The Historical Progression of African Americans Essay Example

The Historical Progression of African Americans Essay Example The Historical Progression of African Americans Essay The Historical Progression of African Americans Essay The Historical Progression of African Americans Jeff Brown HIS 204: American History Since 1865 Prof Carl Garrigus May 16, 2010 The Historical Progression of African Americans America in 1857 was a â€Å"Nation on the Brink. † Relationships between the Northern and Southern states had been strained for decades. During the 1850s, the situation exploded. The Compromise of 1850 served as a clear warning that the slavery issue- relatively dormant since the Missouri Compromise of 1820- had returned. African Americans existence in America has been a disaster ever since they have been here. Every avenue of their cultural, economic, literary, political, religious, and social values has been violated to no avail, and then only until the early 60s were there noticeable changes. Between 1865 and 1876, life for African Americans was nothing but sadness and hardships. Two social issues they faced were discrimination and slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U. S. slaves wherever they were. As a result, the mass of Southern blacks now faced the difficulty Northern blacks had confrontedthat of a free people surrounded by many hostile whites. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, two more years of war, service by African American troops, and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a non-slave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it. After the Civil War, with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, acquire the land of former owners, seek their own employment, and use public accommodations. Opponents of this progress, however, soon rallied against the former slaves freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood (Edwards, 2007). The U. S. presidency is a meaningful domain in which to explore perceptions of discrimination for at least three reasons. The first reason for exploring children’s views about the presidency concerns the centrality of work to gender and racial differences in American society. There are significant gender and racial differences in workforce participation, occupational roles, job status, and income. Research indicates that children are aware of many of these differences from an early age. The presidency is an especially compelling example of gender and racial stratification within the workforce because all 43 of the individuals who have held the position have been European American males. Because children understand the presidency and other political roles to be occupations, their views about the role that gender and race/ethnicity play in the presidency may be indicative of their broader patterns of thinking about the role of gender and racial discrimination in the workforce. Furthermore, the presidency is important to examine because it is arguably the most prestigious occupation in the world and is unique in its scope. In contrast, children are aware that all adult American citizens are eligible to vote and that election outcome, therefore, represent the judgments of large, representative segments of society. The second reason for exploring children’s views about the presidency concerns the importance of democracy and civic engagement. The presidency represents the pinnacle of American government, arguably the most important institution in the United States. Perceptions of discrimination within the presidency could have serious repercussions for individuals’ political engagement. Indeed, gender and racial differences in participation in U. S. democracy have long been noted. For example, African Americans report feeling disengaged from the political process and frequently believe that their civic activities make little to no difference to their communities. Perceptions of discrimination that arise in childhood may shape individuals’ later civic behavior. A third and final reason for studying children’s perceptions of the presidency is that knowledge of the domain emerges early in the life course. Most children in U. S. lementary schools are introduced to lessons about U. S. presidents in kindergarten. Although children’s understanding of the methods, purpose, and effects of government increases over time, even young children have a rudimentary understanding of the role of the president as a leader of government. The research questions concerned children’s knowledge of the links among gender, race, and the presidency. And the conclus ions were, that it is unlikely that children are explicitly taught that only European American men have been presidents of the United States. Nonetheless, children might acquire such knowledge through observation and constructive processes (Bigler et al. , 2008). Still between 1865 and 1876, there was a culture identity crisis for African Americans. We cannot explain the roots of African American culture without reference to Africa because African values, beliefs, and practices played a crucial role in the formation of African American cultures. It is basically these historical foundations, that many scholars fail to take into account in their treatment of the origins of African American cultures in the New World. Small wonder we have been saddled with accounts that maintain that African captives, in the dehumanizing experience of the Middle Passage, lost their cultural heritage and simply became acculturated to Euro-American customs and beliefs. According to some authors, African captives were a heterogeneous crowd made up of disparate cultures and unintelligible languages with no prior contact. African captives began to create an entirely new social structure and organization in the form of the dyad of two slaves sharing one space on the slave ship. Various shreds of evidence suggest that some of the earliest social bonds to develop in the coffles, in the factories, and especially during the long Middle Passage were of a dyadic (two person) nature. The bond between shipmates, those who shared passage on the same slaver, can be found in widely scattered parts of Afro-America; the shipmate relationship became a major principle for social organization and continued for decades or even centurie s to shape ongoing relations. Through an examination of African languages, patterns of slave importation, slave uprisings during the Middle Passage, baptismal rites, music, dance, and funeral rites, shared much in common culturally. Despite the horrors of enslavement, common African cultural practices among the various African