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See the main article at African American.
Like other blacks in the Western Hemisphere, the progenitors of the overwhelming majority of African Americans were brought to North America as African slaves between the 1600s and 1807 (The importation of slaves into the U.S. was outlawed in 1807). In North America, African slaves could be found primarily in the southern half of the British colonies, although slaves were also owned in the Spanish colony of Florida and the French colony of Louisiana. As chattel slaves in perpetuity, African slaves and their progeny were considered the property of their owners and had no rights.
The U.S. Constitution of 1787 said that slaves, who at no time had the right to vote in any state, should count as part of the population at the ratio of three persons counted per five slaves. Many African-American spokespersons have translated this into a belief that slaves counted as 3/5 of a person, which is a rough approximation of the truth of their status. Students of the abolitionist movement, however, note that slaves would have been better off if they were not counted as people at all: the population counts added pro-slavery members of the House of Representatives and added electoral votes for pro-slavery Presidential nominees.
The twin doctrines of white supremacy and its corollary, a belief in the inherent inferiority of blacks, combined with capitalism to create a powerful rationale for slavery. Nationwide, de facto and de jure segregation and discrimination based on the notion of race were accepted and effective tools to enforce and entrench a pervasive system of white power and privilege and black oppression and disadvantage.
After the American RevolutionThe American Revolution refers to the series of events, ideas, and changes that resulted in the political separation of thirteen colonies in North America from the British Empire and the creation of the United States of America. The American Revolutionary (1775-1783), changing economic conditions resulted in the decline and end of what limited slavery there was in the North. Conversely, the rapid spread of cotton cultivation in the South encouraged the growth of slavery there. By 1860, 3.8 million slaves accounted for one third of the total population of the southern states.
Contrary to popular belief, however, not all blacks in America were slaves. By the year 1860, well over 11% of the total black population in the U.S. was free. There were approximately 500,000 free blacks who lived throughout the United States, with slightly more than half residing in the South.
After having completed the labor required of them by their masters, some slaves were permitted to perform work for hire. In this way, over time some were able to purchase their freedom. Once free, many then continued to save their incomes in order to purchase their entire families' freedom. Others sometimes were manumitted, usually upon the death of their masters, and still others escaped to freedom. The Underground RailroadAlternative meaning: Metro The Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad but rather a network of clandestine routes, often informal and impromptu, by which black slaves were able to escape the southern United States and reach freedom either in state was a series of well-traveled escape routes to the North along which people sympathetic to the anti-slavery cause provided refuge, food and directions to safeguard and speed fugitive slaves on their journey North.
In the North, many free blacks joined the abolitionist cause, and tens of thousands of free black men and fugitive slaves enthustiastically joined the ranks of the Union ArmyThe Union Army refers to the United States Army during the American Civil War. The Union Army is also known as the Northern Army and the Federal Army''. History of the Union Army Secession and the Beginning of the war The United States of America was in c after the Civil War began.
In 1863, during the American Civil WarThe American Civil War was fought in the United States from 1861 until 1865 between the northern states, popularly referred to as "the U. the Union," " the North," or "the Yankees"; and the seceding southern states, commonly referred to as "the Confederat (1861-1865), U.S. president Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln ( February 12, 1809 April 15, 1865) was the 16th ( 1861- 1865) President of the United States, and the first president from the Republican Party. The election of Lincoln, who staunchly opposed the expansion of slavery, polarized the nation issued the Emancipation ProclamationThe Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862, and went officially into effect January 1, 1863, during the second year of the American Civil War. It was Abraham Lincoln's declaration that all slaves in the states which had seceded from th, freeing slaves in the southern states at war with the North. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1865, outlawed slavery in the United States. In 1868, the 14th Amendment granted full U.S. citizenship to African-Americans. The 15th amendment, ratified in 1870, extended the right to vote to black males.
After the Union victory over the Confederacy, a brief period of southern black progress, called Reconstruction, followed. From 1865 to 1877, under protection of Union troops, some strides were made toward equal rights for African-Americans. Southern blacks began to vote, were elected to the U.S. Congress, held local public office, established schools and built towns and businesses. However, in the face of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks as well as whites sympathetic to their cause, the U.S. government retreated from its pledge to guarantee constitutional protections to freedmen and women. When President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South in 1877, white southerners acted quickly to reverse the groundbreaking advances of Reconstruction, and white mob violence against African-Americans intensified. Seeking to return blacks to their subordinate status under slavery, white supremacists resurrected de facto barriers and enacted new laws to further marginalize blacks in southern society, limiting, among other things, black access to transportation, schools, restaurants and other public facilities. Although slavery had been abolished, most southern blacks for decades continued to struggle in grinding poverty as agricultural, domestic and menial laborers. Many were sharecroppers, their economic status little changed by Emancipation.
After its founding in 1867, the Ku Klux Klan, a clandestine organization sworn to perpetuate white supremacy, became a power in the South and beyond, eventually establishing a northern headquarters in Greenfield, Indiana. The Klan employed lynching, cross burnings and other forms of terrorism, violence and intimidation. Lynchings escalated dramatically in a period that marked the bleakest era in U.S. black-white race relations. It was reported that nearly 3,100 black men and women were lynched from 1889 to 1930. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers during this period, it is reported that less than 50 whites were ever indicted for their crimes, and only four sentenced.
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