing oratory; and then lead them on protest marches conspicuous for their nonviolent spirit and moral purpose. Then the marchers escalated their demands--even fill up the jails--until they brought about a moment of "creative tension," when white authorities would either agree to negotiate or resort to violence. If violence broke out it would humiliate the moderate whites and redouble national pressures from church and activists for federal intervention. So far there was no violence on the part of blacks, but they were growing more and more frustrated and angry, with militants like [[Malcolm X]] calling for more extreme measures.<ref> Robert Terrill, "Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X," ''Rhetoric & Public Affairs'' 4#1 Spring 2001, pp. 25-53 in [[Project Muse]]; Akinyele O. Umoja, "The Ballot and the Bullet," ''Journal of Black Studies'' 29 (1999): 558-79; Sean Dennis Cashman, ''African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights, 1900-1990'' (1991), 184-215.</ref>


Nonviolent confrontation failed politically in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, where white authorities were equally nonviolent. In 1963 it succeeded in Birmingham, Alabama, where Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor turned
fire-hoses and police dogs on the marchers--in full view of reporters and television cameras. The civil rights activists thus exposed racist hatred to the scorn of national and world opinion. Jailed during the demonstrations, King wrote his classic "Letter from Birmingham Jail," the most influential and eloquent expression of the goals and philosophy of the civil rights movement.<ref>Edward I. Berry, "Doing Time: King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail." ''Rhetoric & Public Affairs'' 9#1 Spring 2005, pp. 109-131 in [[Project Muse]]</ref> King's great speech, "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, galvanized the movement, putting forth a goal of an integrated color-blind society.<ref> Mark Vail, "The 'Integrative' Rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech," ''Rhetoric & Public Affairs'' 9#1 Spring 2006, pp. 51-78 in [[Project Muse]]; Alexandra Alverez, "Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream': The Speech Event as Metaphor," ''Journal of Black Studies'' 3 (1998):337–57</ref> President [[Lyndon Johnson]], a long-time supporter of civil rights, had replaced Kennedy and he seized the moment to mobilize a majority coalition of northern Democrats, Republicans, white churches, and white labor unions to break a Senate filibuster and pass 1964 [[Civil Rights Act]], which desegregated public facilities. Overnight Jim Crow vanished, with little protest or violence.


However, within days of the passage of the powerful new law, rioting broke out in black ghettoes, as the civil rights leadership discovered it could not control the angry masses.  Nor could it control the radical students in SNCC and like-minded groups who were moving rapidly to the left, rejecting alliances with whites, discarding the goal of integration and demanding instead black separatism and "Black Power."<ref> Akinyele O. Umoja, "1964: The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement," ''Radical History Review'', Jan 2003; 2003: 201 - 226. online in [[Duke journals]]</ref>


==Historiography==
==Historiography==
Line 24: Line 54:


Benjamin Quarles (1904-96) had a significant impact on the teaching of African-American history. Quarles and John Hope Franklin provided a bridge between the work of historians such as Carter G. Woodson and the black history found in late-20th-century universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in 1953 teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins.
Benjamin Quarles (1904-96) had a significant impact on the teaching of African-American history. Quarles and John Hope Franklin provided a bridge between the work of historians such as Carter G. Woodson and the black history found in late-20th-century universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in 1953 teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins.


Black history attempted to reverse centuries of ignorance.  While black historians were not alone in advocating a new examination of slavery and racism in the United States, the study of African-American history has often been a political and scholarly struggle to change assumptions.
Black history attempted to reverse centuries of ignorance.  While black historians were not alone in advocating a new examination of slavery and racism in the United States, the study of African-American history has often been a political and scholarly struggle to change assumptions.
Line 30: Line 59:
One of the foremost assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel.  For decades, historians sought to find explanations for this alleged reality.  Eventually, a series of historians transformed the image of African-Americans, revealing a much richer and complex experience.  Historians, such as Leon Littwack, showed how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people.  Others wrote of rebellions small and large.
One of the foremost assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel.  For decades, historians sought to find explanations for this alleged reality.  Eventually, a series of historians transformed the image of African-Americans, revealing a much richer and complex experience.  Historians, such as Leon Littwack, showed how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people.  Others wrote of rebellions small and large.