ethnic groups served as an organizing and unifying principle which armed African captives with some sense of solidarity and cultural continuity in their new environment. Neither cultural diversity nor linguistic multiplicity served as major obstacles to the development of African American cultures in the New World. West and Central African cultural practices provide a suitable reference point for understanding the origins of African American cultures in the New World. More importantly, it should be clear that African captives relied upon organizing and unifying principles of African culture- like language, dance, baptismal practices, funeral rites- to enable them to cope with the horrors of slavery and to create a social and spiritual environment in the New World. Their cultural background sustained them as they adopted and created new practices and institutions that allowed them to survive the oppressive conditions of American slavery (Ntloedibe, 2006). Also during this same time frame, African American’s religion was a tale of variety and creative fusion. Preserving African religions in North America proved to be very difficult. The harsh circumstances under which most slaves lived- high death rates, the separation of families and tribal groups, and the concerted effort of white owners to eradicate heathen (or non-Christian) customs- rendered the preservation of religious traditions difficult and often unsuccessful. Isolated songs, rhythms, movements, and beliefs in the curative powers of roots and the efficacy of a world of spirits and ancestors did survive well into the nineteenth century. But these increasingly were combined in creative ways with the various forms of Christianity to which Europeans and Americans introduced African slaves. In Latin America, where Catholicism was most prevalent, slaves mixed African beliefs and practices with Catholic rituals and theology, resulting in the formation of entirely new religions such as vaudou in Haiti (later referred to as voodoo), Santeria in Cuba, and Candomble in Brazil. But in North America, slaves came into contact with the growing number of Protestant evangelical preachers, many of whom actively sought the conversion of African Americans. By 1810 the slave trade to the United States also came to an end and the slave population began to increase naturally, making way for the preservation and transmission of religious practices that were, by this time, truly African-American. This transition coincided with the period of intense religious revivalism known as awakenings. In the southern states increasing numbers of slaves converted to evangelical religions such as the Methodist and Baptist faiths. Many clergy within these denominations actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of god, a message that provided hope and sustenance to the slaves. They also encouraged worship in ways that many Africans found to be similar, or at least adaptable, to African worship patterns, with enthusiastic singing, clapping, dancing, and even spirit-possession. Still, many white owners insisted on slave attendance at white-controlled churches, since they were fearful that if slaves were allowed to worship independently they would ultimately plot rebellion against their owners. It is clear that many blacks saw these white churches, in which ministers promoted obedience to ones master as the highest religious ideal, as a mockery of the true Christian message of equality and liberation as they knew it. In the slave quarters, however, African Americans organized their own invisible institution. Through signals, passwords, and messages not discernible to whites, they called believers to hush harbors where they freely mixed African rhythms, singing, and beliefs with evangelical Christianity. It was here that the spirituals, with their double meanings of religious salvation and freedom from slavery, developed, and flourished; and here, too, that black preachers, those who believed that God had called them to speak his Word, polished their chanted sermons, or rhythmic, intoned style of extemporaneous preaching. In a massive missionary effort, northern black churches established missions to their southern counterparts, resulting in the dynamic growth of independent black churches in the southern states between 1865 and 1900. Predominantly white denominations, such as the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Episcopal churches, also sponsored missions, opened schools for freed slaves, and aided the general welfare of southern blacks, but the majority of African-Americans chose to join the independent black denominations founded in the northern states during the antebellum era. Within a decade the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches claimed southern membership in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping that of any other organizations. They were quickly joined in 1870 by a new southern-based denomination, the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by indigenous southern black leaders. Finally, in 1894 black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, an organization that is currently the largest black religious organization in the United States (Paris, 2008). As slavery ended between 1877-1920, Blacks developed unique solutions to the many problems they faced in attaining literacy and other educational goals. With beginnings in Reconstruction-era legislation to the implementation of the first public schools for Blacks in 1871, Blacks have long struggled with a wide range of problems in their various efforts to develop primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational opportunities. In the midst of what historian Rayford Logan (1954) termed the Nadir (the suffocating combination of Jim Crow legislation, political disfranchisement, sharecropping, and racial violence). Blacks fought a series of battles to create educational institutions and to define the purposes of these schools. In the era between 1877 and 1901, Southern legislators, lynch mobs, the Ku Klux Klan, and even the U. S. Supreme Court rolled back years of progressive change which Black Southerners enjoyed during Reconstruction. With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency in 1876, the Nadir- a low point in Black history- began and, in the eyes of some observers, was a decided move back towards slavery and Southern White supremacy. In the ensuing chaos, the definition and goals of education became an important set of battlegrounds- among many others- for Black communities throughout the American South. In the post-Reconstruction era, educators including Booker