African Americans#Demographics
{{Short description|Ethnic and cultural group in the United States}}
{{Redirect|Afro-American|the newspaper|Baltimore Afro-American{{!}}Baltimore Afro-American}}
{{pp-semi-indef}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2023}}
{{Infobox ethnic group
| group = African Americans
| native_name =
| image = Black_Americans_2020_County.png
| image_caption =
| pop = Alone (one race):
{{increase}} 41,104,200{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-and-2020-census.html|title=Race and Ethnicity in the United States|date=August 12, 2021|publisher=United States Census Bureau|access-date=August 17, 2021}}
{{decrease}} 12.40% of the total U.S. population
In combination (mixed race):
{{increase}} 5,832,533
{{increase}} 1.76% of the total U.S. population
Alone or in combination:
{{increase}} 46,936,733
{{increase}} 14.16% of the total U.S. population
| popplace = Predominantly the Southern United States and American urban centers, including:
| region1 = {{flag|Texas}}
| pop1 = 3,552,997
| region2 = {{flag|Georgia (U.S. state)|name=Georgia}}
| pop2 = 3,320,513
| region3 = {{flag|Florida}}
| pop3 = 3,246,381
| region4 = {{flag|New York}}
| pop4 = 2,986,172
| region5 = {{flag|California}}
| pop5 = 2,237,044
| languages = American English (incl. African-American English and African-American Vernacular English), Gullah, Louisiana Creole
| religions = Majority:
Christianity (78%){{NoteTag|Predominantly Protestantism (71%), including the African-American Church (53%), Evangelicalism (14%), and Mainline Protestantism (4%). Other Christian denominations include Catholicism (5%) and Jehovah's Witnesses (2%).}}
Other:{{cite web|url=https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/religious-tradition/by/racial-and-ethnic-composition/|title=Religious tradition by race/ethnicity (2014)|publisher=The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life|access-date=April 5, 2019|archive-date=May 18, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150518010639/https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/religious-tradition/by/racial-and-ethnic-composition/|url-status=live}}
Irreligion (18%)
Islam (2%)
See: Religion of Black Americans
}}
{{African American topics sidebar}}
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa.[https://web.archive.org/web/20220301190109/http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-06.pdf "The Black Population: 2010" (PDF)], Census Bureau, September 2011. "Black or African Americans" refers to a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The Black racial category includes people who marked the "Black, African Am., or Negro" checkbox. It also includes respondents who reported entries such as African American; Sub-Saharan African entries, such as Kenyan and Nigerian; and Afro-Caribbean entries, such as Haitian and Jamaican."[https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/african-americans/ African Americans Law & Legal Definition] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180817202929/https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/african-americans/|date=August 17, 2018}}: "African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry." African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans.{{cite web |title=Measuring Racial and Ethnic Diversity for the 2020 Census |url=https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/08/measuring-racial-ethnic-diversity-2020-census.html |access-date=2023-04-23 |website=The United States Census Bureau |language=EN-US |archive-date=April 30, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230430114126/https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/08/measuring-racial-ethnic-diversity-2020-census.html |url-status=live }} The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States.{{cite book|last1=Locke |first1=Don C.|last2=Bailey|first2=Deryl F.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7nJFBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA106|title=Increasing Multicultural Understanding|publisher=Sage Publications|year=2013|isbn=978-1483314211|page=106|quote=African American refers to descendants of enslaved Black people who are from the United States. The reason we use an entire continent (Africa) instead of a country (e.g., Irish American) is because slave masters purposefully obliterated tribal ancestry, language, and family units in order to destroy the spirit of the people they enslaved, thereby making it impossible for their descendants to trace their history prior to being born into slavery.|access-date=March 7, 2018|archive-date=August 18, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180818040343/https://books.google.com/books?id=7nJFBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA106|url-status=live }} In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S.{{Cite web |last=Passel |first=Gracie Martinez and Jeffrey S. |date=2025-01-23 |title=Facts About the U.S. Black Population |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/ |access-date=2025-06-01 |website=Pew Research Center |language=en-US}}