In the Twenty-First Century, black history is regarded as mainstream and, by proclamation of President [[Jimmy Carter]], is celebrated every February in the United States during "Black History Month." Proponents of black history believe that it promotes diversity, develops self-esteem, and corrects myths and stereotypes. Opponents argue such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor.<ref> Abul Pitre  and Ruth Ray, "The Controversy Around Black History." ''Western Journal of Black Studies'' 2002 26(3): 149-154. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: [[Ebsco]]</ref>
In the 21st century, black history is regarded as mainstream and, by proclamation of President [[Jimmy Carter]], is celebrated every February in the United States during "Black History Month." Proponents of black history believe that it promotes diversity, develops self-esteem, and corrects myths and stereotypes. Opponents argue such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor.<ref> Abul Pitre  and Ruth Ray, "The Controversy Around Black History." ''Western Journal of Black Studies'' 2002 26(3): 149-154. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: [[Ebsco]]</ref>
 
==Knowledge of black history==
==Knowledge of black history==
Surveys of 11th and 12th grade students and adults in 2005 show that American schools have made them very well informed about black history.  Both groups were asked to name ten famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of the students, the three highest names were blacks: 67% named Martin Luther King, 60% Rosa Parks, and 44% Harriet Tubman. Among adults, King was 2nd (at 36%) and Parks was tied for 4th with 30%, while Tubman tied for 10th place with Henry Ford, at 16%. When distiguished historians were asked in 2006 to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top 100.<ref> Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano, "'Famous Americans': The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes," ''Journal of American History (March 2008) 94#4 pp. 1186–1202)
Surveys of 11th and 12th grade students and adults in 2005 show that American schools have made them very well informed about black history.  Both groups were asked to name ten famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of the students, the three highest names were blacks: 67% named Martin Luther King, 60% Rosa Parks, and 44% Harriet Tubman. Among adults, King was 2nd (at 36%) and Parks was tied for 4th with 30%, while Tubman tied for 10th place with Henry Ford, at 16%. When distinguished historians were asked in 2006 to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top 100.<ref> Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano, "'Famous Americans': The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes," ''Journal of American History'' (March 2008) 94#4 pp. 1186–1202.
</ref>
</ref>


==Bibliography==
==References==
===Surveys===
{{reflist}}
* Earle, Jonathan, and Malcolm Swanston. ''The Routledge Atlas of African American History'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-African-American-History-Atlases/dp/0415921422/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208666779&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred Moss, ''From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans'', (2001), standard textbook; first edition in 1947 [http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Freedom-History-African-Americans/dp/0375406719/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208666779&sr=1-5 excerpt and text search]
* Hine, Darlene Clark, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Elsa Barkley Brown, eds.  ''Black Women in America - An Historical Encyclopedia'', (2005) [http://www.amazon.com/Black-Women-America-Historical-Encyclopedia/dp/0253327741/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208666895&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Hine, Darlene Clark, et al. ''The African-American Odyssey'' (2 vol, 4th ed. 2007) textbook [http://www.amazon.com/African-American-Odyssey-4th-Darlene-Hine/dp/0136150136/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208666930&sr=1-7 excerpt and text search vol 1]
* Holt, Thomas C. ed. ''Major Problems in African-American History: From Freedom to "Freedom Now," 1865-1990s'' (2000) reader in primary and secondary sources
* Lowery, Charles D.  and John F. Marszalek, eds. ''Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present'' (1992) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=71235565  online edition]
* Mandle, Jay R. ''Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience since the Civil War'' (1992)  [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=3099697 online edition]
* Painter, Nell Irvin. ''Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present.'' (2006),  480 pp survey
* Smallwood, Arwin D ''The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times'' (1997)
 