T. Washington emerged to stress vocational and industrial training. This would ultimately be viewed as a call for the acquiescence of Black labor to the dictates of paternalistic and racist Whites as a panacea for all of the ills facing Black Southerners. In this problematic view, if Black Southerners demonstrated their industriousness and work ethic. Whites would accept them into the mainstream, eventually granting Black Americans economic opportunities, social equality, and political rights. Washington unmistakably accepted a subordinate position for Southern Negroes. In the end, putting aside constitutionally guaranteed civil and political rights in the hopes that Whites would learn to appreciate the presence of Blacks in the South was a recipe for disaster. William Edward B. Du Bois and Anna Julia Cooper favored the establishment of college preparatory secondary schools and liberal arts colleges. Du Bois envisioned early in his long career, that this would produce classes of Black leaders rising from the ranks of liberal arts college graduates. Du Bois argued that without the presence of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) emphasizing a liberal arts curriculum- the American Negro would scarcely have attained his present position (Rucker and Jubilee, 2007). Paul Laurence Dunbar presented a curious sight to the passengers who rode his elevator in the early 1890s. The clerks, craftswomen, and business managers of Dayton, Ohio, often saw the Century magazine in his hands. The occupants of that elevator were used to seeing elevator operators reading dime novels. But here was young Dunbar reading the Century, then the nations preeminent magazine of culture. The New York monthly held, as one contemporary observed, a position of undisputed primacy among American magazines. † The magazine could make an authors reputation instantly. For a poet of Dunbars day, there was no surer way of forging a literary career than to publish in the Century. Against seemingly impossible odds, Dunbar not only broke into the Century, he also became one of the few poets enshrined in the magazines literary pantheon. The Century had the distinction of publishing three of Dunbars poems in the year before Howells wrote his infamous 1896 review of Majors and Minors. Thereafter, the Century championed Dunbars career. The magazine published more Dunbar poems than it did any other poet during the decade of his productive career. For Dunbar, the magazine was his most important literary outlet. He published more of his poems in the Century than in any other periodical. ^ The influence of the Century on Dunbars career was immense. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the relationship between Dunbar and the Century editors who promoted his work. This relationship is vital not only for comprehending Dunbars literary career, but also for understanding the racialization of US society around 1900. The defining dilemma of Dunbars literary life was having been born and raised in urban black and in the western part of the state of Ohio. Dunbars westemness complicated his blackness. It put him in close contact with numerous whites and allowed him to develop intimate contacts across the color line. In his youth, for example, he was friends with the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilber. This unique background led Dunbar constantly to confront the question of the source of his identity. What defined him more: his race or his region, his blackness or his westemness? Dunbars marginal status would cause him to struggle with the question of identity throughout his short life, both personally and professionally. It forced him simultaneously to employ and reject the regionalism of Cultural Reconstruction. In the years following 1898 until his death in 1906, Dunbar published upwards of 200 original poems in magazines and newspapers across the country. The great majority were in Negro dialect. None was in Hoosier or any other white dialects. A handful was in standard English. Virtually all were on themes of black history or black culture. Dunbar had come to lose all hope of being a regional voice in the national chorus envisioned in the early formulation of Cultural Reconstruction. By 1901, Dunbar was widely hailed, not as an American poet, or a western poet, or even a southern poet. For those searching to establish black culture, he was the laureate of his race, the expression of a racial genius, the historian of his race, the voice of a race (Dunbars Poems; Nelson; The New Slavery). For those who clung to the darkey stereotype, Dunbar was a black threat: I used to read Dunbar quite a lot, W. E. B. DuBois heard a white Texas woman say, until I found out he was a nigger. † Dunbar had become trapped in a prison-house of literary. Dunbars dialect poetry performed a vital if aesthetically suicidal task in the era of Jim Crows caustic ascendancy. By revealing that black authors could write Negro, Dunbar unmasked the racist stereotype of the African American perpetrated by white authors such as Thomas Nelson Page. But Dunbar could only legitimate this act of unmasking by adopting for himself the metastasizing conception of race as an identity prior to all others. Dunbar, Samson-like, brought the regionalist pretensions of Cultural Reconstruction crashing down on himself. His dialect poetry was the sign that US national identity by 1900 was no longer constructed through the production of regional unity, but through the production of racial difference (Scott-Childress, 2007). Between 1921 and 1945 the Great Depression years, hard times were nothing new to African Americans. When the depression struck, black unemployment surged. Even the skilled black workers who had retained their jobs saw their wages cut in half. Migration out of the rural South dropped. In 1934, the average income for blacks cotton farm workers was under $200 a year. Much of the white population that had left the cities for the suburbs was replaced by African Americans and Hispanics. They were part of a larger migration especially of millions of blacks families leaving the South to search for work in urban cities. Most headed for the Middle Atlanta, Northeast, and Upper Midwest regions. While central cities lost millions of white residents, they gained millions of African Americans instead. By the late 50s, half of all black Americans were living in central cities (Davidson et al. , 2008). During 1946 up until 1976, the roots of the civil rights movement lie deep in the history of this nation. The civil rights movement began with the presence of enslaved blacks in the New World, with the first slave