African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. They were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom through manumission or escape, and founded independent communities before and during the American Revolution. After the United States was founded in 1783, most Black people continued to be enslaved, primarily concentrated in the American South, with four million enslaved people only liberated with the Civil War in 1865.{{cite news |last=Harris |first=Paul |date=October 8, 2015 |title=How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans |newspaper=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230116000423/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war |archive-date=January 16, 2023}} During Reconstruction, they gained citizenship and adult-males the right to vote; however, due to widespread White supremacy, they were treated as second-class citizens and soon disenfranchised in the South. These circumstances changed due to participation in the military conflicts of the United States, substantial migration out of the South, the elimination of legal racial segregation, and the civil rights movement which sought political and social freedom. However, racism against African Americans and racial socioeconomic disparity remain a problem into the 21st century.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, immigration has played an increasingly significant role in the African-American community. As of 2022, 10% of the U.S. Black population were immigrants, and 20% were either immigrants or the children of immigrants.{{cite web |title=One-in-Ten Black People Living in the U.S. Are Immigrants {{!}} Immigration Research Library |url=https://www.immigrationresearch.org/node/3361#:~:text=In%20addition,%20a%20significant%20share,immigrant%20or%20children%20of%20immigrants. |access-date=July 4, 2024 |website=www.immigrationresearch.org}}
African-American culture has had a significant influence on worldwide culture, making numerous contributions to visual arts, literature, the English language, philosophy, politics, cuisine, sports, and music. The African-American contribution to popular music is so profound that most American music, including jazz, gospel, blues, rock and roll, funk, disco, house, techno, hip hop, R&B, trap, and soul, has its origins either partially or entirely in the African-American community.{{Cite web |last=Eaglin |first=Maya |date=February 21, 2021 |title=The soundtrack of history: How Black music has shaped American culture through time |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/soundtrack-history-how-black-music-has-shaped-american-culture-through-n1258474 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220419033050/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/soundtrack-history-how-black-music-has-shaped-american-culture-through-n1258474 |archive-date=April 19, 2022 |access-date=April 14, 2022 |website=NBC News |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Osei |first=Sarah |date=November 4, 2020 |title=How Black People Created All Your Favorite Music |url=https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/black-music-genres/ |access-date=April 14, 2022 |website=Highsnobiety |language=en}}
History
{{Main|African American history}}{{See also|African immigration to the United States}}
=Colonial era=
{{Main|Slavery in the colonial history of the United States}}
{{See also|Atlantic slave trade}}
The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from several Central and West African ethnic groups. They had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids,{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3|title=The transatlantic slave trade|publisher=BBC|access-date=May 6, 2021|archive-date=May 6, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210506163511/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3|url-status=live}} or sold by other West Africans, or by half-European "merchant princes"{{cite web|title=Implications of the slave trade for African societies|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/7|publisher=BBC|access-date=June 12, 2020|location=London|archive-date=June 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200609025050/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/7|url-status=live}} to European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas.{{cite web|title=The capture and sale of slaves|url=http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/africa/capture_sale.aspx|publisher=International Slavery Museum|access-date=October 14, 2015|location=Liverpool|archive-date=December 29, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191229214612/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/africa/capture_sale.aspx|url-status=live}}
The first African slaves in what is now the United States arrived in the early 16th century. Africans were Among Juan Ponce de León's 1513 voyage that landed in what would become Spanish Florida, and enslaved Africans arrived around the same time to Spanish Puerto Rico.{{Cite web |last= |first= |last2= |first2= |title=African Americans in St. Augustine 1565-1821 - Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/casa/learn/historyculture/african-americans-in-st-augustine-1565-1821.htm |access-date=2024-12-04 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Hall |first=Stephanie |date=2019-08-28 |title=Beyond 1619: Slavery and the Cultures of America {{!}} Folklife Today |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2019/08/beyond-1619/ |access-date=2024-12-04 |website=The Library of Congress}}
Africans also came via Santo Domingo in the Caribbean to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526.{{cite journal|last=Robert Wright|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Robert Wright|year=1941|title=Negro Companions of the Spanish Explorers|journal=Phylon|volume=2|issue=4}} The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterward, due to an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to the Island of Hispaniola, whence they had come.
