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Of Black America was a series of seven one-hour documentaries presented by CBS News in the summer of 1968, at the end of the Civil Rights Movement and during a time of racial unrest ( Martin Luther King had been assassinated that spring and riots in many cities had followed).
NumberTitleProducers1"Black History: Lost, Stolen, Strayed"Andy Rooney, Vern Diamond, Lloyd Weaver2"The Black Soldier"Peter Wolff, Lloyd Weaver3"Black World"Lloyd Weaver4"Body and Soul"Andy Rooney, Martin Carr, Lloyd Weaver- Overview
- Names and labels
- The early history of Blacks in the Americas
African Americans, one of the largest of the many ethnic groups in the United States. African Americans are mainly of African ancestry, but many have non-Black ancestors as well.
African Americans are largely the descendants of enslaved people who were brought from their African homelands by force to work in the New World. Their rights were severely limited, and they were long denied a rightful share in the economic, social, and political progress of the United States. Nevertheless, African Americans have made basic and lasting contributions to American history and culture.
As Americans of African descent reached each new plateau in their struggle for equality, they reevaluated their identity. The slaveholder labels of black and negro (Spanish for “black”) were offensive, so they chose the euphemism coloured when they were freed. Capitalized, Negro became acceptable during the migration to the North for factory jobs. Afro-American was adopted by civil rights activists to underline pride in their ancestral homeland, but Black—the symbol of power and revolution—proved more popular. All these terms are still reflected in the names of dozens of organizations. To reestablish “cultural integrity” in the late 1980s, Jesse Jackson proposed African American, which—unlike some “baseless” colour label—proclaims kinship with a historical land base. In the 21st century the terms Black and African American both were widely used.
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Africans assisted the Spanish and the Portuguese during their early exploration of the Americas. In the 16th century some Black explorers settled in the Mississippi valley and in the areas that became South Carolina and New Mexico. The most celebrated Black explorer of the Americas was Estéban, who traveled through the Southwest in the 1530s.
The uninterrupted history of Blacks in the United States began in 1619, when 20 Africans were landed in the English colony of Virginia. These individuals were not enslaved people but indentured servants—persons bound to an employer for a limited number of years—as were many of the settlers of European descent (whites). By the 1660s large numbers of Africans were being brought to the English colonies. In 1790 Blacks numbered almost 760,000 and made up nearly one-fifth of the population of the United States.
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Attempts to hold Black servants beyond the normal term of indenture culminated in the legal establishment of Black chattel slavery in Virginia in 1661 and in all the English colonies by 1750. Black people were easily distinguished by their skin colour (the result of evolutionary pressures favouring the presence in the skin of a dark pigment called melanin in populations in equatorial climates) from the rest of the populace, making them highly visible targets for enslavement. Moreover, the development of the belief that they were an “inferior” race with a “heathen” culture made it easier for whites to rationalize Black slavery. Enslaved Blacks were put to work clearing and cultivating the farmlands of the New World.
Of an estimated 10 million Africans brought to the Americas by the trade of enslaved peoples, about 430,000 came to the territory of what is now the United States. The overwhelming majority were taken from the area of western Africa stretching from present-day Senegal to Angola, where political and social organization as well as art, music, and dance were highly advanced. On or near the African coast had emerged the major kingdoms of Oyo, Ashanti, Benin, Dahomey, and the Congo. In the Sudanese interior had arisen the empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai; the Hausa states; and the states of Kanem-Bornu. Such African cities as Djenné and Timbuktu, both now in Mali, were at one time major commercial and educational centres.
- Hollis Lynch
25 de mar. de 2021 · The Black population of the United States is diverse. Its members have varied histories in the nation – many are descendants of enslaved people, while others are recently arrived immigrants. The Black population also has nuanced ethnic and racial identities reflecting intermarriage and international migration.
- Shannon Greenwood
18 de jan. de 2024 · The Black population has grown by more than 10 million since 2000, when 36.2 million of the U.S. population identified as Black, marking a 32% increase over roughly two decades. In 2022, there were 5.1 million foreign-born Black Americans, about 11% of the U.S. Black population.
- Shannon Greenwood
18 de jan. de 2024 · In this analysis, the Black population is made up of three main groups: single-race, non-Hispanic Black people; non-Hispanic, multiracial Black people; and Black Hispanics. You can also read our newly updated fact sheet about Black Americans in 2022 .
25 de fev. de 2021 · Black History Month has been celebrated in the United States for close to 100 years. But what is it, exactly, and how did it begin? In the years after Reconstruction, campaigning for the...
Black history is the story of African Americans in the United States and elsewhere. Learn about Black History Month, Black leaders, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement and more.
