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North America Most of the black population of North America is in the United States, where 29,986,060 blacks were counted by the 1900 census. Canadian blacks made up less than 1 per cent of the population, numbering 170,340. Almost all these people are descendants of Africans brought to the New World as slaves between 1501, when Spain first permitted African slavery in its colonies, and 1808, when the United States banned the importation of new slaves. In Mexico the African-American population intermingled extensively with other races, but in the United States and Canada blacks generally remained socially and culturally distinct. Although the values and behaviour patterns of the various African cultures were suppressed by the white majority in North America, black people nonetheless combined African practices with European cultural elements to create a mixed and resilient African-American culture that has had considerable impact on nonblacks, particularly in the areas of music, dance, and the arts. Conversely, black people have absorbed the language and social skills needed to survive and advance in a white-dominated society while maintaining a distinct identity and separate interests. The history of blacks in North America has been characterized by intense and recurring struggles for civil rights, economic equity, and political self-determination. The Slave Era The extensive use of black African labour during the 16th and 17th centuries on profitable Brazilian and Caribbean sugar plantations provided a model for European colonists in North America, where Native American and white indentured servant populations were insufficient to meet the demands for agricultural labour. Although Africans served as guides and soldiers in the initial Spanish conquest of Mexico, most blacks brought to North America were used to produce the export crops (tobacco, rice, indigo, and cotton) that became the major source of wealth extracted by European nations from their colonies. The English settlers of North America only gradually turned to black slavery to solve their labour shortage. Spain brought at least 100,000 Africans to Mexico during the 16th century, but England did not engage extensively in the slave trade until the Royal African Company was established in 1663. Although a few Africans began arriving in English North America in 1619, their status was initially similar to that of the white indentured servants, who remained the backbone of the agricultural labour force until the end of the 17th century. As white workers improved their status during this period, however, both free and bonded blacks were subjected to new laws punishing slave disobedience, prohibiting racial intermarriage, restricting manumission, and otherwise ensuring that the political rights and economic opportunities granted to whites would not be extended to Africans or their descendants. Resistance Blacks resisted enslavement from the time of capture in Africa but, outnumbered by whites, North American slaves were less likely than Brazilian or Caribbean ones to engage in massive rebellions. Africans in North America typically underwent “seasoning” in the West Indies and a “breaking” process on the mainland, which was designed to replace African cultural roots with the attitudes and habits of obedience required for slave labour. Retention of African skills and social patterns was not as common among North American slaves as among their Latin American counterparts, who were more likely to be born in Africa or have extensive contact with African-born slaves. Only in South Carolina, where slaves formed a majority of the population, did planters commonly seek slaves from particular regions of Africa who possessed desired skills, such as knowledge of rice cultivation. More often, white slaveowners attempted to suppress African culture, believing it was easier to control slaves who spoke English and depended on the skills and knowledge instilled in them by whites. These efforts were not completely successful, however. Slaves adapted English, Christianity, and other aspects of Western civilization, thereby creating their own African-American culture that combined African with European elements. Efforts to return to Africa or to establish Maroon (independent runaway slave) colonies in North America became less common as the proportion of African-born slaves declined, but resistance continued under the leadership of slaves and free blacks, who used their knowledge of white society to improve the status of blacks. Despite the restrictions white masters placed on the education and religious activity of slaves, literacy and Christianity often became vehicles for individual and collective resistance, both to brutal treatment and to enslavement itself. The American War of Independence and Black Rebellions During the 18th century, black rebelliousness received a new stimulus from the growing popularity among whites with democratic and egalitarian ideas. Slaves exploited the divisions in white society during the American War of Independence (1775-1783) against British rule. Thousands responded to a royal offer of freedom for those who fought with the British, and after the war several thousand black Loyalists went to Canada, most of them settling in Nova Scotia. About 5,000 blacks served in the Continental Army. After the war, revolutionary ideology and Quaker pietism inspired new antislavery activities by both blacks and whites. Blacks petitioned state legislatures for freedom, better treatment, or repatriation to Africa. The self-trained black scientist Benjamin Banneker argued against black inferiority in a famous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. During the 18th century, the spread of cotton cultivation to the Deep South (US states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico) and south-western states fostered the rise of an extremely conservative political order based on the use of slave labour. Much of what liberalization of white attitudes had occurred in the South was reversed as a result of the profits made possible by the invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. Despite this retreat, however, ideas drawn from the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, as well as from Christian idealism and African folk beliefs, remained evident in 19th-century slave resistance, especially the major conspiracies led by Gabriel Prosser in Virginia (1800) and Denmark Vesey in South Carolina (1822). The bloody Nat Turner Rebellion (1831) prompted increased repression of slave activities, although small-scale resistance, such as running away, tool breaking, and sporadic violence, continued to interfere with plantation operations. Semifree Blacks Although more than 90 per cent of the black population in the United States was enslaved at the time of the 1790 census, the small population of freed blacks had already established its own social institutions and had begun efforts to improve the conditions of the race. Most of these