The enslaved explorer Esteban arrived in Florida with the Narváez expedition in 1528, a journey that first landed in Santo Domingo and later traveled into Spanish Texas and the Southwest before ending in Mexico.{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Estevanico |url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/estevanico |access-date=2024-12-04 |website=Texas State Historical Association |language=en}}
The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free Black domestic servant from Seville, and Miguel Rodríguez, a White Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what is now the continental United States.{{citation|url=https://laflorida.org/florida-stories/|title=Luisa de Abrego: Marriage, Bigamy, and the Spanish Inquisition|publisher=University of South Florida|author1-link=J. Michael Francis|author=J. Michael Francis|access-date=July 21, 2018|archive-date=July 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180721163646/https://laflorida.org/florida-stories/|url-status=dead}}
File:1670 virginia tobacco slaves.jpg
The first recorded Africans in English America (including most of the future United States) were "20 and odd negroes" who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants.{{cite book|first1=Frank E. Jr.|last1=Grizzard|author-link1=Frank E. Grizzard Jr.|first2=D. Boyd|last2=Smith |title=Jamestown Colony: A Political, Social, and Cultural History|year=2007|publisher=ABC-CLIO |location=Santa Barbara, CA|isbn=978-1-85109-637-4|page=198}} As many Virginian settlers began to die from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers.{{cite book|first=Betty|last=Wood|title=The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies|year=1997|publisher=Hill and Wang|location=New York|isbn=978-0-8090-1608-2|chapter=Tobacco Slaves: The Chesapeake Colonies|pages=68–93}}
An indentured servant (who could be White or Black) would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased, and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or attempting to running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed after their term of service expired or if their freedom was purchased. Their children did not inherit their status, and on their release from contract they received "a year's provision of corn, double apparel, tools necessary", and a small cash payment called "freedom dues".{{cite magazine|first=Tim |last=Hashaw |title=The First Black Americans |url=https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |magazine=U.S. News & World Report |date=January 21, 2007 |access-date=February 13, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110202205901/https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |archive-date=February 2, 2011 }} Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom.{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-147667728.html?Q=Jamestown|title=The shaping of Black America: forthcoming 400th celebration|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia.com|date=June 26, 2006|access-date=January 20, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080305014338/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-147667728.html?Q=Jamestown|archive-date=March 5, 2008|url-status=dead}} They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or European settlers.{{cite web|url=https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |title=The First Black Americans |publisher=Usnews.com – U.S. News & World Report |date=January 29, 2007 |access-date=January 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110202205901/https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |archive-date=February 2, 2011 |url-status=dead }}
File:First Slave Auction 1655 Howard Pyle.jpg in 1655; illustration from 1895 by Howard Pyle{{cite web |title=New Netherland Institute :: Slave Trade |url=https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/digital-exhibitions/slavery-exhibit/slave-trade/ |website=newnetherlandinstitute.org |publisher=New Netherland Institute |access-date=July 8, 2019 |archive-date=July 8, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190708145212/https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/digital-exhibitions/slavery-exhibit/slave-trade/ |url-status=live }}]]
By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown, and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced John Punch, a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn, for running away.{{Cite book|title=White Over Black: American attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812|first=Winthrop|last=Jordan|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=1968|isbn=978-0807871416}}{{Cite book|title=In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period|first=A. Leon|last=Higginbotham|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=1975|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ErPg7VegkcMC&pg=PR7|isbn=9780195027457}}
In Spanish Florida, some Spanish married or had unions with Pensacola, Creek or African women, both enslaved and free, and their descendants created a mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattos. The Spanish encouraged slaves from the colony of Georgia to come to Florida as a refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism. King Charles II issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism. Most went to the area around St. Augustine, but escaped slaves also reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had mustered an all-Black militia unit defending Spanish Florida as early as 1683.{{citation|url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/sanctuary-in-the-spanish-empire.htm|title=Sanctuary in the Spanish Empire: An African American officer earns freedom in Florida|author=Gene Allen Smith, Texas Christian University|publisher=National Park Service|access-date=April 5, 2018|archive-date=January 10, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210110103703/https://www.nps.gov/articles/sanctuary-in-the-spanish-empire.htm|url-status=live}}
File:Slave Auction Ad.jpg, in 1769]]
One of the Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would later own one of the first Black "slaves", John Casor, resulting from the court ruling of a civil case.[https://archive.org/stream/freenegro00russrich#page/28/mode/2up/search/page+29 John Henderson Russell, The Free Negro In Virginia, 1619–1865], Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1913, pp. 29–30, scanned text online.{{Cite book|first=Frank W.|last=Sweet|title=Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kezflCVnongC&pg=PA117|date=July 2005|publisher=Backintyme|isbn=978-0-939479-23-8|page=117|access-date=June 16, 2015|archive-date=January 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112641/https://books.google.com/books?id=kezflCVnongC&pg=PA117#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}
The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven Black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). All the colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the English.{{Citation|last=Hodges|first=Russel Graham|title=Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863|place=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=1999}}
Massachusetts was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women would take the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as was the case under common law. This legal principle was called partus sequitur ventrum.[https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/52/ Taunya Lovell Banks, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit – Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191024221530/https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/52/ |date=October 24, 2019 }}, 41 Akron Law Review 799 (2008), Digital Commons Law, University of Maryland Law School. Retrieved April 21, 2009PBS. Africans in America: the Terrible Transformation. "[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070604113622/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html |date=June 4, 2007 }}." Accessed September 13, 2011.
