The Handy African American History Answer Book

UPON AMERICA’S SHORES: BEGINNING THE BLACK EXPERIENCE

The historical voices of people of color are those of an oppressed people who were forced from Africa to the Western Hemisphere, constituting a massive population shift. Beginning in 1619, they came in chains on their journey across the Atlantic Ocean, on a route referred to as the Middle Passage. Some claim that as many as twenty-five million came, several generations of people ripped from their homelands. From the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century they added to the riches of their European and American captors and owners.

It was not until 1807 that Great Britain, deeply entrenched in the African slave trade, ended such commerce in that country. The trade was outlawed only as a result of the growing number of abolitionists who argued that slavery was immoral and violated Christian beliefs. Yet, slavery throughout the British Empire continued until 1833, when the great anti-slavery movement was finally successful. In the United States, however, the slave trade was prohibited, but slave ownership was allowed to exist. In 1808 the slave trade as it had been known officially ended and was outlawed throughout the Americas.

Throughout the period of slavery, many anti-slavery efforts took place. Leading journalists, merchants, and influential men and women, black and white, slave and free, joined in the efforts. Many belonged to groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and similar organizations. Women also had their own groups, such as the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society. Great orators, like abolitionist and escaped slave Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), were quite vocal in the movement at home and abroad.

Equally well known among the efforts to end the peculiar institution called slavery was the Underground Railroad, a network to emancipate slaves. Its most ardent leader was abolitionist, nurse, Union spy, and feminist Harriet Tubman (c. 1820–1913), sometimes called the Moses of her people. Tubman made at least fifteen trips from North to South and led over three hundred of her people from bondage to freedom. Of equal importance was Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), abolitionist, women’s rights activist, lecturer, and religious leader, who was also an uneducated slave known for her rigid opposition to slavery. She had an articulate and a fearless voice in the promotion of liberal reform in race and gender.

Artist Charles T. Weber’s painting The Underground Railroad (1893) depicts his friends Hannah Haddock and Levi and Catharine Coffin leading slaves to freedom. The painting was done on commission for the World’s Columbian Exposition and celebrates the work of abolitionists.

So determined were some slaves to crush the peculiar institution that they tried to force change by engaging in insurrections. Some historians believe that these efforts were far more widespread than records show, yet they acknowledge leading efforts of such men as Nat Turner (1800–1831) in Southampton, Virginia; Denmark Vesey (1767–1822) in Charleston, South Carolina; and the efforts of ardent white abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859), who led a violent raid in Kansas on May 14, 1856.

From 1861 to 1865, a bloody war raged between the Confederacy and the Union, known as the Civil War, which, among other issues, prompted President Abraham Lincoln to make a proclamation to emancipate slaves. On January 1, 1863, the official Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and on January 31, 1865, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery throughout the states. Even so, the Confederate states refused to free their four million slaves until April 9 of that year. The news reached some states much later, meaning that former slaves, particularly those in Texas in 1865, had no idea that they were legally free. In June of 1865, Union General Gordon Granger, along with two thousand Union troops, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and force compliance with the Emancipation Proclamation. African Americans began to celebrate the date of their freedom, or what they call Juneteenth; they honored June 19, the date on which they learned of their new status. Juneteenth has since become a day of celebration among many black Americans throughout the nation.

The Reconstruction period—a twelve-year period from 1865 to 1877—followed the Civil War and was a time to rebuild the South. The South lay in ruins and food and supplies were scarce. Blacks were homeless, cities destroyed, and government was nonexistent. Slowly, efforts followed to aid in the rebuilding, such as the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to enfranchise blacks, although it was not until 1875 that the act became law. In 1883, however, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law. Meanwhile, efforts of agencies such as the Freedmen’s Bureau, or the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, created in 1865, aided in uniting black families, built over forty hospitals, distributed food to the needy, and established 4,239 schools for blacks, including several historically black colleges. Even so, the bureau ceased to exist in 1868, because of Congress’ feeble efforts and a lack of a national commitment to provide equal citizenship for blacks.

Among other laws that addressed the civil rights of black people was the Plessy v. Ferguson decision—often equated with separate but equal provisions—that for almost sixty years served as the legal foundation and justification for keeping the races separated. This law existed until 1954, when it was overturned with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision, which denied legal and unequal segregation in schools and public places.

Race relations left much to be desired, however, and a number of protests preceded the modern Civil Rights Movement. Protests were seen in Memphis (1866); Hamburg, South Carolina (1873); New Orleans (1874); Atlanta (1906); Springfield, Illinois (1908); Houston (1917); Tulsa (1921); Harlem (1935 and 1943); Detroit (1943); and elsewhere. Freedom’s call extended from the work of the abolitionist crusaders to the work of civil rights activists and leaders throughout the centuries. Such crusaders have included W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ida Wells-Barnett. Then came the modern Civil Rights Movement, which represented a time when African Americans had had enough and new protests swung into action. Led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the movement followed a policy of peaceful protest and included boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and other demonstrations. Included were the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, the Albany, Georgia, movement, and the sit-in movement, including those of national prominence—the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins and the Nashville, Tennessee, sit-ins. There were protests such as Freedom Summer (an intensive voter registration project in Mississippi), Freedom Rides, the famous March on Washington in 1963, and the Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968. The period saw the rise of the black power movement and greater racial pride, both stimulated by the work of activist Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Turè).