mutiny on the ships bringing them here. The black Odyssey includes some of the bleakest examples of repression and terrorism in the history of this or any nation. Through the first three decades of the twentieth century, the mechanisms that circumscribed black lives remained in place. Individual blacks made breakthroughs into the middle class; the New Deal, grassroots protests, and the stirrings in organized labor in the 1930s, culminating in the March on Washington movement in 1941, encouraged a politics of hope and raised the stakes in the struggle for economic justice. For many blacks, World War II was the turning point in the relationship of African Americans to American society. Not only did blacks lose respect for whites, but those who fought in the war also lost another quality that had been instilled in them over several centuries- fear of whites- and that change would have far-reaching implications as the soldiers returned to their homes. With the end of World War II, the conviction grew that the way it used to be did not have to be, and African Americans, many of them veterans, gave voice to that feeling in ways white America could no longer ignore. Long before Martin Luther King Jr. nd Rosa Parks took center stage, black men, and women, acting mostly as individuals but numbering in the thousands, waged guerrilla warfare on the infrastructure of Jim Crow. During World War II, they violated law and custom, sitting where they pleased in buses, trains, stations, restaurants, and movie houses, waiting to be dragged off by conductors, drivers, owners, and police officers. Capitalizing on the gains made earlier in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the civil rights movement revolutionized black consciousness and mobilized the black community in ways that captured the imagination of much of the world. Extraordinary changes- some of them symbolic, some of them substantive- transformed the South. The civil rights movement struck down the legal barriers of segregation and disenfranchisement, dismantling a racial caste system that had been evolving, sometimes fitfully, over some four centuries. The achievements were impressive and far-reaching, with striking gains in educational achievement, in clerical and professional positions, in skilled labor, in political representation, and in the entertainment and sports industries. Affirmative action opened positions hitherto reserved for whites, significantly expanding the black middle class. Politically, from 1960 to 1980 the number of black registered voters in the South more than tripled. Even as the civil rights movement struck down legal barriers and transformed the face of southern politics, it failed to diminish economic inequalities. Even as the Supreme Court ended school segregation by law, the justices failed to end segregation by income and residence. With the urban uprisings, the Vietnam war, and the heightened rhetoric and new directions of the civil rights movement, the battles over racial change became too much for many whites to absorb. What compounded the problem was the conviction shared by many white Americans that, in general, blacks had made it. Laws had been passed; Jim Crow had been eliminated. Blacks had been elected to public office. Opportunities were available for blacks if they only seized the initiative. If the failures of blacks persisted, the fault had to lie with the victims, not in deeply rooted economic and social inequalities, not in their economic marginalization. The failure of blacks to succeed reflected inferior intelligence, the unfitness, incapacity, and moral, even genetic and cultural, shortcomings of a race; failure lay in their refusal to put their own house in order, to lessen their dependency on government programs and handouts. How free is free? This question persists. Enslaved labor was abolished more than a century ago, but only after 250 years of uncompensated labor. Jim Crow blocked black access to economic and political power for another century. But even with the dismantling of segregation some four decades ago, the images will not go away. Though expressed with more subtlety today, racism remains pervasive; its terrors and tensions are still with us, and it knows no regional boundaries (Litwack, 2009). After the election of President Barack Obama, millions of Americans rejoiced at the prospect of a changing America. Americans were hopeful that the election of President Obama marked a change in the political landscape, financial condition, and social mindset of the American people. For many in the African American community, his election represented how far America has come regarding race relations and provided new hope for future generations that all things were possible for African Americans in this nation. Unlike the civil rights movement of the 1960s, African Americans today are not fighting for basic civil rights such as the right to vote and attend non-segregated schools. This is not to say that overt and covert acts of racism do not still exist in America and do not continue to affect the African American community. However, with the passing of civil rights legislation over the years, individual minorities and minority groups have the right to file grievances against those who choose to discriminate against them based on race or ethnic background. In the media today, even the hint of racial injustice or discrimination draws automatic fire from the media and action from several groups eager to carry the mantel of equality and justice for all. Many of the challenges facing African Americans today are more subtle and involve a struggle that is more within the African American community than without. The struggle involves pushing against institutional barriers that have been strengthened by those in favor of maintaining a historical precedent or the status quo; it also involves a continued determination to resist an apathetic attitude toward the problems in the African American community. In many instances, it is not the opinionated few who determine the overall outcome, but the indifference of the majority who are usually directly affected by the decision that they fail to be a part of. The issues African Americans face are issues all Americans have to address. There is no sole African American solution to these issues because they are not issues that exclusively affect African Americans. Daily we lead or are led by Airmen who struggle with these issues. It is imperative that we all, as Americans, deliberately and effectively meet the challenges of these issues. In doing, so we become better leaders, followers, and citizens of this great nation.