===Slave era pre 1860===
* Berlin, Ira. ''Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America'' (2000) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00069 ACLS E-book]* Genovese, Eugene. ''Roll Jordan Roll'' (1974), highly iunfluential study of slavery [http://www.amazon.com/Roll-Jordan-World-Slaves-Made/dp/0394716523/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208665810&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
*  Horton, James Oliver. ''In hope of liberty: culture, community, and protest among northern free Blacks, 1700-1860'' (1998) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02341 ACLS E-book]
* White, Deborah Gray. ''Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South,'' (2nd ed. 1999)
* Wood, Peter H. ''Black majority: Negroes in colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion'' (1975) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00338 ACLS E-book]
 
===Emancipation and Reconstruction Era: 1860-1890===
see the longer Bibliography at [[Reconstruction]]
 
* Butchart, Ronald E. ''Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875'' (1980) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15101767  onlineedition]
*Cimbala, Paul A. and Trefousse, Hans L. (eds.) ''The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South After the Civil War.'' 2005.
* Click, Patricia C. ''Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867'' (2001) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105840008 online edition]
* Crouch, Barry. ''The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans'' (1992)
* Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. "The Freedmen's Bureau"  (1901)] by leading black scholar [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid=ABK2934-0087-50 online edition]
* Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. ''Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880'' (1935)
* Durrill, Wayne K. "Political Legitimacy and Local Courts: 'Politicks at Such a Rage' in a Southern Community during Reconstruction" in ''Journal of Southern History'', Vol. 70 #3, 2004 pp 577-617 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5006777413 online edition]
* Foner Eric. ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877'' (1988), the standard history of Reconstruction.
* Gutman, Herbert G. ''The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925'' (1977)
* Hahn, Steven. ''A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration'' (2003), 1865-1950 [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.03953 ACLS E-book]
* Jones, Jacqueline. ''Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present'' (1985)
* Kolchin, Peter. ''First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction'' 1972.
* Litwack, Leon F. ''Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery.'' 1979,
* Oubre, Claude F. ''Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership'' 1978.
* Quarles, Benjamin. ''The Negro in the Civil War'''. (1953) by leading African American historian
* Richardson, Joe M. ''Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890'' (1986).
* Howard N.  Rabinowitz, ''Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890'' (1978)
* Span, Christopher M. "'I Must Learn Now or Not at All': Social and Cultural Capital in the Educational Initiatives of Formerly Enslaved African Americans in Mississippi, 1862-1869," ''The Journal of African American History'', 2002  pp 196-222 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000605558 online edition]
* Ransom, Roger L. ''Conflict and Compromise''. (1989), econometric history
* Oubre, Claude F. ''Forty Acres and a Mule''. (1978).
* Rodrigue, John C. "Labor Militancy and Black Grassroots Political Mobilization in the Louisiana Sugar Region, 1865-1868" in ''Journal of Southern History'', Vol. 67 #1, 2001 pp 115-45; [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002388829 online edition]  also in JSTOR
* Schwalm, Leslie A. "'Sweet Dreams of Freedom': Freedwomen's Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina," ''Journal of Women's History,'' Vol. 9 #1, 1997 pp 9-32 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=98499026 online edition]
* Williamson, Joel. ''After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877'' 1965.
 