efforts were centred in cities, which offered greater liberty to black residents than did rural areas. Even black slaves had some freedom of movement in the cities, and they were generally more skilled and had better access to information than was common on plantations. By the early 19th century, blacks in Philadelphia under the leadership of Richard Allen had founded what became the African Methodist Episcopal Church, while blacks in New York had formed the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Black Baptist churches had also been established in various other communities, mostly in the South. In Boston, Philadelphia, and Providence, Rhode Island, Prince Hall had founded lodges for African-American members of Freemasonry (fraternal order). By the time of the Turner Rebellion, black urban communities sustained a variety of African-American churches, fraternal orders, schools, self-help groups, and political organizations. Although literacy was still uncommon, these institutions fostered self-confidence among black leaders and encouraged them to express their concerns to the general population. The determination of blacks to decide their own destiny was revealed in their newspapers, such as Freedom's Journal, founded in 1827, and in militant pamphlets, including Appeal (1829) by David Walker. During the 1830s black leaders gathered annually in national conventions to discuss strategies for racial advancement. Efforts by blacks to improve their conditions ranged from the adoption of prevailing white values to attempts to reform or escape American society. The black shipowner Paul Cuffee, for example, favoured a return to Africa and in 1815 succeeded in transporting a small group of free blacks to Sierra Leone. In 1817, however, when whites in the newly formed American Colonization Society (ACS) announced their desire to return free blacks to Africa, black representatives assembled by Richard Allen firmly rejected the idea, arguing that they should not abandon their enslaved fellow blacks. In subsequent years, blacks continued to discuss the option of immigrating to Canada, Latin America, or Africa. Although the ACS established a colony in Liberia in 1822, foreign colonization ventures received little support until the 1850s. Discrimination against manumitted slaves was intense throughout the United States. Although blacks could vote in some northern states in the years after the American War of Independence, the extension of voting rights to propertyless men was accompanied by new restrictions on black political participation, landownership, and social contact with whites. By the 1830s, most southern and some northern states restricted or prohibited the entry of free blacks. An attack on the Cincinnati black community by a white mob in 1829 was followed in the next few years by similar riots in other northern cities, where white workers resented competition from blacks for jobs. Although southern free blacks lived in societies that feared and often restricted their presence, they had greater opportunities than northern blacks to work as artisans and even to acquire property. In New Orleans, Louisiana, for example, 753 blacks owned slaves, according to the 1830 census. Most urban blacks lived on the margins of society, however, barred from public educational facilities, good housing, and legal protection. Before the American War of Independence thousands of blacks had sought refuge in Canada (where slavery was outlawed in 1833) and, to a lesser degree, in Mexico. Abolitionist Movement Increased discrimination, combined with the growth of black literacy, institutional strength, and economic resources, encouraged a trend towards greater militancy after 1830. Impatience with gradualist plans to end slavery prompted the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to advocate immediate abolition and, with black help, to found the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Many African-American activists later became disenchanted with Garrison's notion that slavery could be ended by moralistic arguments. Instead they stressed the need for political action and, ultimately, violent resistance. The growing militancy was displayed in 1839, when black communities raised funds to defend Africans in the Amistad case. Some blacks broke with Garrison to join the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, while others worked within all-black self-help societies and local groups established to help runaway slaves. Growing Activism During the 1840s black abolitionists developed a variety of strategies for abolishing slavery. In 1843 the call by Reverend Henry Highland Garnet for a slave uprising was almost adopted at a meeting of black representatives. In 1847 the outspoken black orator and writer Frederick Douglass, a former Garrison supporter, joined with Martin Delany, a pioneer black nationalist, to establish an independent black journal, the North Star. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Maria Stewart were active abolitionists. Tubman and others helped slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. The fugutive slave laws passed between 1793 and 1850, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased pessimism among blacks about the possibility of a peaceful end to slavery. Several violent clashes occurred when armed blacks tried to protect escaped slaves or sought to free captured fugitives. Abolitionist resistance in Boston was so strong that 2,000 soldiers were required in 1854 to escort Anthony Burns, an escaped slave, to a ship that returned him to the South. Black pessimism was further strengthened in 1857 by the Dred Scott case ruling that blacks were not considered US citizens. During this period, black militants such as Garnet and Delany decided that blacks could progress only by remaining separate from whites, and in 1859 Delany led an exploratory expedition to Africa to prepare the way for future African-American colonies. Although these advocates of black nationalism were a minority within the antebellum black community, they reflected the growing belief that slavery was a basic part of the US political system. Thus, the white abolitionist John Brown found that many blacks sympathized with his plans to initiate a slave uprising, and five blacks later participated in Brown's unsuccessful raid on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, now in West Virginia in 1859. Civil War, Reconstruction, and Urban Migration Although most northern whites did not expect the American Civil War to result in the elimination of slavery, black abolitionists offered their services to the causes of the Union (northern states) with that end in mind. Ironically, northern policy regarding black enlistments was inconsistent, as President Abraham Lincoln and other leaders hoped to preserve the Union without abolishing slavery or ending discrimination in the North. Blacks in Union Service At the beginning of the war, only a few blacks were permitted to join the northern military forces. As casualties mounted during 