By an act of 1699, Virginia ordered the deportation of all free Blacks, effectively defining all people of African descent who remained in the colony as slaves.[https://books.google.com/books?id=BEd85InqqAIC&pg=PA48 William J. Wood, "The Illegal Beginning of American Slavery"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112637/https://books.google.com/books?id=BEd85InqqAIC&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false |date=January 7, 2024 }}, ABA Journal, 1970, American Bar Association In 1670, the colonial assembly passed a law prohibiting free and baptized Blacks (and Native Americans) from purchasing Christians (in this act meaning White Europeans) but allowing them to buy people "of their owne nation".{{Cite journal|title=Colored Freemen as Slave Owners in Virginia|first=John H.|last=Russell|journal=Journal of Negro History|date=June 1916|volume=1|issue=3|pages=233–242|doi=10.2307/3035621|jstor=3035621|doi-access=free | issn = 0022-2992}}
File:Runaway slave advertisement 9-15-1774-NY.gif in a New York newspaper, offering a $10 reward ({{Inflation|US|10|1774|fmt=eq}}). Slave owners, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, placed around 200,000 runaway slave adverts in newspapers across the US before slavery ended in 1865.{{cite news |title=Runaway! How George Washington, Other Slave Owners Used Newspapers to Hunt Escaped Slaves |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/10/runaway-how-george-washington-and-other-slave-owners-used-newspapers-to-hunt-escaped-slaves/ |access-date=August 30, 2022 |work=Library of Congress |archive-date=August 30, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220830181110/https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/10/runaway-how-george-washington-and-other-slave-owners-used-newspapers-to-hunt-escaped-slaves/ |url-status=live }}]]
In Spanish Louisiana, although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others.{{cite journal |last1=Berquist |first1=Emily |title=Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765–1817 |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=June 2010 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=181–205 |doi=10.1080/01440391003711073|s2cid=145434799 }} Although some did not have the money to do so, government measures on slavery enabled the existence of many free Blacks. This caused problems to the Spaniards with the French creoles (French who had settled in New France) who had also populated Spanish Louisiana. The French creoles cited that measure as one of the system's worst elements.{{citation|url=https://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/slavery-in-spanish-colonial-louisiana|publisher=knowlouisiana.org|title=Slavery in Spanish Colonial Louisiana|access-date=July 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180721134124/https://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/slavery-in-spanish-colonial-louisiana|archive-date=July 21, 2018|url-status=dead}}
First established in South Carolina in 1704, groups of armed White men—slave patrols—were formed to monitor enslaved Black people. Their function was to police slaves, especially fugitives. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or slave rebellions, so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols. These patrols were used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or rebellions.{{cite web|date=July 10, 2019|title=Slave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing|url=https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/|access-date=June 16, 2020|website=National Law Enforcement Museum|language=en-US|archive-date=June 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200609091807/https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/|url-status=dead}}
The earliest African American congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after English Americans.{{cite web|url=https://www.dalhousielodge.org/Thesis/scotstonc.htm|title=Scots to Colonial North Carolina Before 1775|publisher=Dalhousielodge.org|date=n.d.|access-date=April 20, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120219045151/http://www.dalhousielodge.org/Thesis/scotstonc.htm|archive-date=February 19, 2012|url-status=dead}}
=From the American Revolution to the Civil War=
{{Main|Slavery in the United States}}
File:Crispus Attucks.jpg, the first "martyr" of the American Revolution. He was of Native American and African American descent.]]
During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious American colonists secure their independence by defeating the British in the American Revolutionary War.{{cite web|url=https://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/DIASPORA/REV.HTM |title=African Americans in the American Revolution |publisher=Wsu.edu:8080 |date=June 6, 1999 |access-date=January 20, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514085114/https://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/DIASPORA/REV.HTM |archive-date=May 14, 2011 }} Blacks played a role in both sides in the American Revolution. Activists in the Patriot cause included James Armistead, Prince Whipple, and Oliver Cromwell.Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American revolution (1961).Gary B. Nash, "The African Americans' Revolution" in The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution ed. by Jane Kamensky and Edward G. Gray (2012) online at {{doi|10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199746705.013.0015}} Around 15,000 Black Loyalists left with the British after the war, most of them ending up as free Black people in England{{cite book|last=Braidwood|first=Stephen|
year=1994|title=Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London's Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement, 1786–1791|publisher=Liverpool University Press|isbn=978-0-85323-377-0}} or its colonies, such as the Black Nova Scotians and the Sierra Leone Creole people.{{cite book |last=Finkelman |first=Paul |date=2012 |chapter=Slavery in the United States: Persons or Property? |editor-last=Allain |editor-first=Jean |title=The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=105–134 [116] |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660469.003.0007 |chapter-url=https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2709/ |isbn=978-0-19-174550-8 |access-date=April 18, 2023 |archive-date=April 18, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230418120304/https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2709/ |url-status=live }}{{cite book|last=Walker |first=James W. |year=1992 |chapter=Chapter Five: Foundation of Sierra Leone |title=The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 |location=Toronto |publisher=University of Toronto Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/blackloyalistsse0000walk/page/94 94]–114 |url=https://archive.org/details/blackloyalistsse0000walk |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-8020-7402-7}} Originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).
