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Demographics Of Alabama

Demographics of Alabama

Population

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Alabama's 2000 population was 4,447,100. As of 2004, the Census Bureau estimated that Alabama's population was 4,530,182. the state's population increased by 490,000 between 1990 and 2004, a 12% rise. As of 2004 Alabama had 108,000 foreign-born (2.4% of the state population), of which an estimated 22.2% were illegal aliens (24,000).

Race and ancestry

The racial makeup of the state and comparison to the prior census: The largest reported ancestry groups in Alabama: American (17.0%), English (7.8%), Irish (7.7%), German (5.7%), and Scotch-Irish (2.0%). 'American' includes those reported as Native American or African American.

Ethnicity/Ancestry

The five largest ancestry groups in Alabama are: 26.0% African American; 17.0% American; 7.8% English; 7.7% Irish; 5.7% German. Historically, African American groups were established in Alabama as slaves, primarily in the cotton-producing plantation region known as the Black Belt. This region remains predominantly African American while the northern part of the state, originally settled by small farmers with fewer slaves, is predominantly white. The Port of Mobile, founded by the French and subsequently controlled by England, Spain, and the United States, has long had an ethnically diverse population, and has served as an entry point for various groups settling in other parts of the state.

Rankings

:Among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Alabama ranks: :
- 32nd in its percentage of Whites :
- 7th in its percentage of Blacks :
- 43rd in its percentage of Hispanics :
- 44th in its percentage of Asians :
- 26th in its percentage of American Indians :
- 48th in its percentage of people of Mixed race :
- 47th in its percentage of males :
- 5th in its percentage of females

Religion

The religious affiliations of the people of Alabama are as follows:
- Christian – 92%
- Protestant – 79%
- Baptist – 49%
- Methodist – 10%
- Presbyterian – 3%
- Episcopalian – 2%
- Church of God – 2%
- Church of Christ – 2%
- Pentecostal – 2%
- Lutheran – 2%
- Other Protestant – 7%
- Catholic – 13%
- Other religions – 1%
- Non-religious – 7%

Language

As of 2000, 96.7% of Alabama residents age 5 and older speak English at home and 2.2% speak Spanish. German speakers make up only 0.4% of the population, French/French Creole at 0.3%, and Chinese at 0.1%.

Age & Sex

As of 2000, 25.3% of residents of the state were under 18, 6.7% were under 5, and 13.0% were over 65. 51.7% of Alabamians are female and 48.3% are male.

U.S. Census Bureau

The United States Census Bureau (officially Bureau of the Census) is a part of the United States Department of Commerce. Its mission is defined in the Constitution of the United States, which directs that the population be enumerated at least once every ten years (through the U.S. Census), and each state's number of Representatives in Congress determined accordingly. It also is in charge of collecting statistics about the nation, its people, and economy. The Census Bureau's establishment is codified in Title 13 of the United States Code. United States CodeSince 1903, the official census-taking organ of the United States government has been the Bureau of the Census. The Bureau is headed by a Director, assisted by a Deputy Director and an Executive Staff composed of the associate directors. The Bureau has 12 regional offices (Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, Kansas City, and Seattle) with additional processing centers set up temporarily for the decennial censuses. The sole purpose of the censuses and surveys is to secure general statistical information. Replies are obtained from individuals and establishments only to enable the compilation of such general statistics. The confidentiality of these replies is very important. By law, no one — neither the census takers nor any other Census Bureau employee — is permitted to reveal identifiable information about any person, household, or business. The bureau recognizes four census regions within the United States, and further organizes them into nine divisions. These regions are groupings of states that subdivide the United States for the presentation of data. They should not be construed as bound together by any geographical, historical, or cultural concerns. The regions are as follows:region
- Region 1 (Northeast) :
- Division 1 (New England) :
- Division 2 (Middle Atlantic)
- Region 2 (Midwest) :
- Division 3 (East North Central) :
- Division 4 (West North Central)
- Region 3 (South) :
- Division 5 (South Atlantic) :
- Division 6 (East South Central) :
- Division 7 (West South Central)
- Region 4 (West) :
- Division 8 (Mountain) :
- Division 9 (Pacific) The Census Bureau headquarters is located at 4700 Silver Hill Road, Suitland Maryland.