In addition to King, the various movements catapulted others into prominence, including Hosea Williams, John Lewis, Diane Nash (Bevel), Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Turé), James Farmer, and a number of other sung—and unsung—heroes. These actions helped to spur on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped to remove barriers to equal access and opportunity affecting blacks, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the voting rights of black Americans.

President Bill Clinton tried to unify Americans with his Initiative on Race.

Organizations such as the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the National Urban League, helped to dismantle segregation, support education of blacks, address issues of housing, promote jobs and economic development, address issues of health in the black community, and promote black leadership. The federal government had taken some steps to promote racial justice, as seen, for example, in the work of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan agency established in 1957 as a temporary, independent agency. It continues to investigate citizens’ complaints about violations of voting rights and other fraudulent practices. In 1997 President Bill Clinton established the Initiative on Race in an effort to move the nation closer to a stronger, unified, and more just America. Black America has not forgotten the ills that their ancestors endured, many calling for the federal government and white America to pay reparations, or compensation, for being wronged. The idea has been discussed many times; for example, near the end of the nineteenth century former Tennessee slave Callie House became a leader in a movement to petition the U.S. government for pensions and reparations for African Americans held in involuntary servitude. During the Civil Rights Movement, leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee issued a Black Manifesto, insisting on reparations for African Americans. In 1990 the idea of reparations gained currency with some of the American public.

OUR CULTURAL STRIVINGS

The hold that America had on enslaved black Americans failed to thwart blacks from seeking their own cultural agenda. They came from Africa with musical and artistic talents, giving full expression to their creativity on the slave plantation. Dance, music, and song were entrenched in African societies and used in religious ceremonies and rites. Now in America, these cultural expressions enabled slaves to shape the black community by entertaining themselves as well as their masters. Their shout, or ring shout, was an example of an artistic form from their African background. In music as well, talented slaves demonstrated their skills. Slave musicians played violin, flute, piano, and sang; some gave public concerts. For example, in 1858 Thomas Greene Bethune, also known as Blind Tom, performed before President James Buchanan at the White House and received national fame as a pianist.

One of the things that African American culture is known for is its spiritual songs, which came into being in the form of Southern slave music. Today, that tradition remains strong in the form of gospel choirs that perform all across the country.

African Americans are also known for their religious songs, or spirituals, and began to sing them from the time they were first enslaved. Sometimes called sorrow songs, some also call them the most prominent style of Southern slave music. The development of the spiritual is difficult to trace, for the music was not recorded at first, but preserved and passed on orally; it probably emerged in the late 1770s and became prominent between 1830 and the 1860s. The spiritual represented a shield against the inhumanity of slavery, as slaves endured the pain of work on the plantation and sought routes to freedom either through an unknown being that would carry them out of slavery or through a more earthly method of escape. Slave songs often had hidden messages, such as use of the Jordan River as a river of escape. Beginning in 1882 the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Nashville’s Fisk University began to popularize spirituals by singing them during their tours across America and in England.

The music of African Americans was presented later on through big bands, in concert halls, through their own compositions, and in musical forms such as jazz, the blues, gospel, and soul. Certain eras in history saw the effects of African Americans and their music on cultural developments. For example, during the modern Civil Rights Movement, songs of protest and progresses re-emerged or were written, and were sung in marches and rallies to inspire protesters and to send messages to others. The song We Shall Overcome became the theme song of the movement, yet this spiritual was actually a song from the early anti-slavery movement. From Bessie Smith to B. B. King, the soul of black America has been presented in song.

Slave artisans were also skilled in their work as painters, silversmiths, cabinet-makers, and sculptors. Some worked in iron and others with metals during the eighteenth century, and their work was seen in Southern mansions, churches, and public buildings. Names of many of these artisans remain unknown. Leading painters from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries include Edward Mitchell Bannister, Meta Warrick Fuller, Edmonia Lewis, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Perhaps no other era in African-American history has been preserved and studied more than the Harlem Renaissance period, also known as the Negro Renaissance and the New Negro Movement. This literary, artistic, and cultural revolution was centered in the Harlem section of New York City, particularly during the 1920s. There were precursors of the movement as well as intense cultural developments after that time. James Weldon Johnson is an example of a precursor as well as a Harlem Renaissance luminary. Among the leading writers of this period are Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. Visual artists were also important, including Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Augusta Savage. Actors like Charles Gilpin, independent filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux, and dancer and actor Florence Mills helped to round out this group of luminaries. After World War II, and into the modern Civil Rights Movement, some artists depicted black migration from the South to urban areas in the North in their works. Such artists included Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney, and Jacob Lawrence. As well, Walter Williams, Sam Gilliam, David Driskell, Faith Ringgold, and Elizabeth Catlett Mora often embodied their personal stories into their work. Some artists moved their works to the streets of the ghetto, as graffiti became popular and developed a market value. Photographers Gordon Parks and Moneta Sleet chronicled black history through the camera.