In the Spanish Louisiana, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez organized Spanish free Black men into two militia companies to defend New Orleans during the American Revolution. They fought in the 1779 battle in which Spain captured Baton Rouge from the British. Gálvez also commanded them in campaigns against the British outposts in Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. He recruited slaves for the militia by pledging to free anyone who was seriously wounded and promised to secure a low price for coartación (buy their freedom and that of others) for those who received lesser wounds. During the 1790s, Governor Francisco Luis Héctor, baron of Carondelet reinforced local fortifications and recruit even more free Black men for the militia. Carondelet doubled the number of free Black men who served, creating two more militia companies—one made up of Black members and the other of pardo (mixed race). Serving in the militia brought free Black men one step closer to equality with Whites, allowing them, for example, the right to carry arms and boosting their earning power. However, actually these privileges distanced free Black men from enslaved Blacks and encouraged them to identify with Whites.
Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the US Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the 3/5 compromise. Due to the restrictions of Section 9, Clause 1, Congress was unable to pass an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves until 1807.{{cite web | url=http://abolition.nypl.org/print/us_constitution/ | title=The Abolition of The Slave Trade | publisher=New York Public Library | date=2007 | access-date=August 30, 2021 | author=Finkelman, Paul | archive-date=October 9, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181009202811/http://abolition.nypl.org/print/us_constitution/ | url-status=dead }} Fugitive slave laws (derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution—Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) were passed by Congress in both 1793 and 1850, guaranteeing the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave anywhere within the US.{{cite news |title=Fugitive Slave Laws |url=https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/fugitive-slave-laws/ |access-date=February 18, 2022 |work=Encyclopedia Virginia |archive-date=February 18, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220218075405/https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/fugitive-slave-laws/ |url-status=live }} Slave owners, who viewed enslaved people as property, ensured that it became a federal crime to aid or assist those who had fled slavery or to interfere with their capture. By that time, slavery, which almost exclusively targeted Black people, had become the most critical and contentious political issue in the Antebellum United States, repeatedly sparking crises and conflicts. Among these were the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the infamous Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
File:Frederick Douglass by Samuel J Miller, 1847-52.png, {{circa|1850}}]]
Prior to the Civil War, eight serving presidents had owned slaves, a practice that was legally protected under the US Constitution.{{cite book|last1=Calore|first1=Paul|title=The Causes of the Civil War: The Political, Cultural, Economic and Territorial Disputes between North and South|date=2008|publisher=McFarland|page=10}} By 1860, the number of enslaved Black people in the US had grown to between 3.5 and 4.4 million, largely as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. In addition, 488,000–500,000 Black people lived free (with legislated limits)[https://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=731&issue_id=75 "Background on conflict in Liberia"], Friends Committee on National Legislation, July 30, 2003 {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070214051143/https://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=731&issue_id=75|date=February 14, 2007}} across the country.{{cite book|last1=Gomez|first1=Edmund Terence|last2=Premdas|first2=Ralph|title=Affirmative Action, Ethnicity and Conflict|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XU_XDHfO3jsC&pg=PA48|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-64506-5|page=48|access-date=September 26, 2015|archive-date=January 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112637/https://books.google.com/books?id=XU_XDHfO3jsC&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}} With legislated limits imposed upon them in addition to "unconquerable prejudice" from Whites according to Henry Clay.Maggie Montesinos Sale (1997). The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and the Production of Rebellious Masculinity, Duke University Press, 1997, p. 264. {{ISBN|0-8223-1992-6}} In response to these conditions, some free Black people chose to leave the US and emigrate to Liberia in West Africa. Liberia had been established in 1821 as a settlement by the American Colonization Society (ACS), with many abolitionist members of the ACS believing Black Americans would have greater opportunities for freedom and equality in Africa than they would in the US.
Slaves not only represented a significant financial investment for their owners, but they also played a crucial role in producing the country's most valuable product and export: cotton. Enslaved people were instrumental in the construction of several prominent structures such as, the United States Capitol, the White House and other Washington, D.C.–based buildings."[https://emancipation.dc.gov/page/ending-slavery-district-columbia Ending slavery in the District of Columbia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181119044541/https://emancipation.dc.gov/page/ending-slavery-district-columbia |date=November 19, 2018 }}", consulted June 20, 2015. Similar building projects existed in the slave states.
File:Crowe-Slaves Waiting for Sale - Richmond, Virginia.jpg broke up many families, and individuals lost their connection to families and clans.]]
By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a significant and major economic activity in the United States, continuing to flourish until the 1860s.Marcyliena H. Morgan (2002). [https://books.google.com/books?id=mhJcsiydNe8C&pg=PA20 Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112637/https://books.google.com/books?id=mhJcsiydNe8C&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q&f=false |date=January 7, 2024 }}, p. 20. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Historians estimate that nearly one million individuals were subjected to this forced migration, which was often referred to as a new "Middle Passage". The historian Ira Berlin described this internal forced migration of enslaved people as the "central event" in the life of a slave during the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Berlin emphasized that whether enslaved individuals were directly uprooted or lived in constant fear that they or their families would be involuntarily relocated, "the massive deportation traumatized Black people" throughout the US.Berlin, Generations of Captivity, pp. 161–162. As a result of this large-scale forced movement, countless individuals lost their connection to families and clans, and many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa.
