History of the African American

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Civil rights activist Martin Luther King in conversation with US President Lyndon B. Johnson (1966)

The history of African American people begins with the arrival of the first slaves in the European colonies, from which the United States emerged in 1776. African slaves came to the North American mainland in large numbers after plantation economies emerged in the southern colonies that were extremely profitable, but whose labor demand could not be met by local wage laborers. The economic and political contradictions between the northern states , which had given up slavery in many individual steps from 1776 onwards, and the southern states , which clung to it, culminated in the Civil War in 1861 , which ended in defeat for the southern states , which allowed slavery. The liberation of all remaining slaves followed in 1865.

The abolition of the slave trade and slavery initially did not lead to any legal or even factual equality for Afro-Americans in either the northern or southern states . From the late 19th century to the 1960s, the United States had a comprehensive system of segregation that placed African Americans at a disadvantage compared to whites in almost all areas of life. Fundamental changes - the abolition of segregation and legal equality - could only be achieved by the Afro-American minority in the civil rights movement that emerged in the mid-1950s . Many problems - especially the disadvantage of African Americans in business and education, their discrimination in everyday life and the white supremacy ideology - persisted and preoccupied American society to this day.

Colonial times

Juan "Jan" Rodrigues, a Creole merchant or shipping agent, who, coming from his home island Hispaniola , landed on Manhattan in 1612 with the Dutch ship Jonge Tobias , is considered to be one of the first people of African descent to settle in what would later become the territory of the United States .

Africans have been bought and shipped to the American southern states since 1619.

religion

For the expression Black Churches, see African American Religion in the United States . In the African churches the lines between free and unfree blacks have been blurred; Due to their poverty, slaves could not assume leadership positions in these communities; but occasionally they became deacons or clergy. The African Orthodox Church is one of these churches .

According to a 2007 poll, more than half of African Americans were black church members. The most numerous are Baptists to whom the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention of America belong. The second largest denomination are Methodists , divided into the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church . The Pentecostal movement is represented in various groups, including the Church of God in Christ . 5% of African Americans belong to the Catholic Church . 22% of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States are African American.

20% of Muslims in the US are black Africans. At the beginning of the 20th century, some African Americans converted to Islam , mainly under the influence of black nationalism , which gave rise to syncretic movements such as the Moorish Science Temple of America and the Nation of Islam . World boxing champion Muhammad Ali and civil rights activist Malcolm X initially belonged to the Nation of Islam , but later resigned. Malcolm X joined the traditional Sunni direction of Islam after his pilgrimage to Mecca , Muhammad Ali became a follower of Sufism in 2005 under the guidance of Sheikh Hisham Kabbani , chairman and co-founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of America .

From independence to the civil war

Situation in the northern states

In the northern states - New England , New York , New Jersey and Pennsylvania - slavery was abolished by law in many steps from 1777 to 1865. However, a large proportion of the slaves living in the northern states at the time the United States was founded remained unfree throughout their lives. Even those Afro-Americans who were formally freed were - out of poverty or because the slave owners only released them under this condition - often forced to return to long-term dependency as debt servants. Many former slave owners benefited from the fact that they could let their formally free former slaves continue to work for them under exploitative conditions without having to bear responsibility for them. Many former slaves were also kept dependent because slave owners continued to keep their spouses or children enslaved. Until 1865, African-Americans could not become American citizens, and in the so-called “free states” the so-called “ Jim Crow laws ” prevented the integration of blacks in a free society.

In many parts of the north, too, free blacks were subject to the same legal regulations as slaves: they were subject to curfews and travel restrictions, were not entitled to vote , were not allowed to join juries , testify in court or join the armed forces .

In the cities, the legal form of term slavery was introduced, a form of slavery in which the slave should be given freedom after a defined (usually longer) period of time. This allowed the slave owners to use the labor of the slaves while they were young, but to get rid of responsibility for them before they got old.

Another form of delaying the release was the so-called “ forced apprenticeship ”, in which African-American children and adolescents who were formally free were placed in the household of a “teacher” by court order and mostly against the will of their parents.

That the abolition of slavery and the equality of Afro-Americans came so hesitantly also led to a division within the black community. The living conditions of those Afro-Americans who remained unfree until the final dissolution of slavery differed fundamentally from those of those who were freed soon after the declaration of independence. The latter were emancipated and began to reconstruct African life historically; they redefined the concept of race , the relationship between blacks and whites, as well as the relationship between blacks. Regardless of all the differences, the Afro-Americans agreed to use the self-designation “African”. As an expression of their personal liberation and as an act of political challenge, these former slaves took on new names. Instead of the stubby and disparaging names that the owners often gave them, they gave each other full first names and surnames . Frequently chosen nicknames were Freeman , Newman , Somerset and Armstead , but even more often freed slaves took on common Anglo-American family names such as Jackson , Johnson or Morgan .