===Jim Crow Era: 1890-1954===
* Anderson, James D. ''The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935'' (1988) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=54406292  online edition]
* Bayor, Ronald H. ''Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta'' (1996)
* Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed ''Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up from Slavery 100 Years Later'' (2003)
* Bullock, Henry Allen. ''A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present'' (1967) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00625 ACLS E-book]
* Cartwright, Joseph H. ''The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s'' (1976)
* Gatewood, Jr., Willard B. ''Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920'' (2000)
* Gosnell, Harold F. ''Negro politicians: the rise of Negro politics in Chicago,'' (1935, 1967) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02846 ACLS E-book]
* Hahn, Steven. ''A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration'' (2003), 1865-1950 [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.03953 ACLS E-book]; also [http://www.amazon.com/Nation-under-Our-Feet-Political/dp/067401765X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208663397&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Jones, Jacqueline. ''Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present'' (1985)
* Harlan. Louis R.  ''Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1900'' (1972) the standard biography, vol 1
* Harlan. Louis R.  ''Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee 1901-1915'' (1983), the standard scholarly biography vol 2 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=78995092  online edition vol 2]
* Harlan. Louis R.    ''Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan'' (1988) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104404815  online edition]
* Harlan. Louis R.  "The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington."  ''Journal of Southern History'' 37#3 (1971).  pp 393-416 Documents Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation against segregation and disfranchisement. [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2206948 in JSTOR]
* McMurry, Linda O.  ''George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol'' (1982) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106358296 online edition]
* Jones, Jacqueline. ''Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present'' (1985) [http://www.amazon.com/Labor-Love-Sorrow-Jacqueline-Jones/dp/0394745361/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208663256&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Lewis, David Levering. ''W. E. B. DuBois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race'' (2 vol 1993, 2000). [http://www.amazon.com/W-E-Bois-1868-1919-Biography/dp/0805035680/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208663291&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search vol 1], winner of Pulitzer Prize; ''W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/W-E-B-Du-Bois-Equality-1919-1963/dp/B0006Q1URA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208663291&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Logan, Frenise A. ''The Negro in North Carolina, 1876-1894'' (1964),
* Logan, Rayford. ''The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson'' (Originally Published as: ''The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir: 1877-1901'') (1970) [http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Negro-Rutherford-Woodrow-Wilson/dp/0306807580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208663219&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* McMillen, Neil R. ''Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow'' (1989).
* Meier, August.  ''Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington'' (1963),
* Meier, August.  "Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washington."  23 ''Journal of Southern History'' 22#2 (1957) [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2955315 in JSTOR]
* Sterner, Richard. ''The Negro's share: a study of income, consumption, housing, and public assistance'' (1943), statistical analysis of 1930s [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02857 ACLS E-book]
* Walker, Juliet E. K. ''Encyclopedia of African American Business History'' (1999) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101376721  online edition]
* Woodward, C. Vann. ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'' (3d ed., 1974), [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02029 in ACLS E-books]
* Woodward, C. Vann. ''Origins of the New South, 1877-1913'' (1951) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00007 ACLS E-book]
* Wintz, Cary D. ''African American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104912065  online edition]
 