The 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn, a branded slave from Louisiana, along with the famous image of Gordon and his scarred back, served as two of the earliest and most powerful examples of how the newborn medium of photography could be used to visually document and encapsulate the brutality and cruelty of slavery.{{cite news|last=Paulson Gage|first=Joan|title=Icons of Cruelty|url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/icons-of-cruelty/|newspaper=The New York Times|date=August 5, 2013|access-date=February 16, 2022|archive-date=August 23, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130823025616/http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/icons-of-cruelty/|url-status=live}}
File:Auction and negro sales 1864.jpg, Georgia, 1864 during the American Civil War with a Union corporal of the United States Colored Troops sitting by the door.]]
Emigration of free Blacks to their continent of origin had been proposed since the Revolutionary war. After Haiti became independent, it tried to recruit African Americans to migrate there after it re-established trade relations with the United States. The Haitian Union was a group formed to promote relations between the countries.Taylor, Nikki M. Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802–1868. Ohio University Press, 2005, {{ISBN|0-8214-1579-4}}, pp. 50–79. After riots against Blacks in Cincinnati, its Black community sponsored founding of the Wilberforce Colony, an initially successful settlement of African American immigrants to Canada. The colony was one of the first such independent political entities. It lasted for a number of decades and provided a destination for about 200 Black families emigrating from a number of locations in the United States.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory were free.{{cite web|title=The Emancipation Proclamation|website=Featured Documents|publisher=National Archives and Records Administration|access-date=June 7, 2007|url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070607051115/https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/|archive-date=June 7, 2007 |url-status=live}} Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation, with Texas being the last state to be emancipated, in 1865.{{cite web|url=https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm|title=History of Juneteenth|publisher=Juneteenth.com|year=2005|access-date=June 7, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070527081441/https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm|archive-date=May 27, 2007|url-status=dead}}
File:Harriet Tubman c1868-69 (cropped).jpg, {{circa|1869}}]]
Slavery in a few border states continued until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.[https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=013/llsl013.db&recNum=803 Seward certificate] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180721102957/https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=013/llsl013.db&recNum=803 |date=July 21, 2018 }} proclaiming the Thirteenth Amendment to have been adopted as part of the Constitution as of December 6, 1865. While the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship to Whites only,{{cite book|last=Schultz|first=Jeffrey D.|title=Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&pg=PA284|page=284|year=2002|publisher=Oryx Press|access-date=October 8, 2015|isbn=9781573561488|archive-date=February 4, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230204144206/https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&pg=PA284|url-status=live}}Leland T. Saito (1998). "Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb". p. 154. University of Illinois Press the 14th Amendment (1868) gave Black people citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave Black men the right to vote.{{cite news |title=Black voting rights, 15th Amendment still challenged after 150 years |url=https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/03/black-voting-rights-15th-amendment-still-challenged-after-150-years/4587160002/ |access-date=November 19, 2020 |work=USA Today |archive-date=April 25, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200425165501/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/03/black-voting-rights-15th-amendment-still-challenged-after-150-years/4587160002/ |url-status=live }}
=Reconstruction era and Jim Crow=
{{Main|Reconstruction era|Jim Crow laws}}
African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from White control or oversight. While the post-war Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. By the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement.{{cite web|title=Creating Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay |last=Davis |first=Ronald L.F.|website=The History of Jim Crow |publisher=New York Life Insurance Company |access-date=June 7, 2007 |url=https://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020614223755/https://jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 14, 2002 }} Segregation was now imposed with Jim Crow laws, using signs used to show Blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.Leon Litwack, Jim Crow Blues, Magazine of History (OAH Publications, 2004) For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Most African Americans obeyed the Jim Crow laws, to avoid racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.{{cite web|url=https://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/surviving.htm|title=Surviving Jim Crow|last=Davis|first=Ronald|website=The History of Jim Crow|publisher=New York Life Insurance Company|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120526204619/http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/surviving.htm|archive-date=May 26, 2012}}
In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States, a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations". These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities.Plessy v. Ferguson {{Ussc|163|537|1896}}
=Great migration and civil rights movement=
{{Main|Great Migration (African American)|l1=Great Migration|civil rights movement}}
File:Omaha courthouse lynching.jpg and had his body mutilated and burned during the Omaha race riot of 1919 in Omaha, Nebraska. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the US.Moyers, Bill. [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html "Legacy of Lynching"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829121124/https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html |date=August 29, 2017 }}. PBS. Retrieved July 28, 2016.]]