1862, however, northern military commanders sometimes recruited black soldiers without explicit authority, and Congress finally gave the president authority to use black troops. Lincoln also issued his Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves held by southerners who remained in rebellion as of January 1, 1863. This act had little immediate effect but did signal the change in Lincoln's racial attitudes that eventually led to a constitutional prohibition of slavery by the 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Even after gaining acceptance into military service, however, black soldiers suffered racist treatment from many of their white officers. The Confederates (members of the southern states) generally treated their black prisoners with brutality. When several hundred black troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, were captured in 1864, they were put to death by the southern forces. By the end of the war, the Union had become dependent on the services of 186,000 black soldiers and sailors, 21 of whom received the Medal of Honor, and Congress acceded to black demands for equal pay, backdated to the date of enlistment. The slaves' desire for freedom was demonstrated during the war by escapes from plantations threatened by Union troops. In the early part of the conflict, some northern commanders returned slaves to their masters, while others forced escapees to work for the Union Army. In a few instances, blacks were allowed to farm land confiscated from white planters, but most of these lands were returned to their former owners at the end of the war. The Freedmen's Bureau, established in March 1865, assumed responsibility for the welfare of free slaves, but a clear national policy regarding the future status of blacks emerged only gradually. Reconstruction Despite the Union victory, southern blacks experienced severe restrictions on their freedom after the Civil War. Many hoped that they would be given confiscated or abandoned lands and thereby gain economic independence, but white landowners succeeded in passing “black codes” to restrict black landownership and freedom of movement. This southern recalcitrance prompted Congress to extend the existence of the Freedmen's Bureau and to pass civil rights legislation protecting black rights. The veto of this legislation by President Andrew Johnson, and the subsequent defeat of his Democratic party in the 1866 congressional elections, led radical Republicans to take charge of the Reconstruction of the South. Congressional Reconstruction failed to eliminate black economic dependency, but the Freedmen's Bureau provided needed rations and medical care for ex-slaves. The bureau's greatest success was in literacy training and in helping to establish black colleges, including Howard University in Washington DC (1867). Improved education was of little benefit to black farmers, however, who lacked job opportunities; many blacks were thus forced back into conditions resembling slavery. Eventually, a majority of former slaves became sharecroppers (tenant farmers). This system of peonage left blacks under the domination of white creditors who provided them with seeds and tools. Although the federal occupation of the South left white economic domination unaltered, it temporarily provided a setting in which black leaders could seek political office and promote such political reforms as improved public education and an end to property qualifications for voting, imprisonment for debt, and segregation in public facilities. In South Carolina, blacks achieved considerable influence, holding at various times the offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and speaker of the house. In Louisiana, the black lieutenant governor P. B. S. Pinchback served as acting governor for some time after the white governor was removed from office. Although two black men—Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce—became US senators, and about 20 blacks served in the House of Representatives, blacks never controlled any state government. The official corruption that was later attributed to black rule in the South was merely part of a national trend towards the exploitation of government by business interests. In general, southern blacks attempting to exercise their newly acquired rights faced growing terrorization from such groups as the Ku Klux Klan. Erosion of Black Rights After the final withdrawal of northern troops from the South in 1877, intense racial discrimination and depressed economic conditions prompted many blacks to leave. Moreover, Supreme Court decisions during the 1880s and 1890s drastically undermined their protection under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. The Court's Plessy vs. Ferguson decision in 1896, approving separate public facilities for blacks, marked the culmination of this process. Black economic rights were eroded through crop lien laws (which gave white landowners title to black farm production), through debt peonage, and through vagrancy laws that prevented blacks from refusing low-paying jobs. During the 1890s black and white farmers joined to build a strong Populist alliance, leading to the creation of organizations such as the People's Party. However, this coalition of farming interests fell apart after 1896 as a result of intimidation and white susceptibility to racist Democratic appeals. By the end of the century, southern white leaders had begun to undermine the 15th Amendment's guarantees of black voting rights through devices such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Black political and economic freedom was also suppressed by sheer terror, as illustrated by the fact that more than 1,000 blacks were put to death by lynching during the 1890s. A black educator, Booker T. Washington, reacted to this erosion of black rights by advocating a policy of racial accommodation. He urged blacks not to emphasize the goals of social integration and political rights but to acquire the occupational skills that would provide opportunities for economic advancement instead. Urban Migration The deteriorating conditions in the South after Reconstruction sparked numerous waves of black migration to the North and West. Although the majority of black migrants went to the eastern seaboard states and to the Midwest, blacks also participated in the general westward movement. A major exodus into Kansas occurred in 1879, and other movements resulted in the formation of all-black towns in Oklahoma and other western states. Black migrants also moved to the far West. Mexican-born blacks were among the founders of Los Angeles, California, and black “buffalo soldiers” fought Native Americans to open up much of the South-west for white settlement. By 1900 the distribution of the black population had changed in significant ways from what it had been before the Civil War. Although still overwhelmingly concentrated in the South, almost a quarter of all blacks now lived in urban areas. In the north-eastern and western states, more than three quarters were urban