===Historiography and teaching==
* Dagbovie, Pero. ''The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/History-Movement-Woodson-Lorenzo-Johnston/dp/0252074351/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208662932&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search]
* Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. "Exploring a Century of Historical Scholarship on Booker T. Washington." ''Journal of African American History'' 2007 92(2): 239-264. Issn: 1548-1867 Fulltext: [[Ebsco]]
* Dorsey, Allison. "Black History Is American History: Teaching African American History in the Twenty-first Century." ''Journal of American History'' 2007 93(4): 1171-1177. Issn: 0021-8723 Fulltext: [[History Cooperative]]
* Eyerman, Ron. ''Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity'' (2002) argues that slavery emerged as a central element of the collective identity of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era.
* Fields, Barbara J. "Ideology and Race in American History," in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson , eds., ''Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward'' (1982),
* Franklin, John Hope. "Afro-American History: State of the Art," ''Journal of American History'' (June 1988): 163-173. [http://www.jstor.org/pss/1889663 in JSTOR]
* Goggin, Jacqueline. ''Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History'' (1993)
*  Hall, Stephen Gilroy.  "'To Give a Faithful Account of the Race': History and Historical Consciousness in the African-American Community, 1827-1915." PhD disseratation, Ohio State U. 1999. 470 pp.  DAI 2000 60(8): 3084-A. DA9941339  Fulltext: [[ProQuest Dissertations & Theses]]
* Harris, Robert L., "Coming of Age: The Transformation of Afro-American Historiography," ''Journal of Negro History'' 57 (1982): 107-121. [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2717569 in JSTOR]
* Harris, Robert L., Jr. "The Flowering of Afro-American History." ''American Historical Review'' 1987 92(5): 1150-1161. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1868489  in Jstor]
* Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, "African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race," ''Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society'' 17 (1992): 251-274.
* Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. ''Afro-American History: Past, Present, and Future.'' (1986).
* Hine, Darlene Clark. ''Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History'' (1994) [http://www.amazon.com/Hine-Sight-Re-Construction-American-Diaspora/dp/0253211247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208662746&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Hornsby Jr., Alton, et al. eds. ''A Companion to African American History.'' (2005). 580 pp. 31 long essays by experts covering African and diasporic connections in the context of the transatlantic slave trade; colonial and antebellum African, European, and indigenous relations; processes of cultural exchange; war and emancipation; post-emancipation community and institution building; intersections of class and gender; migration; and struggles for civil rights. ISBN 0-631-23066-1 
* McMillen, Neil R. "Up from Jim Crow: Black History Enters the Profession's Mainstream." ''Reviews in American History'' 1987 15(4): 543-549. Issn: 0048-7511 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2701928  in Jstor]
* Meier, August,  and Elliott Rudwick. ''Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980'' (1986)
* Nelson, Hasker. ''Listening For Our Past: A Lay Guide To African American Oral History Interviewing'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Listening-Our-Past-American-Interviewing/dp/0964732106/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208662776&sr=8-9 excerpt and text search]
* Quarles, Benjamin. ''Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography'' (1988).
* Rabinowitz, Howard N. "More Than the Woodward Thesis: Assessing The Strange Career of Jim Crow", ''Journal of American History'' 75 (Dec. 1988): 842-56. [http://www.jstor.org/pss/1901533 in JSTOR]
* Reidy, Joseph P. "Slave Emancipation Through the Prism of Archives Records" (1997)  [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/slave-emancipation.html online]
* Roper, John Herbert. ''U. B. Phillips: A Southern Mind'' (1984), on the white historian of slavery
* Trotter, Joe W. "African-American History: Origins, Development, and Current State of the Field," ''OAH Magazine of History'' Volume 7, No 4 Summer 1993 [http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/africanamerican/trotter.html online edition]
* Wright, William D. ''Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography'' (2002), proposes new racial and ethnic terminology and classifications for the study of black people and history. [http://www.amazon.com/Black-History-Identity-Call-Historiography/dp/0275974421/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208661182&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
 
===Primary Sources===
*Berlin, Ira, ed. ''Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War'' (1995)
* Finkenbine, Roy E. ''Sources of the African-American Past: Primary Sources in American History'' (2nd Edition) (2003)
* Rawick, George P. ed. ''The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography'' (19 vols., (1972) oral histories with ex-slaves conducted in 1930s by [[WPA]]
* Sernett, Milton C. ''African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness'' (1999) [http://www.amazon.com/Afro-American-Religious-History-Documentary-Witness/dp/0822305941/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208662776&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]
*  Wright, Kai, ed. ''The African-American Archive: The History of the Black Experience Through Documents'' (2001)
 
 
==External links==
* [http://www.loc.gov/rr/mss/guide/african.html Library of Congress - African American History and Culture]
* [http://search.eb.com/Blackhistory/home.do ''Encyclopedia Britannica'' - Guide to Black History]
* [http://www.tntech.edu/history/black.html Tennessee Technological University - African-American History and Studies]
 
 
====notes====
<references/>
 
[[Category:History Workgroup]]
[[Category:CZ Live]]

Revision as of 10:44, 27 December 2020

This article is developing and not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

What has come to be known as African-American history developed out of the same forces that shaped the Civil Rights Movement.