Many freed slaves, who only now gained the right to do so, married their previous sexual partners or legalized their families. Others went in search of partners and children from whom they had been separated - possibly during the turmoil of the War of Independence. Even with partners and children identified, however, many free blacks were too poor to set up a common household.

The opportunities for a good living were slim for African Americans. In most industries, employers were unwilling to hire black people for skilled or rewarding jobs. Most of the jobs for African Americans were in the service industries that had previously been identified with slavery. Black women, for example, found work almost exclusively as domestic helpers and cooks. Men became grooms, hairdressers and coachmen. Only a small minority of black merchants and manufacturers made it into the social middle class.

To shake off the stigma of slavery, many liberated Afro-Americans who could afford it moved to live. Since the rural regions were poor and offered no prospects, many free blacks were drawn to the cities, especially to New York City , Philadelphia and Boston . They did not find cheap rents there in black ghettos , but in industrial areas in the outskirts of the cities that were actually unsuitable for living, where they initially lived next to poor whites. Lively African American communities soon sprang up here, with black churches, schools, welfare organizations and other institutions that took on the problems of the newly freed slaves. The gender ratio of blacks, which had been heavily male-dominated until the import bans for slaves, reached equilibrium in the cities as early as the early 19th century. By 1806, New York City was already home to more black women than black men. Young men in particular were underrepresented in the cities; these had often been sold to the southern states by their owners. Since sea trade offered Afro-American men more employment than any other northern industry, many had gone to sea too.

An elite also emerged in the cities and the African-American institutions established there that assumed a leadership role within the black community. These included u. a. the Reverend Richard Allen ( Philadelphia ) and the Masonic Prince Hall ( Boston ). Such Black Petitioners , who were more educated and wealthy than most of the other ex-slaves and who had closer ties with whites, began to make the interests of African American be heard and to exert political pressure. In particular, they campaigned for a ban on the slave trade, for a general emancipation of slaves and, finally, for the legal equality of African Americans. Outside of the black public, however, and even among most other blacks, their demands were barely noticed.

Situation in Delaware, Maryland and the Virginia lowlands

In the Upper South slavery lost their economic foundation, as there the plantation economy was replaced by a mixed farming culture in the last decades of the 18th century. The working and living conditions of the remaining slaves changed fundamentally. Since fewer and fewer slaves could be used in the new economic system, many were released; others were sold profitably to the states bordering to the south, where the plantation economy continued to expand. There was no swift abolition of slavery in the Upper South either; measures such as contingent manumission and new forms of bondage such as term slavery have rather dragged it off in the long term - much to the benefit of the entrepreneurs. Only rarely could slaves free themselves by buying themselves; they barely had enough money. Free African Americans worked all the harder to buy their loved ones out. Escape was also the most likely option for slaves whose relatives or friends lived in freedom.

After their release, the former slaves took on new, full names; mostly they chose widespread Anglo-American names, but often names such as Freeman , Freeland or Liberty . Many of the liberated changed residence; others could not because they wanted to be around family and friends who were still unfree. There was little rural exodus like in the north in the Upper South.

Wherever Afro-Americans gained freedom, they encountered social ostracism and discrimination; they were excluded. New laws emerged that enforced the subordination of blacks even beyond the formal abolition of slavery. Basic rights such as the right to vote, to participate in juries, the right to testify in court or to join the military, but e.g. B. the right to keep dogs or to carry guns were denied them. There were passport laws that prevented African Americans from traveling freely. Blacks were required to report to their county council each year .

While Afro-Americans played hardly any role in the economic life of the north, they occupied a central position in the handicrafts and urban service sectors of the Upper South. Blacks worked there in large numbers as barbers , caterers , carters and shoemakers. Most of the free blacks in the cities, however, were poor and dispossessed.

As in the north, a small African-American ruling class emerged in the Upper South, the most important representatives of which were the Methodist preachers Daniel Coker ( Baltimore ), Christopher McPherson ( Richmond ) and Caesar Hope ( Williamsburg ). In Baltimore in 1792, African American Thomas Brown, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, ran for a seat in the Maryland House of Representatives .

