Black Americans Essay Research Paper Black Americans

Black Americans Essay, Research Paper

Black Americans are those persons in the United States who trace their

ancestry to members of the Negroid race in Africa. They have at various times in

United States history been referred to as African, coloured, Negro,

Afro-American, and African-American, as well as black. The black population of

the United States has grown from three-quarters of a million in 1790 to nearly

30 million in 1990. As a percentage of the total population, blacks declined

from 19.3 in 1790 to 9.7 in 1930. A modest percentage increase has occurred

since that time. Over the past 300 and more years in the United States,

considerable racial mixture has taken place between persons of African descent

and those with other racial backgrounds, mainly of white European or American

Indian ancestry. Shades of skin colour range from dark brown to ivory. In body

type black Americans range from short and stocky to tall and lean. Nose shapes

vary from aquiline to extremely broad and flat; hair colour from medium brown to

brown black; and hair texture from tightly curled to limp and straight.

Historically, the predominant attitude toward racial group membership in the

United States has been that persons having any black African ancestry are

considered to be black. In some parts of the United States, especially in the

antebellum South, laws were written to define racial group membership in this

way, generally to the detriment of those who were not Caucasian. It is important

to note, however, that ancestry and physical characteristics are only part of

what has set black Americans apart as a distinct group. The concept of race, as

it applies to the black minority in the United States, is as much a social and

political concept as a biological one. Blacks Under Slavery: 1600-1865 The first

Africans in the New World arrived with Spanish and Portuguese explorers and

settlers. By 1600 an estimated 275,000 Africans, both free and slave, were in

Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Africans first arrived in the

area that became the United States in 1619, when a handful of captives were sold

by the captain of a Dutch man-of-war to settlers at JAMESTOWN. Others were

brought in increasing numbers to fill the desire for labour in a country where

land was plentiful and labour scarce. By the end of the 17th century,

approximately 1,300,000 Africans had landed in the New World. From 1701 to 1810

the number reached 6,000,000, with another 1,800,000 arriving after 1810. Some

Africans were brought directly to the English colonies in North America. Others

landed as slaves in the West Indies and were later resold and shipped to the

mainland. Slavery in America The earliest African arrivals were viewed in the

same way as indentured servants from Europe. This similarity did not long

continue. By the latter half of the 17th century, clear differences existed in

the treatment of black and white servants. A 1662 Virginia law assumed Africans

would remain servants for life, and a 1667 act declared that "Baptism do

not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom." By

1740 the SLAVERY system in colonial America was fully developed. A Virginia law

in that year declared slaves to be "chattel personal in the hands of their

owners and possessors . . . for all intents, construction, and purpose

whatsoever." In spite of numerous ideological conflicts, however, the

slavery system was maintained in the United States until 1865, and widespread

antiblack attitudes nurtured by slavery continued thereafter. Prior to the

American Revolution, slavery existed in all the colonies. The ideals of the

Revolution and the limited profitability of slavery in the North resulted in its

abandonment in northern states during the last quarter of the 18th century. At

the same time the strength of slavery increased in the South, with the

continuing demand for cheap labour by the tobacco growers and cotton farmers of

the Southern states. By 1850, 92 percent of all American blacks were

concentrated in the South, and of this group approximately 95 percent were

slaves. Under the plantation system gang labour was the typical form of

employment. Overseers were harsh as a matter of general practice, and brutality

was common. Slaves could own no property unless sanctioned by a slave master,

and rape of a female slave was not considered a crime except as it represented

trespassing on another’s property. Slaves could not present evidence in court

against whites. In most of the South it was illegal to teach a black to read or

write. Opposition by Blacks Blacks were forbidden to carry arms or to gather in

numbers except in the presence of a white person. Free blacks, whether living in

the North or South, were confronted with attitudes and actions that differed

little from those facing Southern bl

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