More than 10 million people brought as slaves to the Americas during the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries confronted a situation that was historically unprecedented. Never before had such a large group of people been driven from their homelands and forced to labor for the remainder of their lives in distant societies dominated by culturally and racially different people. Deprived of their freedom and torn from their cultural roots, slaves and their descendants responded to their enslavement in varied ways.
Slaves born in African societies initially relied upon their cultural traditions as they struggled against chattel slavery, but life in Africa had not prepared them to challenge European technological superiority. Some slaves saw their situation as hopeless and committed suicide rather than endure the passage to the Americas or the harsh process of slave breaking once they arrived. Others fought their enslavers, rebelling aboard slave ships or in the Americas. Few rebellions succeeded, however, because slaves were closely supervised, unfamiliar with their new surroundings, often divided by linguistic and religious differences, and subjected to brutal punishments when disobedient. In addition, disease and malnutrition killed many slaves and weakened the ability of others to rebel. Most Africans who came to the Americas, particularly those brought to the sugar plantations of Brazil or the Caribbean islands, died before they could bear children.
Those who survived found it necessary to undergo a cultural transformation. Africans from diverse cultural backgrounds became African Americans, a group defined by the color of their skin and bound together by the common experience of being dominated by Europeans. The most basic aspect of this cultural transformation was the adoption of European languages, which not only enabled slaves to communicate with their masters but also, in some cases, with each other. The transformation also involved the adoption of other European cultural, social, and political practices, but this did not constitute a complete abandonment of African cultural values, some of which persisted in the Americas. Nor did African slaves simply become Europeanized, because they simultaneously transformed European culture as they infused it with their own insights. African Americans not only endured under oppression; over time they also established families, churches, schools, self-help groups, fraternal orders, and other institutions as they sought to improve their lives collectively and individually. These institutions conformed somewhat to European-American models, but they also reflected the distinctive common experiences and aspirations of slaves and their descendants.
The tendency of African Americans to utilize European cultural forms increased during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of the religious "awakenings" and democratic revolutions that occurred in many European-dominated societies. Emerging forms of African-American Christianity combined residual elements of African religions and those aspects of Christianity that appealed to slaves and freed blacks. From the beginning of the slave era, conversion to Christianity sometimes offered a means for slaves to improve their lives or simply to find a degree of psychological solace, but conversion rarely led directly to emancipation for slaves. Instead, most slave masters saw slavery as compatible with or even justified by Christianity. In the British colonies of North America, however, the spread of evangelical Christianity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fostered democratic ideals. Methodist and Baptist religious practices were especially appealing to African Americans, because they encouraged individuals to assert control over their spiritual lives as well as over congregational decision making.
The formation in 1793 of Philadelphia's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church was an important step in the institutionalization of African-American culture and society. Bethel's minister, Richard Allen (1760-1831), initially remained within the Episcopal church hierarchy, but in 1816, when the AME church became fully autonomous, he became the denomination's first bishop. Other blacks would join the AME Zion denomination or one of hundreds of Baptist and Methodist churches that gained members as a result of the religious revivals of the decades before the Civil War. Such religious institutions provided training grounds for the development of black leadership. Moreover, Christianity became a source of insights for African Americans seeking understanding of their history and plight. They could identify their enslavement with that of the Jews and see the Ethiopians mentioned in the Bible as their ancient ancestors. Prayer and prophecy became means for expressing African-American aspirations. As transformed by blacks struggling to free themselves, Christianity became a theology of liberation at least partially outside the control of whites.
While African Americans adapted Christianity to serve new purposes, they also transformed modern concepts of *nationalism into a set of political ideas that gave them a collective identity and informed their movements for freedom and justice. Both the American and the French revolutions of the late eighteenth century encouraged African Americans to hope that they might enjoy the *rights that were being obtained by white people. The gradual movement in Europe and the Americas toward the ideal of universal rights influenced and was influenced by African-American struggles for advancement. After the British colonies of North America gained their independence, blacks in the *United States petitioned white leaders to end slavery and racial discrimination by pointing to the egalitarian sentiments expressed in revolutionary documents such as the Declaration of Independence. The U.S. Constitution reflected the postrevolutionary decline of democratic idealism, however, reinforcing the legal rights of slaveholders and providing few mechanisms for effective political action against the proslavery state governments. The French Revolution of 1789 strengthened antislavery sentiment in the Americas and prompted a successful slave rebellion, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803), in the colony that became *Haiti. Taken together, the American and the French revolutions provided democratic ideals for many subsequent African-American political movements.