The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South sparked the Great Migration during the first half of the 20th century which led to a growing African American community in Northern and Western United States.{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html|title=The Great Migration|access-date=October 22, 2007|website=African American World|publisher=PBS|year=2002|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012201420/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html|archive-date=October 12, 2007}} The rapid influx of Blacks disturbed the racial balance within Northern and Western cities, exacerbating hostility between both Blacks and Whites in the two regions.Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith (2001). "Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America". p. 42. Oxford University Press The Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the US as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919. Overall, Blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. At the 1900 Hampton Negro Conference, Reverend Matthew Anderson said: "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South."{{cite book|title=Annual Report of the Hampton Negro Conference|chapter=The Economic Aspect of the Negro Problem|first=Anderson|last=Matthew|series=Hampton bulletinno. 9–10, 12–16|editor1-last=Browne|editor1-first=Hugh|editor2-last=Kruse|editor2-first=Edwina|editor4-last=Moton|editor3-last=Walker|editor3-first=Thomas C.|editor4-first=Robert Russa|editor4-link=Robert Russa Moton|editor5-last=Wheelock|editor5-first=Frederick D.|publisher=Hampton Institute Press|location=Hampton, Virginia|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39|hdl=2027/chi.14025588?urlappend=%3Bseq=43|volume=4|year=1900|page=39|access-date=November 19, 2020|archive-date=January 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112637/https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}} Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering".{{cite journal|last=Tolnay|first=Stewart|title=The African American 'Great Migration' and Beyond|journal=Annual Review of Sociology|year=2003|volume=29|issue=1 |pages=218–221|doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009|jstor=30036966}} While many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as White flight.{{cite book|last=Seligman|first=Amanda|title=Block by block: neighborhoods and public policy on Chicago's West Side|year=2005|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0-226-74663-0|pages=213–14}}
File:Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated municipal bus in Montgomery, Alabama.jpg being fingerprinted after being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a White person]]
Despite discrimination, drawing cards for leaving the hopelessness in the South were the growth of African American institutions and communities in Northern cities. Institutions included Black oriented organizations (e.g., Urban League, NAACP), churches, businesses, and newspapers, as well as successes in the development in African American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture (e.g., Harlem Renaissance, Chicago Black Renaissance). The Cotton Club in Harlem was a Whites-only establishment, with Blacks (such as Duke Ellington) allowed to perform, but to a White audience.{{cite book |title=Ella Fitzgerald |date=1989 |publisher=Holloway House Publishing |page=27}} Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in Northern cities, without the enforced disabilities of Jim Crow.{{cite journal|last=Tolnay|first=Stewart|title=The African American 'Great Migration' and Beyond|journal=Annual Review of Sociology|year=2003|volume=29|issue=1 |page=217 |doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009|jstor=30036966}}{{Cite magazine |last=Wilkerson |first=Isabel |date=September 2016 |title=The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/ |magazine=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=November 19, 2019 |archive-date=February 15, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200215000512/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/ |url-status=live }}
By the 1950s, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the US.{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/|title=How 'The Blood of Emmett Till' Still Stains America Today|last=Newkirk II|first=Vann R.|work=The Atlantic|access-date=July 29, 2017|archive-date=July 28, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170728213446/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/|url-status=live}} Vann Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of White supremacy". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-White jury.Whitfield, Stephen (1991). A Death in the Delta: The story of Emmett Till. pp 41–42. JHU Press. One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama—indeed, Parks told Emmett's mother Mamie Till that "the photograph of Emmett's disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus."{{Cite book|title=The Assassination of Fred Hampton|last=Haas|first=Jeffrey|publisher=Chicago Review Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1569767092|location=Chicago|page=17}}
File:March on washington Aug 28 1963.jpg, August 28, 1963, shows civil rights leaders and union leaders]]
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure Black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections.{{cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/intro/intro_b.php|title=History of Federal Voting Rights Laws: The Voting Rights Act of 1965|publisher=United States Department of Justice|access-date=August 12, 2017|date=August 6, 2015|archive-date=January 6, 2021|archive-url=https://archive.today/20210106161217/https://www.justice.gov/crt/history-federal-voting-rights-laws|url-status=live}} By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White authority.{{cite web|url=https://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp |title=The March On Washington, 1963 |access-date=October 22, 2007 |publisher=Abbeville Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012121716/https://abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp |archive-date=October 12, 2007 |url-status=dead }}
During the post-war period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged relative to other Americans. Average Black income stood at 54 percent of that of White workers in 1947, and 55 percent in 1962. In 1959, median family income for Whites was $5,600 ({{Inflation|US|5600|1959|fmt=eq}}), compared with $2,900 ({{Inflation|US|2900|1959|fmt=eq}}) for non-White families. In 1965, 43 percent of all Black families fell into the poverty bracket, earning under $3,000 ({{Inflation|US|3000|1965|fmt=eq}}) a year. The 1960s saw improvements in the social and economic conditions of many Black Americans.The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II by William H. Chafe {{ISBN?}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}}
From 1965 to 1969, Black family income rose from 54 to 60 percent of White family income. In 1968, 23 percent of Black families earned under $3,000 ({{Inflation|US|3000|1968|fmt=eq}}) a year, compared with 41 percent in 1960. In 1965, 19 percent of Black Americans had incomes equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960, the median level of education for Blacks had been 10.8 years, and by the late 1960s, the figure rose to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for Whites.