By the 1930s organized efforts of the federal government helped to encourage and support black artistic talent. The Works Progress Administration and the Federal Theater Project employed many African Americans to work in plays, contemporary comedies, circuses, and in films. Katherine Dunham, Rex Ingram, and Butterfly McQueen were among the dancers and actors who benefitted. Two major black theater projects emerged in the wake of the Federal Theater Project: the American Negro Theater and the Negro Ensemble Company. Later, playwrights Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson became prominent. By the late 1990s, Tyler Perry reached an untapped audience and was rocketed to enormous success. During the last century, African Americans also emerged as cartoonists and radio show hosts. Much of black America’s culture is showcased at national black theater and art festivals.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Although not all African Americans were enslaved, much of the information about African Americans as entrepreneurs has been handed down through slave narratives. The talents of both free and enslaved blacks, however, were legion. Free blacks had many more opportunities to develop businesses than those enslaved and maintained many businesses outside the South. As early as the 1700s, records show that Stephen Jackson of Virginia made hats of fur and leather. Before the Civil War, there were landowners, brokers and merchants, a tailor, a grocer, and a lumber and coal merchant. One prominent name among the wealthy African Americans was William Alexander Leidesdorff (c. 1811–1848), a trader, rancher, landholder, hotelier, ship captain, and steamboat innovator. The leading black antebellum entrepreneurs included cotton planters, a sail maker, a barber, a sugar planter, and a commission broker. By the Civil War period, the combined wealth of free blacks exceeded $100,000, a respectable amount at that time.

Notable among slave-born entrepreneurs is William Tiler Johnson (1809–1851), who became known as the Barber of Natchez; he was especially popular among white Americans. Until the late nineteenth century black barbershops with large white clientele fared well. During the lifetime of the African-American community, both barber shops and beauty shops have been successful industries. Those shops that survived in the racially segregated South, however, often catered to whites. Icons of the black beauty industry are Madam C. J. Walker (1867–1919), Sarah Spencer Washington (1889–1953), and Annie Turnbo Malone (1869–1957). In addition to manufacturing companies that these women founded and owned, they established beauty schools and revolutionized the care of black hair. In later years, the Cardozo sisters, Rose Morgan (1912–2008), and Joe L. Dudley (1937–) became prominent salon owners, stylists, and/or owners of manufacturing companies. Barber shops and beauty shops became vital to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and were political incubators for politicians and civil rights workers who needed a safe haven in which to plan and promote their work.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), founded by journalist and activist Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), was well known for promoting economic development in the black community. Garvey also launched a shipping company and established other business organizations that employed many blacks. He also founded a tailoring business, grocery stores, restaurants, a doll factory, and other ventures that brought him phenomenal success.

The Oakland, California, headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association was located in Liberty Hall, which is now on the list of the National Register of Historic Places. The UNIA promoted economic activity in the black community.

Among other businesses that supported economic development in the African-American community is the funeral business. Following the Civil War, the funeral business emerged as a one-person operation and later grew into a family business. This industry was highly successful up to the 1980s, when inflation took its toll, and many firms closed their doors. Others, however, merged and remained successful. Some funeral establishments owned burial associations, insurance companies, cemeteries, and other services.

Black business districts in two cities became known as Black Wall Street. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Durham (North Carolina) and Tulsa (Oklahoma) each had a number of flourishing businesses owned and operated by blacks. In Durham, these included the well-known North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company as well as cafes, movie houses, barber shops, boarding houses, grocery stores, funeral homes, and other traditional services. Tulsa offered hospitals, libraries, churches, grocery stores, a bus line, construction companies, and other ventures. The golden age of black business development came during the first half of the twentieth century, as blacks in many areas served a segregated market with businesses such as real estate, hotels, homes, theaters, railroad lines and other transportation systems, automobile repair shops, banks, and loan associations.

Not to be overlooked is the banking business and the leadership that African Americans provided in that area. While the federally founded Freedman’s Bank (or the National Freedman’s Savings Bank and Trust Company), established in 1865, aimed to serve the financial needs of African Americans, it was privately owned by whites. In 1888 the nation saw the first black-created and black-run banks: the True Reformers’ Bank of Richmond, Virginia, and the Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C. In 1903 Maggie Lena Walker (1865–1934) founded the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia, and became the first black woman bank president in the nation. Her bank survived the Great Depression and continues to function