dwellers. The largest concentrations, each of which had more than 40,000 black residents, were in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; New Orleans, Louisiana; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York; and Memphis, Tennessee. Urban blacks, drawn by economic opportunities available in the cities, had to contend with considerable discrimination and hostility from white workers. Faced with competition from European immigrants, they were generally excluded from unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labour. Even blacks who worked as domestic servants encountered growing competition from immigrants and increasing hostility from their affluent white clientele. Both American blacks and the much smaller black population in Canada (about 17,000 in 1900) felt a declining support by whites for racial reform and a growing acceptance of pseudoscientific doctrines of northern European superiority. Black Culture in the Early 20th Century The movement of blacks from rural to urban areas led to profound changes in African-American society and cultural life. The expanding black urban communities offered the migrants greater freedom than the rural South and provided a broader range of social institutions and educational opportunities. The cities were particularly attractive to blacks who had been educated at Howard, Fisk (Nashville, Tennesee), Atlanta (Georgia), Hampton (Virginia), and other black universities established during the 19th century. University-educated intellectuals, including Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, W. E. B. Du Bois, and William Monroe Trotter, departed from the accommodating policy advocated by government to pursue equal rights through various protest groups, such as the all-black African-American Council and Niagara Movement and the interracial National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Growing Black Consciousness The growth in size and literacy of the urban black populace stimulated cultural and intellectual activity. Newspapers and magazines published by blacks appeared in all substantial black communities. The composers Scott Joplin, W. C. Handy, and J. Rosamond Johnson, brother of the writer James Weldon Johnson, and the poet-novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar were among black artists who achieved prominence at the turn of the century. Numerous other less well known musicians and writers combined Western musical styles with rhythmic and melodic forms rooted in Africa and in slavery to create African-American jazz. At the end of the 19th century, ambivalence about “unrefined” black folk culture and emerging black urban lifestyles existed among longer established and more educated black residents. As these communities absorbed a stream of new migrants in the decades after Reconstruction, churches that were dominated by older residents were supplemented by less formal Baptist or Pentecostal churches that appealed to poor, sometimes illiterate, new arrivals from the rural South. Tensions were evident between the old residents, who frequently performed domestic service for whites, and the new migrants, who had difficulty competing for such jobs. By the early 20th century, however, many black communities had become large enough to support a minority of black professionals and business people, and earlier deference to white standards among relatively successful blacks gradually gave way to an increasing sense of racial pride and social cohesion. Black fraternal orders, political organizations, social clubs, and newspapers published by blacks asserted an urban black consciousness that became the foundation for the militancy and cultural innovations of the 1920s. World War I World War I marked a turning point in African-American history by accelerating the long-term process of black urbanization and institutional development. When black migrants came to urban areas to take industrial jobs vacated by white workers who had enlisted in the armed forces, the resulting expansion of the black urban population opened still further the business and professional opportunities for blacks. Even before the war, the emerging black middle class had begun to identify its own interests with those of less affluent blacks, who were their clientele. These sentiments became more evident as blacks reacted to white racism with expressions of racial pride and unity. Black university graduates, called the Talented Tenth by Du Bois, were still few in number (only 2,132 blacks were in college in 1917), but they increasingly received academic rather than vocational training and were therefore more able to provide articulate political and cultural leadership. These educated blacks did not agree on support for the war—the labour leader A. Philip Randolph and the socialist Chandler Owen vigorously opposed it—but were united in the view that blacks should use the war as an opportunity to make racial gains. The majority of the 370,000 black servicemen were assigned to support units during World War I, but some all-black regiments saw extensive combat duty. The 369th Infantry Regiment was the first Allied regiment to reach the Rhine River and the regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre (Military Cross) by France for distinguished service during the war. Black servicemen came home from the war with a determination to demand the respect of the nation for which they had fought. The Postwar Years Even as blacks returned, however, white opposition to black gains became more intense. In 1917 more than 200 blacks were killed in East St Louis, Illinois, by a white mob that invaded the black community. That year, 63 black soldiers in Houston, Texas, were summarily court-martialled and 13 were hanged without being given the right to appeal after a black battalion rioted in reaction to white harassment. After the war, many black soldiers in uniform were attacked and some killed by whites seeking to reinforce traditional patterns of racial domination. During the “Red Summer” of 1919, antiblack riots occurred in Longview, Texas; Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Omaha, Nebraska. These events further stimulated blacks to defend their rights and support outspoken leaders. The most popular militant black leader was a Jamaican immigrant, Marcus Garvey, who in 1916 established an international organization with headquarters in New York. His Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had a membership ranging from two to four million people. By 1919 he had also established a steamship corporation, the Black Star Line, to pursue trade with Africa. Garvey's popularity, however, made him a target of attacks from black civil rights leaders and brought him under surveillance by the US government. In 1922, amid mounting controversy, he was arrested for mail fraud in connection with his steamship line. His subsequent conviction and imprisonment, and his deportation in 1927, resulted in a rapid decline of the UNIA. The Harlem Renaissance Garvey's rise and fall was only one