Situation in the Lower South

In South Carolina and Georgia , too , the number of free African Americans rose slightly after the end of the Revolutionary War. Many of these people, who mainly settled in the large port cities, had immigrated from Saint-Domingue (Haiti before independence). Others - especially women, and a disproportionately large number of domestic workers among them - had been released by their owners. Still others had been so encouraged by their owners that they could free themselves by buying themselves. More than in the Upper South and in the north, where freed slaves usually completely broke with their former owners, former slaves sought the patronage of their previous owners in the Lower South . As free, they took their names and did not leave the region, but stayed nearby. Some slave owners helped their freed slaves with financial or other support in establishing an independent economic existence.

The continuation of the bond with the former masters brought many slaves fragile economic advantages, but no equality. Even as free people, blacks remained petitioners and petitioners even when they went to court. In many states, e.g. For example, in South Carolina, free blacks had to pay an annual Free Negro Capitation Tax . In order to gain social acceptance and within the framework of their modest financial means, they tried to emulate the lifestyle of their patrons and therefore occasionally even kept slaves themselves. From the point of view of the white slave owners, there was no more comprehensive evidence of the social reliability of a free man than his entry into the slave class. During the first years of the 19th century, nearly a third of the free black families in Charleston acquired slaves, many of whom were members of their own who were to be freed in this way. For others, such as a small number of black planters on the outskirts of the city, slavery was pure business.

Among the organizations that the free African American elite brought into being, the Brown Fellowship Society, founded in Charleston in 1790, should be mentioned, a mutual association that was initially only supposed to ensure that members had access to the good Received graveyard land that the whites withheld from them. Very soon, however, the Society developed into an exclusive, caste-conscious club to which the majority of blacks were not allowed. A group of particularly dark-skinned African-Americans who were not accepted because of their skin color, founded their own organization, the Humane Brotherhood , a little later . The skin color ideology that emerged in the slavery society now also shaped the black community itself and contributed to the emergence of a racial pecking order.

Situation in the Deep South

In the Spanish-controlled parts of the Deep South , where a comparatively liberal release law applied, the proportion of the free black population rose significantly in the second half of the 18th century. Even after the end of Spanish rule (1800) and the Louisiana Purchase (1803), with which Louisiana fell to the USA, it was still possible for many slaves to free themselves by buying themselves. The free black population of the Deep South was drawn to the cities, particularly New Orleans , Mobile, and Pensacola . Their free black population increased steadily, also due to immigration from the Caribbean. In New Orleans alone, thousands of blacks who had fled Saint-Domingue but were also expelled from Havana in 1809 found refuge. These black townspeople formed a cosmopolitan community that had a distinct cultural life of its own, was filled with strong self-confidence and felt an insurmountable cultural distance from plantation slaves. Free black men found employment there in service occupations, such as barbers, coachmen and stable operators; black women made their living as seamstresses, dressmakers and peddlers .

As in the Upper South, free African Americans remained loyal to their ex-masters who had released them in the Deep South. They took their family names and were married as Catholics or their children were baptized as Catholics; the former slave owners acted as godfathers , notarised legal documents and acted as guarantors when their former slaves applied for loans . As in the Upper South, free Afro-Americans who wanted to improve their social status were also under pressure in the Deep South to acquire slaves themselves. As a result, abolitionism , which was strongly advocated by African Americans in the northern states, found little support in the black community of the deep south.

After the end of Spanish rule, not only were the laws regulating the release of slaves tightened, but also the laws governing free African Americans. They were no longer allowed to carry weapons and were punished more severely than whites if they violated the law. Slaves were allowed to testify in court against free blacks, but not against whites. Governor William CC Claiborne gradually disbanded the black armed forces of Louisiana.

Following the deportation of hundreds of thousands of slaves from north to south from 1783 ( Second Middle Passage ), which completely destroyed the social structures of the black community, a new social leadership class emerged in the slave community of the Deep South. It was now recruited from religious leaders - the black community had meanwhile become Christianized - but also from people who took on particularly exposed functions on the plantations, such as healers, midwives, foremen or craftsmen. These authorities were particularly important for the black community because they could not appeal to the white society (e.g. courts) in the event of internal conflicts.

Conditions of the Civil War

In 1808 the import of slaves was formally forbidden, but the ban was barely observed. In 1860 the United States had 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the southern states and 500,000 free African Americans across the country. Slavery was very controversial. The growth of abolitionism culminated in the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and was one of the reasons for the secession of the Confederate States of America , which sparked the American Civil War (1861-1865).

During the civil war, over 180,000 African Americans fought for the Union Army , many of them were organized in the United States Colored Troops .