=Post–civil rights era=
{{Main|Post–civil rights era in African-American history}}
File:Crowd at JJ Hill - Philando Castile (27547111053).jpg protest in response to the fatal shooting of Philando Castile in July 2016]]
Politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides during the post–civil rights era. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the US Congress. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected governor in US history. Clarence Thomas succeeded Marshall to become the second African American Supreme Court Justice in 1991. In 1992, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first African American woman elected to the US Senate. There were 8,936 Black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001, there were 484 Black mayors.{{citation|last=Jordan|first=John H.|title=Black Americans 17th Century to 21st Century: Black Struggles and Successes|publisher=Trafford Publishing|page=3|year=2013}}
In 2005, the number of Africans immigrating to the United States, in a single year, surpassed the peak number who were involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic slave trade.{{cite news|last=Roberts|first=Sam|date=February 21, 2005|title=More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/nyregion/21africa.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050912203241/http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/nyregion/21africa.html |archive-date=September 12, 2005 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=October 26, 2014}} On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama—the son of a White American mother and a Kenyan father—defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected president. At least 95 percent of African American voters voted for Obama.{{cite news|url=https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/exit.polls/|title=Exit polls: Obama wins big among young, minority voters|date=November 4, 2008|publisher=CNN|access-date=June 22, 2010|archive-date=August 10, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100810011229/http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/exit.polls/|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/exit-polls-how-obama-won-015297|title=Exit polls: How Obama won|last=Kuhn|first=David Paul|date=November 5, 2008|website=Politico|access-date=June 22, 2010|archive-date=March 26, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100326033743/http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15297.html|url-status=live}} He also received overwhelming support from young and educated Whites, a majority of Asians,{{cite news|url=https://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/exit-polls.html|title=Exit polls|year=2008|work=The New York Times|access-date=September 6, 2012|archive-date=August 16, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120816170447/http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/exit-polls.html|url-status=live}} and Hispanics, picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost the overall White vote, although he won a larger proportion of White votes than any previous non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter.{{cite web|last=Noah|first=Timothy|url=https://www.slate.com/id/2204251/|title=What We Didn't Overcome|work=Slate|date=November 10, 2008|access-date=January 20, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110124183415/https://www.slate.com/id/2204251/|archive-date=January 24, 2011 |url-status=live}} Obama was reelected for a second and final term, by a similar margin on November 6, 2012.{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Robert |title=Obama wins a second term as U.S. president |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/after-grueling-campaign-polls-open-for-election-day-2012/2012/11/06/d1c24c98-2802-11e2-b4e0-346287b7e56c_story.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=November 6, 2012 |access-date=August 12, 2017 |archive-date=April 17, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150417162701/http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/after-grueling-campaign-polls-open-for-election-day-2012/2012/11/06/d1c24c98-2802-11e2-b4e0-346287b7e56c_story.html |url-status=live }} In 2021, Kamala Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American to serve as Vice President of the United States.{{cite news|last1=Blood|first1=Michael R.|last2=Riccardi|first2=Nicholas|date=December 5, 2020|title=Biden officially secures enough electors to become president|url=https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-elections-electoral-college-3e0b852c3cfadf853b08aecbfc3569fa|access-date=March 2, 2021|work=Associated Press|archive-date=December 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201208201209/https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-elections-electoral-college-3e0b852c3cfadf853b08aecbfc3569fa|url-status=live}}{{fv|reason=source doesn't mention Harris|date=April 2025}} In June 2021, Juneteenth, a day which commemorates the end of slavery in the US, became a federal holiday.{{Cite web |date=June 17, 2021 |title=President Biden Signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act Into Law |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjBhwFcQ4U&t=3811s |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/lUjBhwFcQ4U |archive-date=December 11, 2021 |via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}
Demographics
{{Further|Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States#Black population as a percentage of the total population by U.S. region and state (1790–2010)|List of U.S. communities with African-American majority populations|List of U.S. counties with African-American majority populations|List of U.S. states by African-American population}}
File:Black Americans population pyramid in 2020.svg
File:African Americans by state.svg
File:Black Americans by county.png (alone or in combination) in each county of the fifty states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as of the 2020 United States census
File:2020_Census - Majority-Black Counties in the United States.png in the United States according to the 2020 census