Whether slaves could free themselves and then gain full *citizenship rights in white-dominated societies became central questions for nineteenth- and twentieth-century African-American political movements. In the United States, the strengthening of the slave economy after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 lessened the possibility that slavery would be abolished peacefully. Although some emancipated blacks became politically active during the early nineteenth century, most states imposed special restrictions on their political freedom. After the exposure of major slave conspiracies in Virginia in 1800 and South Carolina in 1822, and the crushing of the Nat Turner (1800-1831) slave rebellion in Virginia in 183 1, southern whites severely restricted the ability of southern slaves and free blacks to assemble. In addition, the desire of African Americans to emigrate back to Africa or at least out of the United States gathered strength during the antebellum years. In 1815 Paul Cuffe (1759-1817), a wealthy African-American merchant mariner, brought a small group of settlers to Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa. Most emancipated blacks found emigration to Africa impractical and undesirable, however, for they had been born in America and had little knowledge of life elsewhere. In 1817 a national meeting of black leaders rejected the efforts of white leaders of the American Colonization Society to encourage freed blacks to go to Africa.
The formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 further encouraged African-American antislavery agitation. Although the society's leader, William Lloyd Garrison, was a white abolitionist who believed in "moral suasion" as the best means of ending slavery, by the 1840s many black abolitionists had begun to attack slavery politically by supporting antislavery parties and candidates for political office. The most well-known black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), initially allied himself with Garrison, but by the end of the 1840s had become a proponent of political strategies. Other black leaders such as Henry Highland Garnet and Martin Delany urged not only political action but also slave rebellions as the best means of abolishing slavery. Garnet and Delany became advocates of black nationalism, believing that there was little hope for black advancement in the United States. Delany's Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852) argued that African Americans were "a nation within a nation" and recommended emigration to Central America or Africa. Pessimism increased among, African Americans about their prospects in the United States after the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1857, which concluded that blacks were not citizens but were "a subordinate and inferior class of beings."
The Civil War marked a major turning point in African-American politics. Although President Abraham Lincoln initially did not see the war as a struggle against slavery, the increasing reliance of the Union army on black soldiers altered war objectives. In 1863, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation promised freedom to slaves in areas still held by the Confederacy. After the defeat of the Confederacy, Republican leaders recognized that citizenship rights for freed slaves were necessary for the party's success in the South during the Reconstruction period. They drafted and obtained ratification by the states of three constitutional amendments designed to free all slaves (Thirteenth Amendment) and to eliminate racial discrimination in the administration of laws (Fourteenth) and voting (Fifteenth). During the Reconstruction period, African Americans participated in the southern political system, but black-supported Republican state governments in the region faced strong opposition from recalcitrant white segregationists, and none survived after the last federal troops were removed in 1877.
The end of Reconstruction led to a rapid decline in black political activity, and by the early twentieth century most southern states had enacted racially discriminatory laws that segregated blacks and prevented them from voting. Black political leaders responded to the imposition of this "Jim Crow" system in a variety of ways. Some leaders, including AME bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834-1915), advocated black separatism and even emigration to Africa. Others, notably Booker T. Washington (1856191S), head of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, urged blacks to forgo agitation for civil rights and instead develop skills that would be useful for white employers. Washington garnered the financial backing of white philanthropists, particularly after his conciliatory address at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895, and he dominated African-American politics at the national level at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The most innovative political thinker of the period was W. E. B. *Du Bois (1868-1963), who combined elements of earlier nationalist thought, particularly an appreciation of the African roots of African-American culture, with a strong commitment to ending racial discrimination. In 1900, Du Bois, influenced by the earlier efforts of Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) and Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), participated in the first Pan-African Conference in London, which advocated unity among all people of African ancestry. In 1905, Du Bois became a founding member of the Niagara movement, formed to promote protest activity on behalf of black civil rights, and four years later he joined with white reformers to establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Twentieth-century African-American politics were greatly affected by the migration of millions of blacks from the rural South to urban areas. A massive influx of blacks to northern cities during World War I strengthened existing African-American urban religious and fraternal institutions, and led to increasing political militancy in the growing black communities. Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) organized the most substantial manifestation of the new militancy, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which, according to some estimates, attracted several million followers. Garvey's ultimate goal was to create a strong, independent African nation that would advance the interests of black people throughout the world. Garvey's caustic criticisms of civil rights leaders such as Du Bois made him a controversial figure among blacks and a target of government persecution. He was convicted of mail fraud in connection with his fund-raising for the Black Star steamship line, and his movement declined rapidly after his deportation in 1927 to Jamaica.
Despite the imprisonment of Garvey, African-American cultural distinctiveness continued to flourish through the movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Poets, essayists, dramatists, novelists, and artists of the 1920s became increasingly concerned with depicting the lives of African Americans. Langston Hughes (1902-1967), the most popular and prolific of the poets of the period, summarized the sentiments of other writers when he announced in a 1926 article: "We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame." Other major intellectual figures of the movement included Alain Locke (1886-1954), Claude McKay (1890-1948), and Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960). Innovative forms of African-American music also appeared during the 1920s as blues and jazz became increasingly popular in urban centers.