Reference and external links

- The original version of this article was adapted from [http://www.census.gov/acsd/www/history.html U.S. Census Bureau] text.
- [http://www.census.gov/ United States Census Bureau website]
- [http://www.census.gov/geo/www/garm.html Geographic Areas Reference Manual] from the U.S. Census Bureau contains detailed explanations of geographic terms used in the census. Census Bureau Category:National statistical services Census Bureau Census Bureau ja:アメリカ合衆国統計局

British American

British Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry stems, either wholly or in part, from one of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom. British Americans commonly have English, Scottish, Scotch-Irish (Ulster), or Welsh family heritages. Irish-Americans are not usually categorized as having British ancestry and many, but not all, do not consider themselves as being British Americans (although the Republic of Ireland was formerly part of the United Kingdom until 1922). Similarly, most Americans with a Scottish or Welsh background identify with those specific countries and not with the island of Great Britain as a whole, and therefore tend not to refer to themselves as British American (see Scottish American). It could therefore be argued that most people identifying themselves as British American are actually English American.

British American or American?

Many British Americans have ancestry in America that dates back to colonial times in the 17th and 18th centuries. With their roots being in America for such a long period, many British Americans and a significant number of Irish Americans have begun to think of themselves ancestrally simply as "Americans". This is especially true in the South. In American society, hyphenated-Americanism prevails because so much of the population has relatively recent roots elsewhere. Many other Americans are uncertain about the relative proportions in their own ancestry or have forgotten the origins of their distant ancestors, or prefer to identify with the ethnicity of ancestors who arrived more recently, which provide more distinctive folkways than the general American culture. Even as prominent a figure as Senator John Kerry was astonished to discover his father's father had been born Jewish in Europe, and on coming to America chose an Irish name and became Catholic. England, Scotland and Wales sent millions of immigrants to America after 1776. They assimilated quite rapidly.

Number of British Americans

In the 2000 Census, 36.4 million Americans reported British ancestry. These include:
- 24.5 million English
- 4.9 million Scottish
- 4.3 million Scotch-Irish (Ulster)
- 1.7 million Welsh
- 1 million British (answered "British" as ancestry on the Census) These figures make British Americans one of the largest "ethnic" groups in the U.S. when counted collectively (although the Census Bureau does not count them collectively, as each of the above is a separate ethnic group, that is English or Scottish or Welsh or Scotch-Irish). The Germans and Irish are the largest self-reported ethnic groups in the nation but British ancestry is considered the most common by experts.

Scholarly Sources

- Oscar Handlin, Ann Orlov and Stephan Thernstrom eds. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980) the standard reference source for all ethnic groups.
- Rowland Tappan Berthoff. British Immigrants in Industrial America, 1790-1950 (1953).

External links

- [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_QTP13&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-_sse=on Census Bureau ancestry figures] Category:Ethnic groups of the United States

German American

German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry. Around 8 million German immigrants have entered the United States since its inception, with the majority arriving between 1840 and 1920). German immigrants arrived for a wide variety of reasons. Some came seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Germany, and others simply for the chance to start afresh in the New World. Numbering over 47 million, German Americans are the largest self-reported ethnic group in the United States.

First German Americans

German immigrants made up a substantial population of colonial Pennsylvania, where they often came into political conflict with the Quakers. The first German settlement in Pennsylvania was founded in 1683, although some Germans were already in America in other colonies at that time. Eventually, Germans would constitute about one-third of the population of Pennsylvania at the time of the Revolution. A large German colony in Virginia called Germanna was located near Culpeper and was founded by two waves of colonists in 1714 and 1717. Many of these colonists were essentially hijacked to Virginia in questionable circumstances relating to Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood, having intended to go to Pennsylvania. Many Germanna decendents took part in the Revolution and later were on the forefront of migration west to Kentucky and beyond. In the 1790 U.S. census, the first taken by the new country, Germans are estimated to have constituted nearly 9% of the white population in the United States.

