African Americans

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African American is a politically correct term some use to describe the ethnic background of Americans with African ancestry. The great majority of African Americans are descended from Africans brought to North America as slaves beginning four centuries ago. Others (like Colin Powell) were twentieth century immigrants from the West Indies or Africa. Many American conservatives believe that the use of terms such as "African-American" or "Mexican-American," collectively referred to as "hyphenated Americanism," make the mistake of "putting America second" and emphasize racial differences over common national identity [1]




see Black history


The system of sharecropping instituted after the end of the war left most Freedmen poor, while the Jim Crow policies of racial segregation that were implemented after the end of Reconstruction limited their civic and political rights.

Blacks left the rural south in two waves, the first around 1915-20, the second coming after World War II when machinery ended the need for large numbers of people to pick cotton by hand. The migrants headed to the large cities of the North and West, and also in the South, moving from very poorly paid farm work to wage labor.


Blacks tended to support the Republican Party from the 1860s to the 1960s, but few who lived in the South voted--some states even stopped people of African ancestry voting by the use of literacy tests, poll taxes and other measures. The New Deal provided large-scale relief for blacks during the Great Depression. Some black Republican organizations, as in Chicago, switched overnight to the Democrats. This sudden change is often attributed to the leftist sentiments that were growing in the late twentieth century. The 15th Amendment allowed blacks to vote, but despite vigorous enforcement in the South prior to the Voting Rights Act, minority voter registration was still much lower than white voter registration.[2][3] After the Voting Rights Act, black turnout increased substantially. Since 1964, blacks have voted 85% to 95% for Democrat presidential candidates, with an occasional black Republican elected to state office.


Barack Obama, the first President with black ancestry


Racial registration and anti-miscegenation laws




See also

Richmond Garrick, Hope, 2008.