From the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century

The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederation free; it contained exceptions for all slaves in the territories who had not renounced. In this way, no slave was immediately freed, since US law over the Confederate States had in fact no effect at the time. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1865) freed all the slaves, including those in the states that had not seceded. During the Reconstruction , African Americans in the South were given the right to vote and hold public office, as well as a number of other rights that they had previously been denied. After the end of the Reconstruction in 1877, the white landowners withdrew the blacks' right to vote with a variety of measures, in which they were supported by decisions of the Supreme Court. They established a system of racial segregation and terrorized blacks with violence including lynching . The black farm workers and tenants were hardly better off than they were before the civil war.

From the Great Migration to the Civil Rights Movement

The desperate situation of African Americans in the south sparked the Great Migration in the early 20th century. Together with the growth of the intellectual and cultural elite in the north, it led to a strengthening of the fight against violence and discrimination against African Americans. One of the most important of the emerging groups was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . She fought a lengthy legal battle to end segregation that resulted in the Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) culminated. After that, racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional.

The African American civil rights movement

The Brown vs. Board of Education was a milestone in the history of the civil rights movement . It was part of a decade-long strategy to end the Jim Crow laws , which legalized segregation in public education, hotels, public transportation, work and housing, and to allow African Americans to exercise constitutionally guaranteed franchise to guarantee. The movement peaked in the 1960s under leaders such as Martin Luther King , Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins , Sr. At the same time, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and later Stokely Carmichael of the Black Panther Party spoke out in favor of Black Power . The ideas of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism found widespread support among a section of African-Americans.

Younger story

The civil rights movement leads to the growth of the black middle class (athletes, musicians, actors and politicians such as Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice ), while the living conditions of the poor majority have deteriorated rapidly since the late 1970s at the latest. African Americans made up a disproportionately high proportion of the rapidly growing prison population and were particularly hard hit by the decline in real incomes in the lower income brackets. Targeted by the stringent US legislation that less on rehabilitation than on deterrence ( "Three-strikes-law" ), the number of African Americans in prison since 1980 has about quadrupled, the number of college graduates in contrast to 30% of 1980 number decreased. The latent racism in the Rodney King case in the early 1990s led to massive unrest in Los Angeles .

With Barack Obama the first African American was elected in 2008 president of the United States elected; he is the son of a black Kenyan and a white American. Nevertheless, there were repeated unrest (2014 death of Michael Brown , 2020 death of George Floyd ).

Libraries

See also

literature

  • Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 .
  • Clayborne Carson, Gary B. Nash, Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner: Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans . Longman, 2006, ISBN 0-321-35575-X .
  • Tom Cowan: Timelines of African-American History: 500 Years of Black Achievement . Perigee Trade, 1994, ISBN 0-399-52127-5 .
  • Oliver Demny: Racism in the USA. History and analysis of a race construction . Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2001, ISBN 3-89771-007-2 .
  • John Hope Franklin, Alfred A. Moss, Jr .: From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2006, ISBN 0-375-40671-9 (7th edition of the highly regarded and groundbreaking textbook first published in 1947).
  • Darlene Clark Hine, Stanley Harrold, William C. Hine: African Americans: A Concise History . Prentice Hall, 2005, ISBN 0-13-192583-0 .
  • James Oliver Horton: Landmarks of African American History. Oxford University Press, New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-19-514118-4 .
  • Lawrence W. Levine: Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford University Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-530569-2 .
  • Nell Irvin Painter: Creating Black Americans. African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present . Oxford University Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-513756-9 .
  • Ronda Racha Penrice: African American History for Dummies . For Dummies, 2007, ISBN 0-7645-5469-7 .

Fictional literature:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Rodrigues ; Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 31.
  2. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 123.
  3. ^ A Religious Portrait of African-Americans ( Memento from April 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Pew Research Center , January 30, 2009 (web archive)
  4. ↑ US Religious Landscape Survey ( Memento from April 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Pew Research Center, February 2008 (web archive)
  5. ↑ Muhammad Ali: Five things you never knew about the boxing legend Conor Lane, CNN. April 28, 2016
  6. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 105, 120.
  7. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 105.
  8. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 120.
  9. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 120; The end of slavery ; The history of Anti-Slavery International ( Memento of October 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).
  10. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 105-111.
  11. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 108.
  12. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 107 f.
  13. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 106-109.
  14. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 109 f.
  15. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 113-120.
  16. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 121.
  17. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 120 f.
  18. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 122.
  19. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 122 f.
  20. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 138.
  21. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 138 f.
  22. ^ Brown Fellowship Society ( memento January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 139 f.
  23. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 140-143, 152, 182.
  24. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 143 f.
  25. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 183.
  26. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 156.
  27. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves . Belknap, Cambridge / London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 195 f.
  28. ↑ Cf. Christian Orban: Review of: Painter, Nell Irvin: Creating Black Americans. African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. New York 2007 . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , March 9, 2010.