Colonial era

See also: Slavery, U.S.

Africans first arrived in 1619, a Dutch ship sold 19 blacks as indentured servants to Englishmen at Jamestown, Virginia. About 10-12 million Africans were transported to Western Hemisphere, The vast majority of these people came from that stretch of the West African coast extending from present-day Senegal to Angola; a small percentage came from Madagascar and East Africa. Only 3% (about 300,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, good medical care, and lighter work loads. Coming as they did from such an extensive area in Africa, they were not of one physical or cultural type. Significant differences existed among them, but they shared a general set of characteristics. They were tall and had dark skin, tight woolly hair, full lips, broad noses, and limited facial and body hair. Gomez (1998) suggests that Africans, upon arriving in America, were dispersed along ethnic and cultural lines. While they eventually dropped their African ethnic identities, they retained some of their original cultures. For example, runaway-slave advertisements sometimes identified the slaves by their ethnic roots ("Dinah, an Ebo wench that speaks very good English").

At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Britain. They avoided the plantations. With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers, plantation owners turned to lifetime slaves who worked for their keep but were not paid wages and could not easily escape. Slaves had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill a slave, and whites were hung for it.) Generally the slaves developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs.

By 1700 there were 25,000 slaves in the American colonies, about 10% of the population. A few had come from Africa but most came from the West Indies (especially Barbados), or, increasingly, were native born. Their legal status was now clear: they were slaves for life and so were the children of slave mothers. They could be sold, or freed, and a few ran away. Slowly a free black population emerged, concentrated in port cities along the Atlantic coast from Charleston to Boston. Slaves in the cities and towns had many more privileges, but the great majority of slaves lived on southern tobacco or rice plantations, usually in groups of 20 or more.

The most serious slave rebellion was the Stono Uprising, in September 1739 in South Carolina. The colony had about 56,000 slaves, who outnumbered whites 2:1. About 150 slaves rose up, and seizing guns and ammunition, murdered twenty whites, and headed for Spanish Florida. The local militia soon intercepted and killed most of them.[1]

All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually the form of personal servants in the North (where 2% of the people were slaves), and field hands in plantations in the South (where 25% were slaves.)

Revolution and early republic: 1775-1840

By 1800 most slaves had become Christians. However few followed the Episcopal or Presbyterian affiliations of most masters; rather by the 1830s most had become Baptists or Methodists, but with a distinctive difference. Genovese (1974) identified the key features of the black version of Christianity as its raucous emotionalism, an absence of a sense of original sin or depravity, an emphasis on the role of Moses (who at times rivaled in importance Jesus), and an uneasy comingling with magic and conjuring. Genovese argued religion was increasingly central to the lives and self-identity of the slaves. "The religion practiced in the quarters gave the slaves the one thing they absolutely had to have if they were to resist. . . . It fired them with a sense of their own worth before God and man."[2]

Age of abolition, 1840-1877

See also: U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction

Over 1 million slaves were moved from the older seaboard slave states, with their declining economies to the rich cotton states of the southwest; many others were sold and moved locally.[3] Berlin (2003) argues that this "Second Middle Passage shredded the planters' paternalist pretenses in the eyes of black people and prodded slaves and free people of color to create a host of oppositional ideologies and institutions that better accounted for the realities of endless deportations, expulsions and flights that continually remade their world.

Age of Jim Crow, 1877-1954

See also: Jim Crow

The most dramatic demographic change came after 1940, as most backs left the rural South--some for nearby southern cities, and most headed to large cities in the North and West. In the decade of the 1940s 1.6 million left the South; in the 1950s, 1.5 million, and in the 1960s 1.4 million. By 1970 there were very few back farmers left. Politically it was a movement from a white dominated rural South where few blacks could vote or speak out, to a pluralistic political environment where northern central cities were controlled by liberals and their allies in the labor unions.