aspect of the growth of racial pride and awareness that characterized the 1920s. At the same time as he was drawing support from black workers and those who owned small businesses, an African-American cultural movement, called the Harlem Renaissance, was gaining support from black intellectuals. The Jamaican-born poet and novelist Claude McKay was the first black literary figure of the 1920s to attract a large white audience. The innovative novel Cane (1923) by Jean Toomer voiced the common theme of the Harlem Renaissance in its identification with the lifestyles of the black poor. Although Toomer and the poet Countee Cullen were members of the black élite, they and other black writers combined European literary techniques with African-American topics. The most popular and prolific of the black writers of the 1920s was the poet Langston Hughes, whose works showed strong identification with the black working class. These writers gained an audience largely through the efforts of white patrons and black editors, such as Charles S. Johnson at Opportunity (published by the Urban League) and Jessie Fauset and Du Bois at The Crisis (published by the NAACP). Alain Locke, a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes scholar, was one of several black academics who promoted African-American and African culture. His work was later continued by Zora Neale Hurston, a novelist who in 1935 published Mules and Men, an outstanding book of southern black folktales. Black activities in theatre also reflected a desire to display African-American cultural distinctiveness to the public. Several musical comedies produced in the 1920s by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle allowed black performers to demonstrate their talents. The black actor Charles Gilpin played more serious roles, including the title role in The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill. Paul Robeson also performed in O'Neill's plays, starred in Othello by William Shakespeare, and later gained prominence as a singer of black spirituals and working-class folk songs. African-American music was also deeply affected by the social developments of the 1920s. Previously confined to the South, jazz and blues began to be played in northern cities during World War I and soon became established in the rapidly growing northern black communities. Louis Armstrong went from New Orleans to Chicago in 1922 to play with the jazz band formed by King Oliver, and during the mid-1920s Jelly Roll Morton began arranging the previously spontaneous jazz pieces, thus preparing the way for big band leaders such as Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson. The Great Depression and World War II The awakening of African-American culture in the 1920s lost momentum in the 1930s as the effects of the Great Depression diverted attention from cultural to economic matters. Unemployment and poverty among blacks were high even before the stockmarket crash of 1929, but the general slump in the economy made it more feasible for blacks to join whites in seeking social reforms. A small minority of blacks was drawn to the Communist party, which made special efforts to attract them and ran a black candidate for vice president in the presidential elections of 1933, 1936, and 1940. The party's black support remained small, however, and many black members, such as the novelist Richard Wright, became disillusioned and left. More important was the involvement of blacks in labour unions, both all-black organizations such as Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, led by A. Philip Randolph, and the industrial unions that joined to form the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). Unions played an important role in forming the National Negro Congress, with Randolph as president, to promote black economic interests, but internal political disputes reduced its effectiveness. Nonetheless, black workers became firmly established during the 1930s and 1940s in numerous industries. Partly as a result of union involvement, the allegiance of black voters underwent a historical shift from the Republican party, which they had supported since Reconstruction, to the Democratic party. In the 1936 election, three years after Franklin D. Roosevelt had won his first term as president, most black voters supported Democratic candidates for the first time. The New Deal Although blacks overwhelmingly voted for Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election, his New Deal had mixed success in black communities. On the one hand, federal relief programmes provided aid for poor blacks who had previously been forced to survive without government assistance. Blacks were also hired to build and were enabled to occupy new housing financed by the government. In addition, partly through the efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt, New Deal policies were influenced by a group of black leaders, informally organized as a Black Cabinet by the educator Mary McLeod Bethune. Finally, several blacks were appointed to the Roosevelt administration. Among these were Robert C. Weaver, an adviser in several agencies, and Bethune, who was director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. On the other hand, the Roosevelt administration did little to confront the special problems faced by blacks. New Deal programmes did not help southern black farmers, who were hurt by the decline in agricultural prices and were not allowed to influence the Agricultural Adjustment Administration measures. Fearful of losing his southern white support, Roosevelt futhermore declined to support federal legislation against lynching. Blacks were often the victims of discrimination on the part of federal relief programmes, especially in the South. For example, by excluding farmers and domestics, the Social Security Act of 1935 excluded 65 per cent of all African-American workers. Many federal housing projects also perpetuated patterns of residential segregation. Despite setbacks, however, a foundation was established during the depression for subsequent civil rights reforms through the alliance of blacks with white liberals. During the 1930s the NAACP led a vigorous legal battle against discrimination, concentrating on segregation in public education. In 1938, it gained an initial victory when the US Supreme Court ordered the admission of a black man to the University of Missouri law school, because the state had failed to provide such facilities for blacks. The NAACP also played an important role for the defence in the Scottsboro case (1935), although its involvement came only after the Communist party had publicized the case. World War II The war against the Axis powers provided a great stimulus for changes in national racial policies, for it increased the need for black labour and heightened the sensitivity of whites to the dangers of racist ideas. On the eve of the war, a threatened march on Washington, D.C. by blacks under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph forced President Roosevelt to issue