The Soul of America
The word “Sankofa” from the Akan people in present-day Ghana and the Ivory Coast roughly translates to “knowing the past to know your future.” The collective recognition of Black American history has come in stages and is frankly still evolving. In the mid-1970s, Americans felt that connection to a cer tain degree when Alex Haley’s book Roots (1976) and the television miniseries sparked a nationwide fervor among Black Americans and others to learn more about Black Americans and their connection to Africa.
That passion was certainly reignited in the 2000s and 2010s as interest in DNA testing through companies like the Black-owned African Ancestry, allowing Black people, in particular, to see from which part of the African continent they may hail, exploded. So did interest in genealogy research, especially through online genealogy sites. Black scholar Henry Louis Gates proved this with the success of his 2006 PBS docuseries African American Lives, where he used DNA testing as well as historical and genealogical research to connect the American and African lin eages of such participants as Oprah Winfrey, Chris Tucker, and Whoopi Goldberg. In 2008, he followed it with Finding Your Roots and later began incorporating white Americans, too.
Although the nation as a whole appeared to have a thirst for their roots, this quest seemed to once again take on special significance for Black Americans, who, through more than two centuries of slavery, had been routinely robbed of a direct, continuous connection to their African heritage. But what has that quest for
identity, belonging meant, especially in a country where it has been generally denied and suppressed? How does ignorance of Black American history contribute to the police killings of Black Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice? Or to the Capitol Riot at the top of 2021? Why is Black Lives Matter even necessary in the 21st century and why are folks like Stacey Abrams fighting voter suppression?
Not knowing the contributions of Black Americans to overall American history isn’t just a disservice to Black Americans. “I want American history taught,” cel ebrated writer James Baldwin once demanded. “Unless I’m in the book, you’re not in it either.” This chapter presents a general overview of Black American history, underscoring its importance to Black Americans and all Americans
A Peek at the Past
Perhaps no one individual did as much for the study and popularization of Black American history as Carter G. Woodson, the man responsible for Black History Month. Born in 1875 in Virginia to parents who were formerly enslaved, Woodson received his B.A. at Kentucky’s Berea College, his M.A. at the University of Chi cago, and his Ph.D. at Harvard.
Woodson, who taught and led public schools even after receiving his graduate degrees, spearheaded the 1915 founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), presently the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), which began publishing what is now the Journal of African American History. After overseeing the organization for more than 30 years, Woodson passed away in 1950 at the age of 74, but the organization still stands and is more than 100 years old.
Woodson believed that preserving Black American history was essential to Black American survival. “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition,” Woodson reasoned. “It becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.” He also felt that omitting Black American contributions from general American history sanctioned and perpetu ated racism. “The philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and lynching,” he noted. Looking at matters from this perspective, it’s little wonder that Black Americans have been vilified
The only way to move forward is to recognize this reality. And that can only be done by acknowledging the history. The following sections examine some moments in Black history.
Life before slavery
“What is Africa to me?” Countee Cullen asks in his 1930 poem “Heritage.” It is a question that should resonate with more than just Black Americans. European interaction with the African continent profoundly changed the world — Black, white, and otherwise — and nowhere else is that fact more evident than in the United States.
With the exception of South Carolina, Africans were largely the racial minority in early America, partially because white colonists adamantly restricted their num bers. Even in small numbers, though, Africans had an enormous impact on Amer ican history. The truth is that America has a dual history rooted in both Europe and Africa. Despite what you see in many textbooks, Black American history didn’t begin with slavery; like other Americans, Black Americans have a beginning that predates the Americas
Kidnapped Africans transported to the Americas through the slave trade generally hailed from Western and Central Africa, an area that includes present-day Ghana, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast (also known as Côte d’Ivoire), Mali, Senegal, Angola, and the Congo. Of Africa’s many empires, Ghana, Mali, and Songhay are the most important to Black American history. Some unique features of these empires included religious tolerance, attempts at representative government, and some what egalitarian attitudes concerning the contributions of women. Chapter 2 pro vides more information about these empires.
Although Egypt attracted European attention centuries before the slave trade began, tales of Africa’s enormous riches reignited European interest in the conti nent. Portugal, which beat other European countries to Africa, didn’t go there to become enslavers but rather to gain material wealth. And although the Portuguese captured Africans during those early trips, they weren’t doomed to a lifetime of enslavement. Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World and Spain’s claim on the land changed that. When Spain instituted slavery to capitalize on cash crops like sugar, Portugal served as the primary supplier of Africans kidnapped from their homes. As Chapter 3 explains, England entered the slave trade relatively late but excelled quickly.
Life before emancipation
The first Africans to arrive in Virginia to Point Comfort and, later, Jamestown in 1619 were brought in on slave ships. Historians of the past argued that these peo ple weren’t enslaved; however, when John Punch (believed to be an ancestor of Barack Obama on his mother’s side and Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche) ran away from Virginia to Maryland with two indentured servants who were white in 1640, only he received a punishment of lifetime enslavement when captured. Still the evidence shows that Africans, by and large, never resigned themselves to being enslaved and kept trying for their freedom, either through running away, challenging their status in court, or trying to appeal to the moral consciences of colonists.