German Americans throughout the country

Heavy German immigration to the United States occurred between 1848 and World War I, during which time nearly 6 million Germans immigrated to the U.S. The Germans became widespread throughout the Northern half of the country, especially the Midwestern states. By 1900, the cities of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Hoboken and Cincinnati all had populations which were over 40% German. The Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati was one of the largest German-American cultural centers.

Present Population

Cincinnati German Americans are the largest self-reported ethnic group in the United States today. According to the 2000 U.S. census, 47 million Americans are of German ancestry. German-Americans represent 16% of the total U.S. population and 24% of the non-Hispanic white population. Of the four major U.S. regions, German was the most-reported ancestry in the Midwest, second in the West, and third in the Northeast and South regions. German was the top reported ancestry in 23 states, and it was one of the top five reported ancestries in every state except Maine and Rhode Island.

Amish, Mennonite and Hutterites

Many communities of Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites still speak dialects of German, including Pennsylvania German. Because of their religious beliefs, they form separate communities that are still functioning, in some cases centuries after their ancestors' immigration to America.

German Americans and World War I

During World War I, German Americans, especially those born abroad, were widely accused, by Americans of other ancestries, of being sympathetic to the German Empire. Many Germans were persecuted. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith) and limited their use of the German language in public places. German music of any kind ceased to be played. Laws were passed to ban the use of German as a language of instruction for elementary school students, even in private and parochial schools. Previously, bilingual schools had been common in German communities. Some communities banned instruction in any language except English. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the ban illegal in 1923 (Meyer v. Nebraska), by which time the nativist hysteria had largely subsided. However, the ground that had been lost was never regained.

German Americans and World War II

After Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States over 11,000 Germans and German-Americans were sent to internment camps. Of these, most were released soon after the war but some were held up to 1950. President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded several Latin American nations to send their German aliens to the American camps. Many alien internees, including Jewish internees, were sent back to Germany in exchange for Americans in Germany, including their American born spouses and children. Some of those sent back to Germany were killed during the war.

German-American Influence

Germans have contributed to a vast number of areas in American culture and technology. Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian officer, led the of the U.S. Army during the War for Independence and helped make the victory against British troops possible. The Studebakers built large numbers of wagons used during the Western migration; Studebaker later became an important early automobile manufacturer. Carl Schurz, a refugee from the unsuccessful first German democratic revolution of 1848 (see also German Confederation), served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Due to the tragic developments in Germany leading from World War I and World War II, many researchers of German origin left Germany due to economic problems or as a result of racial, religious, and political persecution. Probably the most famous of them was Albert Einstein, known for his Theory of Relativity. After World War II, Wernher von Braun, the leading engineer from the former German rocket base Peenemünde, was brought to the U.S. He contributed to the development of U.S. military rockets, as well as of rockets for the NASA space program. It is widely believed that without von Braun and the other German scientists, America's space program would not have succeeded. The influence of German cuisine is seen in the cuisine of the United States throughout the country. Hamburgers, bratwurst, sauerkraut, strudel are common dishes. Germans were important in the beer and wine industries. German bakers introduced the pretzel. See also Lager Beer Riot. Many Americans feel that one of the areas in which the influence of German cuisine is strongest in the Midwest (e.g. Ohio). Cincinnati, Ohio is known for its German-American festival Zinzinnati, held annually. It is among the largest German-American festivals in the U.S.

German-American presidents

There have been two presidents of the United States of America who were of German ancestry. One was World War II General Dwight Eisenhower (this surname was originally spelled Eisenhauer in Germany), the other was Herbert Hoover (original family name Huber).

Scots-Irish American

Scots-Irish Americans are Americans of Ulster-Scots descent. This article deals with those who arrived before 1776 and formed distinctive communities; almost all were Protestant. For the Catholics who came to America see Irish Americans. For other Protestant arrivals from the United Kingdom, see Scottish American and British American.