an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination in the defence industries and in government. Although the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, established under this order, had few enforcement powers, it encouraged a large-scale migration of blacks in search of jobs in munition factories. Between 1940 and 1950 this migration more than tripled the black population in the western states. Conflicts over housing and jobs developed between black and white workers in some cities, and a race riot occurred in Detroit, Michigan, in 1943, resulting in the deaths of 25 blacks and 9 whites before federal troops restored order. While making gains in civilian life, African-Americans also sought to improve their status by military service. As in previous wars, blacks seeking to enter the armed forces faced considerable discrimination, although the War Department eventually approved the training of an unprecedented number of black officers and accepted blacks to serve as pilots and in medical and engineering units. Approximately half a million blacks served overseas in segregated units in the Pacific and Europe. Dorie Miller won the Navy Cross, the highest honour awarded to a black serviceman in the war, for his heroism at Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) in 1941. As in civilian life, racial conflicts occurred on or near military posts and in occupied zones abroad; serious riots also erupted at several camps where black soldiers protested against poor conditions and racial discrimination. Increased Understanding Among Whites The desire of African-Americans to win a victory over fascism abroad and racism at home was expressed in the so-called Double-V campaign, which also revealed an undercurrent of black discontent. Allied rhetoric about the fight for the “four freedoms” (of expression and worship, from want and fear) encouraged blacks to feel these ideals might be realized in the United States. The growing acceptance among whites of racial equality was strengthened by the writings of numerous scholars, including the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, author of An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Other scholarly and literary publications during the 1930s and 1940s increased understanding of the black experience, notably the novel Native Son by Richard Wright (1940); Black Metropolis (1945), an important sociological study, by St Clair Drake and Horace Cayton; and From Slavery to Freedom (1947), by the historian John Hope Franklin. The peaceful sit-ins conducted by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), formed in 1942, signalled a new willingness on the part of both white and black reformers to challenge racial segregation. The success of black individuals in the sporting and scientific worlds also encouraged changing attitutes among whites. The boxer Jack Johnson, the track-and-field athlete Jesse Owens, and the baseball player Jackie Robinson all made a notable impact on their respective sports. The achievements of black scientists can be traced back to Benjamin Banneker in the 18th century; Norbert Rillieux who, in the 19th century, perfected a system for refining sugar. In the early 20th century George Washington Carver made important discoveries in agricultural science, while Charles R. Drew developed a widely used system for storing blood plasma. The Struggle for Freedom The period after the war was one of rapid change in American race relations. As more blacks left the rural South for urban areas, the relative economic status of blacks improved. From 1948 to 1961, the proportion of blacks earning less than $3,000 a year declined from 78 to 47 per cent. At the same time, blacks earning more than $10,000 increased proportionally from less than 1 to 17 per cent. Even so, the median income for whites in 1948 was higher than that of blacks in 1961. Related to these economic changes was a rapid increase in the number of blacks attending university, from 124,000 in 1947 to 233,000 in 1961. Early Gains The existence of a growing affluent and educated black population in urban areas made possible major political gains. Black urban voters provided decisive support for liberal Democratic candidates, who in turn backed civil rights reforms. In 1954 three blacks, Augustus Hawkins of California, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. of New York, and William L. Dawson of Illinois, were elected to the US House of Representatives, the largest number since Reconstruction. A pattern of black influence on national politics was clearly established in 1948, when Harry Truman was elected president, despite receiving only a minority of white votes. Truman had gained the support of blacks by issuing an executive order that eventually desegregated the armed forces and by supporting a civil rights policy for the Democratic party over strong opposition from southern Dixiecrats (a group of Democrats who advocated certain conservative views of the Southern states). Although Truman's actions had little immediate impact on blacks, they indicated that the federal government was listening to black demands. Vigorous political dissent among blacks was discouraged during the so-called McCarthy era (c. 1950-1955), as black leaders, such as Du Bois and Robeson, came under attack from the government, but anticommunism also provided leverage for blacks to demand that the United States live up to its democratic claims. The Brown Decision Although neither President Dwight Eisenhower nor Congress was willing to take action on behalf of black civil rights during the first half of the 1950s, new presidential appointments to the US Supreme Court prepared the way for a reversal of racial segregation in schools established by the decision of Plessey vs. Fergusson of 1896. In 1954 a unanimous Court ruled, in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and the next year ordered state schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed”. Although southern white officials sought to obstruct implementation of the Brown decision, many African-Americans saw the ruling as a sign that the federal government might intervene on their behalf in other racial matters. Unwilling to wait for firm federal action, however, southern blacks began their own desegregation efforts. In 1957, black children defied white mobs in Little Rock, Arkansas, until Eisenhower sent troops to protect their right to attend an all-white high school. Ten years after the Brown decision, however, less than 2 per cent of southern black children attended integrated schools. During the early 1960s, it was necessary to maintain federal troops and police on the University of Mississippi campus to ensure the right of a black student to attend classes. Desegregation Struggle The Brown decision also encouraged African-Americans to launch a sustained movement to desegregate all public facilities. It began in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, when a black woman called Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man and