Enslaved life was harsh, with human beings reduced to nothing more than prop erty. Laws ensured that those enslaved had no control over their lives. Slavehold ers had the legal right to dictate their every move and mistreat them with no recourse. Consequently, slaveholders separated families without a second thought, and rapes and unwanted pregnancies were far from unusual occurrences for enslaved girls and women.
Still, free Blacks and their enslaved brethren never abandoned their hope for free dom. Whether they ran away, rallied sympathetic white people toward emancipa tion or helped carry others to freedom using the Underground Railroad, they did whatever they could to force the new nation to live up to its promise of freedom and equality. Less than a century into the new nation’s existence, the inevitable happened with the onset of the Civil War.
Life before civil rights
Long before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, Black Americans firmly set their minds on attaining freedom. When Lincoln wavered about ending slavery during the Civil War, Black Americans like Frederick Douglass continued lobbying for freedom.
Reconstruction (the period of recovery, particularly in the South, following the Civil War) revealed that most white Americans had never seriously entertained the idea of Black American freedom. Even some white abolitionists who believed that Black people shouldn’t be enslaved didn’t necessarily believe that they should enjoy the same rights and freedoms as other white people. White Congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the grand exception. He and others battled to right the wrongs of the past tied to slavery through various actions like proposing an amendment to the 1866 Freedmen’s Bureau Bill for 40 acre lots for freedmen or supporting bills like the Civil Rights Act of 1866 declaring all men born in the country free with the aid of newly inaugurated Black American congressmen. White Southerners, evidenced by their subsequent push for poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and new state constitutions often excluding Black people, refused to change the status quo, and the North largely sat back and watched.
When Reconstruction ended, Black Americans continued the fight for racial equal ity as white mob violence compromised their freedom and Jim Crow ruled their lives determining where they could live, eat and socialize. In the 20th century, Black American leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett seized every opportunity to challenge the “white only” claim
Searching for better jobs and freedom from Jim Crow, Black Americans migrated North. Although the Promised Land wasn’t all they had imagined, they didn’t abandon each other. Battling mob violence in the North, the nation saw that Black Americans never accepted lynching or Jim Crow; there wasn’t really a “New Negro” at work but rather the old one in plain view. Marcus Garvey capitalized on that spirit when he launched his brand of Black Nationalism and pan-Africanism. (You can read about Du Bois, Wells-Barnett, Garvey, and others, as well as the Great Migration, in Chapter 7.)
The demographic shift created a new power base for Black Americans. Prompted by the shameful treatment Black Americans received during the Great Depression, Black leaders demanded a piece of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal program and switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party. By the time World War II rolled around, strong leaders, remembering the broken promises of World War I, wouldn’t back down from their new demands. By the 1950s and 1960s (see Chapters 7 and 8), the weapons critical to winning the battle against inequality were in place
Being Black in America Today
The Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) dealt a powerful blow to the Jim Crow bully, but Emmett Till’s brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 as the result of an innocent encounter with a white woman shook thousands out
of their complacency. When Martin Luther King Jr. emerged on the scene a few months later, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round” became an anthem for change
The nonviolent direct action favored by Gandhi, which the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. followed, also worked in the United States. However, Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and eventually the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) felt that Black Power was a more effective strategy and refused to turn the other cheek. Despite their differences, the two factions had the same ultimate goals: freedom and equality.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Black Americans amassed a vast assortment of incredible achievements. From serving as mayors in major cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago to selling millions of records worldwide, Black Americans excelled in both expected and unexpected areas. Black household incomes consis tently soared to record heights. The picture wasn’t rosy for everyone, however. The effects of crack cocaine ravished Black neighborhoods, gun violence robbed mothers of their children, and prisons often sucked up those who survived
So much has changed for the better for Black Americans since King and Malcolm X had their lives taken. Visible “colored only” and “white only” signs no longer exist, and Black people aren’t physically assaulted for daring to vote. Many of the obstacles that limited opportunities for Black Americans at one time are gone. Yet vestiges of racism linger. On the one hand, hip-hop moguls such as Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z have turned themselves into global brands. On the other hand, news cameras documented Black men, women, and children stranded on rooftops for days during Hurricane Katrina while elected officials placed blame instead of expediting rescue efforts, and cellphone cameras have captured unarmed Black people being killed by the police. Not even the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president in 2008 could change this reality. And under his successor, one-time reality star Donald Trump, whose presidency spanned from 2017 to 2021, the nation’s barometer for anti-Blackness only worsened
Contributions to history and culture
Black American contributions to American history are tremendous. It’s not a stretch to say that enslaved African labor, for example, is one of the reasons the U.S. exists as it does today. In the colonies, Africans cleared land and built houses in addition to cultivating cash crops such as rice, tobacco, and cotton. Black Americans weren’t absent in the U.S. expansion westward either. In the North, enslaved Black Americans worked in the shipping industry as well as early facto ries. Black soldiers fought in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War
Black American contributions in music are celebrated the world over. Few authen tic American music genres are without African roots, including rock and roll, which counts Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the infamous Ike Turner, and the lesser-known Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris among its early pioneers. Black American dance has influenced American culture since slavery. Literature and sports have also played key roles. So have less well-known contributions in medi cine and architecture, among other fields. The following is a brief sampling of those contributions.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? “NEGRO,” THE N-WORD, AND MANY OTHERS
“African,”“Afro-American,”“colored,”“Negro,”“Black,”and“AfricanAmerican”arejust some of the names used to describe people who trace their roots to the African conti nent.TheconstantlyevolvingtermslargelyreflectdevelopmentsinBlackAmericancul ture and its relationship to the dominant white culture. The changes also reveal Black Americans’ongoingquestforself-identityandself-determination.