History

They are descendants of the Ulster-Scots immigrants who travelled to North America from Northern Ireland in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Historically they had settled the major part of Ulster province in northern Ireland. Most had previously lived in Scotland, usually in the Lowlands and Scottish Border Country. The "Celtic Thesis" of Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney holds that they were basically Celtic (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon), and that all Celtic groups (Scots Irish, Scottish, Welsh and others) were warlike herdsmen, in contrast to the peaceful farmers who predominated in England. James Webb (former US Secretary of the Navy) uses this thesis in his book Born Fighting to suggest that the character traits of the Scots Irish, loyalty to kin, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness, helped shape the American identity." Once settled as the dominant group in their section of Ireland, many of the Scots-Irish suffered under the Penal Laws in Ireland, which discriminated against them because of their Presbyterian form of Protestantism, and aggravated their historical grievances against England. This anti-English sentiment encouraged some to join the patriotic cause, though many in the Carolinas were Loyalists. Some historians suggest that their experience in Ulster of being a colonial minority surrounded by a hostile Catholic population, prepared them for life on America's frontier facing the Indians. The Scotch-Irish celebrated their military victories over the Irish Catholics, which they believed had saved their community from annihilation. Of special symbolic importance was the battle of the Boyne. The migration from the lowlands and the border country to Ulster occurred largely during the 17th and 18th centuries (as detailed in the article History of Scotland and Plantations of Ireland). With the enforcement of Queen Anne's 1703 Test Act. In Ulster however, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots migrated to the North American colonies throughout the 18th century (250,000 settled in the USA between 1717 and 1770 alone). According to the standard scholarly source (Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988)), Protestant were 1/3 or population of Ireland but 3/4 of all emigrants 1700-1776; 70% of Protestants were Presbyterians. Finding the Atlantic coast already heavily settled, most groups of the settlers from Northern Ireland went up into the "western mountains", where their descendants populated the Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley. Others settled in northern New England and north-central Nova Scotia. In the 2000 US Census, 4.3 million Americans (more than 2% of the white population in the USA) were knowledgeable enough about their genealogy to claim Scots-Irish ancestry. They were often called [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=/Folklife/CustomsandLocalTraditions&id=h-552 "crackers"] by English neighbors. As one wrote, "I should explain ... what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." Several presidents have had ancestral links to Ulster, including three whose parents were born in Ulster. Several hundred thousand descendants of settlers from Ulster also live in Canada today. See Orange Order section on The Orange Order in Canada. The Irish Protestant vote in the U.S. has not been studied nearly as much as have the Catholic Irish. (On the Catholic vote see Irish Americans). In the 1820s and 1830s supporters of Andrew Jackson emphasized his Irish background, as did James Knox Polk, but since the 1840s it has been uncommon for a Protestant politician in America to be identified as Irish. In Canada, by contrast, Irish Protestants remained a cohesive political force well into the 20th century, identified with the Conservative Party of Canada (historical) and especially with the Orange Order.

More on the term Scotch-Irish

"Scotch-Irish" is the standard English and most common term for "Scots-Irish" in North America. It has been used since settlement to describe descendents of Protestants from the border country of England and Scotland that first migrated to Ulster and later settled in North America throughout the eighteenth century. Other names, including "Northern Irish" or "Irish Presbyterians", can also describe these people. Grammatically, "Scotch-Irish" is correct, since "Scotch" is an adjective, but "Scots" a plural noun. "Scots-Irish" sounds a bit like "Germans-American." The explanation for the odd term is that "Scots" is "Scotch" in the Scotch language. Moreover, it is inconsistent that "Irish" is left in standard English. There are references to "Scotch-Irish" as early as 1730, and the term was probably first used to distinguish the Ulster-Scots from either Irish Anglicans, Irish Catholics, or immigrants who came directly from Scotland. The word "Scotch" was the favoured adjective as a designation—it literally means "...of Scotland". As people from Scotland nowadays refer to themselves as "Scots" (in the Scottish language) or "Scottish" (in standard English), the term "Scotch" has become dated there. In Scotland it nowadays refers only to whisky. Confusingly perhaps for those outside of the US and Canada, the term "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish" does not refer to simply any Scottish, Irish, but the migrants from the lowlands to Northern Ireland; it is therefore considered by many to be less accurate a term than "Ulster-Scots/Scottish". Strictly speaking, none of these terms is entirely accurate, since the Northern Irish Protestants are largely descendant from the Northumbrians of the Lowlands and the Border Country.