Age of Civil Rights, 1954 to present

In 1955 blacks in Montgomery, Alabama undertook a boycott of the segregated city buses and chose a local pastor Martin Luther King as their leader, and Rosa Parks as a symbolic actor. Drawing on Gandhi's teachings, King directed a nonviolent boycott designed both to end an injustice and to redeem his white adversaries through love. Love, he said, not only avoided the internal violence of the spirit but also severed the external chain of hatred that only produced more hatred. Somebody, he argued, must be willing to break this chain so that "the beloved community" could be restored and true brotherhood could begin. In November 1956, the boycotters had won a resounding moral victory when the United States Supreme Court nullified the Alabama laws that enforced segregated buses. The Montgomery protest captured the imagination of the world over and marked the beginning of a southern black civil rights movement that rocked the Jim Crow South to its foundations. King, with extraordinary oratorical powers and rich religious imagery, emerged as the most inspiring new moral voice in civil rights. In August 1957 King and 115 other black leaders met in Montgomery and formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with King as leader. Working through southern churches, the SCLC enlisted the religious black community in the freedom struggle by expanding "the Montgomery way" across the South.

In 1960 southern black college and high school students launched the sit-in movement, forming the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Through 1961 and 1962 civil rights leaders pressured the John F. Kennedy administration to support a tough civil rights bill, seeking a sort of second Emancipation Proclamation that would employ federal power to wipe out segregation just as Lincoln's 1863 decree had abolished slavery. Kennedy, basically conservative and unwilling to offend his base of Southern white voters, refused to act. Civil rights groups thereupon launched multiple mass demonstrations throughout the South. King and the SCLC staff would single out some notoriously segregated city with officials who tolerated violence; mobilize the local blacks with songs, Bible readings, and rousing oratory; and then lead them on protest marches conspicuous for their nonviolent spirit and moral purpose. Then the marchers escalated their demands--even fill up the jails--until they brought about a moment of "creative tension," when white authorities would either agree to negotiate or resort to violence. If violence broke out it would humiliate the moderate whites and redouble national pressures from church and activists for federal intervention. So far there was no violence on the part of blacks, but they were growing more and more frustrated and angry, with militants like Malcolm X calling for more extreme measures.[4]

Nonviolent confrontation failed politically in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, where white authorities were equally nonviolent. In 1963 it succeeded in Birmingham, Alabama, where Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor turned fire-hoses and police dogs on the marchers--in full view of reporters and television cameras. The civil rights activists thus exposed racist hatred to the scorn of national and world opinion. Jailed during the demonstrations, King wrote his classic "Letter from Birmingham Jail," the most influential and eloquent expression of the goals and philosophy of the civil rights movement.[5] King's great speech, "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, galvanized the movement, putting forth a goal of an integrated color-blind society.[6] President Lyndon Johnson, a long-time supporter of civil rights, had replaced Kennedy and he seized the moment to mobilize a majority coalition of northern Democrats, Republicans, white churches, and white labor unions to break a Senate filibuster and pass 1964 Civil Rights Act, which desegregated public facilities. Overnight Jim Crow vanished, with little protest or violence.

However, within days of the passage of the powerful new law, rioting broke out in black ghettoes, as the civil rights leadership discovered it could not control the angry masses. Nor could it control the radical students in SNCC and like-minded groups who were moving rapidly to the left, rejecting alliances with whites, discarding the goal of integration and demanding instead black separatism and "Black Power."[7]

Historiography

While African-Americans and their African ancestors played a central role in creating and defining the United States, these Americans had few people to tell their stories. Some noted scholars, such as W.E.B. Dubois, shed light on the African-American experience. But that experience was often ignored by white historians.