Surprisingly,“Negro”didn’talwaysrefertoBlackpeople.Attimes,itincludedAsiansand, in the New World, Native Americans. In 19th-century runaway announcements, the term“negro”identifiedBlackAmericans.ProgressiveinstitutionssuchastheAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church preferred the term “African,” but “colored” was widely used. In1829,DavidWalkeraddressedhisfamousappealtothe“colouredcitizensofthe world.” The use of “colored” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP)indicatestheterm’spositivevalueintheearly20thcentury;intheyears between the two world wars, the NAACP actually spearheaded the use of “Negro” with a capital n, and that usage persisted into the 1960s.
As the civil rights movement gave way to the Black Power movement, “Black” replaced “Negro.” The 1980s ushered in the use of “African American,” which supporters such as JesseJacksoninsistedreflectedbothanAfricanandAmericanidentity.However,some arguethatitisn’tspecificenoughbecausewhiteAfricanimmigrantssuchasactress Charlize Theron and business mogul Elon Musk are technically African American. Today, people often use “African American” and “Black” interchangeably.
Enslaved people sometimes referred to themselves as niggers in front of white slave holders to indicate their servility, and the term was widely used in European and early American history to refer to Black Americans, including usage in novels such as Mark Twain’sAdventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Although widely used, “nigger” was rarely a positive term, a point underscored during the civil rights movement when newspapers andtelevisionfrequentlyquotedhostilewhiteAmericansusingthewordfreely.
Some Black Americans, especially with the onset of rap music, made distinctions between “nigger” and “nigga.” Some Black Americans view the latter more positively when used among Black Americans, although saying it aggressively can indicate hostil ity.Eventhoughhip-hopsongsandcomedyroutinesusethetermliberally,it’sgenerally unacceptable for non-Black Americans to use it under any circumstances. The unwritten ruleisthatBlackpeoplecanusetheterm,andnon-Blackpeoplecan’t.Ofcourse,many Black Americans believe that absolutely no one should
In music and dance
Trying to keep up with Black American contributions in music and dance is dizzy ing. Jazz is an indigenous American art form birthed from Black American culture, as are hip hop, blues, ragtime, and spirituals. Many argue that jazz put the United States on the world’s cultural radar. Few musicians of any color have matched jazz maestro Duke Ellington’s volume of compositions. And are there many gospel singers more well-known than Mahalia Jackson? “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” is easily one of the most popular gospel songs. On a similar note, Motown’s cata log grows more timeless each year. To read about Black American music and musical influences, go to Chapter 16.
Throughout history, white Americans have borrowed Black American dances. Actually, the dance that gave Jim Crow, America’s caste system, its name origi nated with a Black performer. Both the Lindy Hop and the Charleston got a lift from Black Americans, and many scholars have great reason to believe that tap dancing, as it’s known today, was developed during slavery. In contemporary terms, Black artists never seemed to run out of new dances in the 1950s and 1960s, and dancers and choreographers Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey garnered international praise for their mastery and innovation in the fields of ballet and modern dance. You can find out about Black American dance in Chapter 15
In literature
Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature wasn’t an anomaly in the context of the tradition from which she hails. To start, slave narratives captivated readers in America as well as abroad. White Americans may have questioned the talent of Phillis Wheatley, the remarkable poet who was enslaved, in court, but the English accepted her talent with ease. Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and so many other Black writers are American treasures whose voices have carried throughout the world. Chapter 14 discusses Black literature in detail.
In sports
Many Black Americans have excelled in all types of sports. Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Arthur Ashe, Wilma Rudolph, Jesse Owens, and Major Taylor are just a few Black American sports greats. (Read about Black athletes in Chapter 19.)
Black athletes have also played crucial roles in key social issues. Jackie Robinson helped the nation take a critical step toward racial desegregation when he broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947. Ali’s refusal to fight in Vietnam boosted antiwar efforts. Without question, Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem as the San Francisco 49ers quarterback during the 2016 season height ened awareness of racial injustice, police brutality, and Black Lives Matter. LeBron James’s outspokenness also brought increased awareness to Black Lives Matter, with him and his colleagues in the NBA and WNBA using their platform during the pandemic to speak out against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more.
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