The worldwide economic depression of the 1930s strengthened the tendency of African Americans to seek advancement through interracial political movements and civil rights reform. A small minority of blacks, including a number of prominent artists and intellectuals, was drawn to the Communist Party, which identified itself with the ideal of universal rights and which fostered the notion that blacks could play a major role in radically transforming American society. Du Bois and Paul Robeson (18981976), a famed singer and actor, were prominent among blacks who remained close to the Communist Party during the 1940s and 1950s, even as other blacks, such as Hughes and novelist Richard Wright (1908-1960), became disillusioned with the party. The dominant direction of African-American political activity outside the South involved electoral participation and efforts to combat racial discrimination through litigation, lobbying efforts, and, to an increasing extent, protest activity. After 1932, black voters generally supported the Democratic Party in national elections, and most black leaders at the national level participated in interracial coalitions favoring civil rights reforms. The 1941 March on Washington movement under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph demonstrated the potential for mass protest activity as a means of bringing about civil rights reform, but the strategy of nonviolent direct action had few practitioners outside of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial group without much support among blacks.
During the two decades following World War II, the generalized political and cultural conformity that characterized Cold War America also affected African-American life. Both socialist and black nationalist radicalism had little impact on black politics, particularly at the national level. Instead, encouraged by the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, civil rights organizations and their leaders sought to strengthen federal and state antidiscrimination policies. The NAACP largely shaped the national civil rights agenda, but, after the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 195556, this organization faced competition from more militant local groups inspired by African independence movements, linked to black colleges and churches, as well as skilled in the use of nonviolent protest tactics. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), formed in 1957 and led by Montgomery protest leader Martin Luther *King, Jr. (1929-1968), was particularly effective in organizing massive protest campaigns in southern communities such as Birmingham in 1963 and Selma in 1965. CORE initiated a Freedom Ride campaign in 1961, pressuring the federal government to act against racial discrimination in interstate travel. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed by student leaders of the sit-in movement of 1960, spearheaded the effort to achieve voting rights for blacks in Mississippi, Alabama, and southwest Georgia. The southern protest movement prodded the federal government to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in most public facilities, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Even as the southern protest movement achieved its civil rights goals, it also fostered revived feelings of racial consciousness among African Americans. Black nationalist sentiments were evident among urban blacks during the early 1960s, but the most effective proponent of these ideas, *Malcolm X (1925-196S), had little impact on national African-American politics until 1964 when he broke with the religious separatist group the Nation of Islam. In the months before his assassination in 196S, Malcolm began to establish ties with militants who had been active in the *civil rights movement. By 1966, both SNCC, under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (b. 1944), and CORE became identified with the "Black Power" slogan, which symbolized the increasingly militant racial consciousness of African Americans. During the decade from 1965 to 1975, many new black-controlled cultural, social, political, educational, and economic institutions came into existence. The Black Panther Party, based in Oakland, California, reflected the widespread discontent of young northern blacks through the brash willingness of armed Panthers to confront police. For the most part, however, the majority of African-American institutions did not pose direct political challenges to the state but instead emphasized African-American cultural distinctiveness. During the late 1960s and early 1970s internal ideological conflicts and external repression led to the decline of militant political groups. The National Black Political Assembly, founded at a 1972 convention in Gary, Indiana, could not reverse the disintegration of black nationalist political activity. Instead, black political activity increasingly focused on efforts to elect black politicians in predominantly black areas. The most enduring outgrowths of the militancy of the 1960s were the black studies academic programs, businesses selling products designed for blacks, and associations formed to protect the interests of black professionals.
The overall dominance of conservative, Republican political leaders during the 1970s and 1980s discouraged African-American political militancy. Nevertheless, many of the insights and institutional outgrowths of earlier mass struggles endured, and African-American racial consciousness continued to be affected by the widespread availability of publications on African-American life and history. National black leaders largely focused their efforts on the consolidation of the civil rights gains of the 1960s, but many incorporated aspects of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism into their political perspectives. Jesse Jackson's (b. 1941) campaigns for the presidency in 1984 and 1988 demonstrated the potential strength of the black electorate. Jackson and other African-American leaders were unable, however, to implement successful strategies to deal with the serious economic problems of blacks who did not receive material benefits as a result of civil rights legislation and affirmative action programs. The persistence of poverty, the increasing deterioration of black families, and the reluctance of white Americans to support major new governmental social programs to deal with these problems led to a revival of strategies for African-American institutional and cultural uplift. Advocates of such strategies included not only community leaders but also black neoconservative intellectuals tied to conservative institutions. In addition, during the period after 1970, black women have increasingly won election to public office and assumed leadership roles in racial policy discussions. After centuries of institutional development and movements for collective advancement, African Americans continue to be concerned with unresolved questions of group identity and destiny.
CLAYBORNE CARSON
In Oxford Companion
to Politics of the World,
edited by Joel Krieger.
New York: Carlson Publishing, 1993.
SOURCES: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York, 1903). Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (New York, 1974). Vincent Harding, There Is a River (Orlando, Fla., 1981). Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York 1985). Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988). John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 6th ed., with Alfred A. Moss, Jr. (New York, 1988).