By the end of the 19th century, African-Americans were commonly depicted in derogatory ways. The days of slavery were portrayed as a time when black people were happy and content. And many historians came to view the aftermath of the Civil War as a tragic time when blacks and carpet-baggers ran wild. In this history, it was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that came to save the day. This portrayal of African-Americans was popularized by filmmaker D.W. Griffith in the Birth of a Nation. The 1915 film glorified the KKK. But it was a view that dominated film and literature into the 1930s when Gone with the Wind offered a romantic story of the Old South full of blacks who appeared content to play inferior roles.

In the first half of the 20th century Carter G. Woodson devoted himself to the early black history movement, an essential component of the proto (pre-Black Power era) black studies movement. Woodson foreshadowed modern black studies scholars in stressing that the study of African descendants be scholarly sound, creative, restorative, and, most important, directly relevant to the black community. He popularized black history with a variety of innovative strategies and vehicles, including Association for the Study of Negro Life outreach activities, Negro History Week, and a popular black history magazine. This article explores how the multi-talented Woodson democratized, legitimized, and popularized black history.[8]

Benjamin Quarles (1904-96) had a significant impact on the teaching of African-American history. Quarles and John Hope Franklin provided a bridge between the work of historians such as Carter G. Woodson and the black history found in late-20th-century universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in 1953 teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins.

Black history attempted to reverse centuries of ignorance. While black historians were not alone in advocating a new examination of slavery and racism in the United States, the study of African-American history has often been a political and scholarly struggle to change assumptions.

One of the foremost assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel. For decades, historians sought to find explanations for this alleged reality. Eventually, a series of historians transformed the image of African-Americans, revealing a much richer and complex experience. Historians, such as Leon Littwack, showed how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people. Others wrote of rebellions small and large.

In the 21st century, black history is regarded as mainstream and, by proclamation of President Jimmy Carter, is celebrated every February in the United States during "Black History Month." Proponents of black history believe that it promotes diversity, develops self-esteem, and corrects myths and stereotypes. Opponents argue such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor.[9]

Knowledge of black history

Surveys of 11th and 12th grade students and adults in 2005 show that American schools have made them very well informed about black history. Both groups were asked to name ten famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of the students, the three highest names were blacks: 67% named Martin Luther King, 60% Rosa Parks, and 44% Harriet Tubman. Among adults, King was 2nd (at 36%) and Parks was tied for 4th with 30%, while Tubman tied for 10th place with Henry Ford, at 16%. When distinguished historians were asked in 2006 to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top 100.[10]

References

  1. Wood (1974)
  2. Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll (1974) p. 283
  3. Rothman (2005)
  4. Robert Terrill, "Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4#1 Spring 2001, pp. 25-53 in Project Muse; Akinyele O. Umoja, "The Ballot and the Bullet," Journal of Black Studies 29 (1999): 558-79; Sean Dennis Cashman, African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights, 1900-1990 (1991), 184-215.
  5. Edward I. Berry, "Doing Time: King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9#1 Spring 2005, pp. 109-131 in Project Muse
  6. Mark Vail, "The 'Integrative' Rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9#1 Spring 2006, pp. 51-78 in Project Muse; Alexandra Alverez, "Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream': The Speech Event as Metaphor," Journal of Black Studies 3 (1998):337–57
  7. Akinyele O. Umoja, "1964: The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement," Radical History Review, Jan 2003; 2003: 201 - 226. online in Duke journals
  8. Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, "Making Black History Practical and Popular: Carter G. Woodson, the Proto Black Studies Movement, and the Struggle for Black Liberation." Western Journal of Black Studies 2004 28(2): 372-383. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: Ebsco
  9. Abul Pitre and Ruth Ray, "The Controversy Around Black History." Western Journal of Black Studies 2002 26(3): 149-154. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: Ebsco
  10. Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano, "'Famous Americans': The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes," Journal of American History (March 2008) 94#4 pp. 1186–1202.