was arrested. Led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., black residents reacted to the arrest by organizing a bus boycott that lasted more than a year, before a federal court declared Alabama's bus segregation laws unconstitutional. King's commitment to reform through nonviolent means attracted a favourable press for his protests. Although King remained the most reknowned black leader, protest activities soon moved beyond the control of any single individual or group. King's supporters organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, but when black university students began a widespread campaign of sit-ins in lunch-bars in February 1960, most young activists rejected leadership by SCLC and older civil rights groups, such as the NAACP or CORE. They formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was often more militant than other civil rights groups. Voter Registration The Freedom Rides of 1961 initiated by CORE were designed to end segregation in facilities dependent on interstate commerce, and demonstrated the ability of civil rights protesters to force federal intervention in the South. They brought many young activists into Mississippi, where white officials firmly resisted any concessions to the civil rights movement. Black civil rights leaders in Mississippi, who had long struggled for gains with the help of the NAACP, encouraged young civil rights workers affiliated with SNCC to concentrate their efforts on achieving voting rights. By 1962 Robert Moses, a Harvard-educated schoolteacher, had brought together a staff of organizers who worked closely with local residents seeking to register as voters. White resistance, however, remained strong. In 1964, after the murder of three of the organizers, a major national effort led to the unsuccessful challenge by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party led by Fannie Lou Hamer to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation at the national Democratic convention. Although the voting-rights movement in Mississippi made slow progress, civil rights protests in southern urban centres achieved important gains. Massive demonstrations were held in Albany, Georgia, during 1961 and 1962, and the following year more than a million demonstrators kept up the pressure in numerous other cities. This wave of protests reached a peak during the spring of 1963, when federal troops were sent into Birmingham, Alabama, to quell racial violence. President John Kennedy reacted to the widespread demonstrations by introducing civil rights legislation designed to end segregation in public facilities. On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 protesters gathered in Washington, D.C., for a peaceful demonstration, calling for congressional action in civil rights and employment legislation. The progress of the civil rights bill through Congress remained at a standstill until 1964, however, when it was passed in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1965 another series of protests in Selma, Alabama, prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to introduce new voting rights legislation, which was passed that summer and had a dramatic impact on black voter registration. In Mississippi, the percentage of blacks registered to vote increased from 7 per cent in 1964 to 59 per cent in 1968. Black Pride The years of civil rights activism in the South led to an upsurge in racial pride and militancy among blacks throughout the nation. In 1966 SNCC announced that the goal of the black movement was no longer civil rights but “black power”, which could be achieved only when black people developed a more positive image of themselves. Such sentiments coincided with a trend towards black militancy in northern urban centres spearheaded by Black Muslims. The most renowned advocate of black nationalism and leader of the Black Muslims was Malcolm X. Although he had attracted only modest support by the time he was assassinated in 1965, his ideas became increasingly popular after his death. His calls for armed self-defence reflected widespread anger among urban blacks and resulted in outbreaks of extensive racial violence in Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. During the following three years, nearly every major urban centre in the United States experienced similar violent, black disturbances. The Kerner Commission, set up by President Johnson, reported in 1968 that the “nation is moving toward two societies, one white, one black—separate and unequal”. New militant organizations, such as the Black Panther party, sought to provide leadership for discontented urban blacks. The outspoken radicalism of many black leaders resulted in considerable federal repression, and by the late 1960s most of the black militant groups had been weakened by police raids as well as internal dissension. Before his assassination in 1968, even Martin Luther King became a target for government surveillance and harassment, as he responded to the new mood of militancy with forceful attacks on US involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and with calls for economic reforms. Blacks attending university launched a movement to introduce black studies into the curriculum, which would result in greater knowledge and understanding of the African-American experience. A new spirit of black racial assertion was particularly evident in sports. In the 1960s black athletes gave university and professional sports a distinctive, individualistic, and spontaneous style of play, despite frequent objections from white coaches and observers in the media. For example, the refusal of the heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali to be enlisted into the army cost him his world championship but also made him a hero to many blacks. The Moderate Leadership The declining effectiveness of the radicals provided an opportunity for more moderate black leaders to reassert themselves, although they, too, often adopted elements from the rhetoric of black consciousness. Thus, during the 1970s public attention was increasingly directed towards leaders reflecting a variety of strategies that did not threaten the American social order. Thurgood Marshall, the first black appointed to the US Supreme Court, symbolized the possibilities for working within the political system. As the executive director of the Urban League, Whitney M. Young, Jr., transformed the organization into an important social welfare institution. The formation of the Congressional Black Caucus provided black US representatives with the means to determine priorities of racial reform. The National Black Political Convention, held in 1972 in Gary, Indiana, was attended by 8,000 delegates and marked an effort to broaden black participation in discussions of political alternatives. In that year Representative Shirley Chisholm, a Democrat from New York, became the first African-American woman to run (albeit unsuccessfully) for the presidential nomination of a major party. Blacks in the Arts The upsurge of activism in the 1960s significantly affected African-American social and cultural life. As in the 1920s, black people manifested growing interest in African and African-American history and closer identification with the distinctive aspects of their culture. The novelists Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry had suggested a new direction even before the 1960s by their willingness to face controversial racial issues, but the dramatist and poet Amiri Baraka set the tone for the late 1960s with his emotional condemnations of white values. The African-American cultural revival continued, although not always within the confines of the earlier militant mood. Many prominent writers in the 1970s and 1980s were committed to describing and analysing the black experience, such as the novelists Alex Haley, Paule Marshall, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Morrison, Pulitzer Prize winner with Beloved in 1988 and Nobel laureate in literature in 1993. Among the playwrights of the late 20th century were Pulitzer Prize winners Charles Fuller with A Soldier's Play, in 1982 and August Wilson with Fences in 1985. Poets also expressed themselves through their work, for example, Gwendolyn Brooks (in To Disembark, 1981, she calls for a “disembarking” from oppressive white cultural patterns), Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni; and poet-playwright Ntozake Shange. Other renowned black artists include the opera star Leontyne Price; the dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey, whose works expressed the black heritage; film-makers such as Gordon Parks, Melvin Van Peebles, and Spike Lee; and painters, among them the poetic Romare Bearden, the realist Jacob Lawrence, and Benny Andrews. Andrews, whose paintings are social commentary in allegorical form, was one of the organizers of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, which in 1969 protested against the inadequate representation of blacks in American art—particularly since their contribution has become an integral part of American art and architecture, and of American literature. Blacks in the 1980s and 1990s Despite setbacks, the black activism of the 1960s produced some lasting political gains. As black residents of inner city areas became sizable minorities—and, sometimes, majorities—of the electorate, black candidates were able to win elections. During the 1970s black mayors were elected in Cleveland, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; Newark, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Los Angeles, California; and in other US cities. The number of black elected officials in the United States rose from about 300 in 1965 to about 7,480 (including 26 members of Congress) in late 1990, and in 1992 the first black woman senator, Carol E. Moseley-Braun, was elected from the state of Illinois. In the 1980s black mayors were elected in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and other cities throughout the country. The total number of black mayors was 318 in late 1990, the same year that L. Douglas Wilder was elected governor of Virginia. In the US armed forces, General Colin L. Powell became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989 and played an important role in the Gulf War. These gains were counterbalanced by less favourable trends. An upsurge of black voter registration, stimulated in part by the 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential primary election campaigns of Jesse Jackson, a Baptist minister and social activist, came to a halt in 1988. By 1990, only 59 per cent of all eligible blacks were registered. The cities in which blacks were concentrated were failing economically, while the liberal Democratic coalition that backed previous civil rights bills diminished in strength. The tensions thus created in race relations were violently demonstrated by the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which followed the acquittal of police in the beating of the African-American motorist Rodney King. Income and Employment The economic status of African-Americans was also a mixture of highly visible improvements and persistent problems. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, blacks made steady gains in academic achievements, greatly increasing the size of the black middle class. In the late 1980s, it became increasingly difficult to sustain earlier gains and in some instances small reverses occurred. In 1980, 9.2 per cent of all blacks were enrolled in college. By 1990, only 8.9 per cent were enrolled. While the median black family income rose to more than $19,700 a year and about 29.6 per cent had annual incomes higher than $35,000, black family income remained at less than three-fifths the median family income of whites. In ironic contrast to the economic reasons that first brought Africans to North America, some of the most important US industries began to use foreign labourers, usually not unionized, and unprotected by minimum wage laws, instead of unskilled urban black workers. Unable to obtain the jobs in industry or in domestic service that had attracted earlier generations of blacks to cities, ghetto residents became trapped in economically depressed urban areas that offered few opportunities for upward or outward mobility. The long-term movement of blacks away from jobs in agriculture or as domestics to urban industrial occupations, which some think did more for 20th-century black economic progress than all the civil rights laws and affirmative action programmes, had ended. As the loss of manufacturing jobs continues in the 1990s, an increasing number of inner-city blacks are experiencing the disintegration of the family unit and a decline in job security. Cultural Dichotomy The common historical experiences and cultural values that enabled previous black movements for racial advancement still remain a source of creative energy and cultural innovation. The exclusion of blacks from many areas of white society throughout North America, also suggests that blacks will remain a distinct social group in the future. However, economic divisions that became more apparent during the 1970s and 1980s indicate a trend towards cultural diffusion. Large numbers of blacks are caught up in urban industrial society, with its pervasive institutions that supplant or absorb the distinctive aspects of African-American culture. Poverty and alienation continue to shield segments of the black populace from complete cultural absorption, but in the absence of effective black movements for social change, values and behaviour that do not conform to the requirements of the dominant social order tend to lead to failure in American society. Du Bois's plea in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) that blacks maintain their cultural heritage was combined with a realization that they have a “double consciousness”. He wrote, “One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”. "Blacks in the Americas," Microsoft® Encarta® 97 Encyclopedia. © 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.