Notable Americans of Scots-Irish Descent

- Neil Armstrong, (astronaut)
- Chester A. Arthur, (President)
- James Buchanan, (President)
- John C. Calhoun, (Vice President)
- Bill Clinton, (President) (Scots Irish and Irish ancestry)
- James Coburn, (actor)
- Eddie Cochran, (musician)
- Mickey Cochrane, (sportsman)
- Davy Crockett (western pioneer)
- Thomas Edison (inventor)
- Ava Gardner (movie star)
- Jeff Gordon (sportsman)
- Ulysses S. Grant (President)
- Anjelica Huston (actor)
- John Huston (director)
- Walter Huston (actor)
- Andrew Jackson (President)
- Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (soldier)
- Jessica Lynch (soldier)
- George B. McClellan (soldier)
- Reba McEntire (singer)
- William McKinley (President)
- Steve McQueen (actor)
- Robert Mitchum (actor)
- Audie Murphy (soldier)
- Arnold Palmer (sportsman)
- Dolly Parton (actress)
- Edgar Allan Poe (author)
- James Polk (President)
- Elvis Presley (singer)
- Robert Redford (actor)
- Ronald Reagan (President) (mother Scots Irish, father Irish Catholic)
- Theodore Roosevelt, US President (mother Scots Irish, father Dutch)
- Jimmy Stewart (actor)
- Mark Twain (author)
- Harry S. Truman (President)
- John Wayne (actor)
- Woodrow Wilson (President)

Scholarly Secondary Sources

- Bailyn, Bernard and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (1991), scholars analyze colonial migrations. [http://print.google.com/print?id=QPsL9WaS7gAC&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285&dq=McWhiney,+Grady.+Cracker+Culture:&prev=http://books.google.com/books%3Flr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26q%3DMcWhiney,%2BGrady.%2BCracker%2BCulture:%26start%3D10&sig=IMjF3pSOt7WaM2p3Ej6L51HxWfw&pli=1&auth=DQAAAGoAAAB-jv3uaXrxfF3YiEBHLXzvpA7QSusLfMGHmm-mpj1U30Wg5nIaUntTnLWWFD13Z8Ng-vis25CT_8hZ7p1lje8QGdgQ4oXabbe0AqMG8LenF7a-FFMZgXSJ4C-j3PKcDyZt9D3xTF2UIFuq_MT2OIow excerpts online]
- Blethen, Tyler. ed. Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish (1997; ISBN 0817308237), scholarly essays.
- Dunaway, Wayland F. The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (1944; reprinted 1997; ISBN 0806308508), solid older scholarly history.
- Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1991), major scholarly study tracing colonial roots of four groups of immigrants, Irish, English Puritans, English Cavaliers, and Quakers.
- Glazier, Michael, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, (1999), the best place to start--the most authoritative source, with essays by over 200 experts, covering both Catholic and Protestants.
- Griffin, Patrick. The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World: 1689-1764 (2001; ISBN 0691074623) solid academic monograph.
- Leyburn, James G. Scotch-Irish: A Social History (1999; ISBN 0807842591) written by academic but out of touch with scholarly literature after 1940
- McDonald, Forrest, and Grady McWhinney, "The Antebellum Southern Herdsman: A Reinterpretation," Journal of Southern History 41 (1975) 147-66; highly influential economic interpretation; online at JSTOR through most academic libraries. Their Celtic interpretation says Scots-Irish resembled all other Celtic groups; they were warlike herders (as opposed to peaceful farmers in England), and brought this tradition to America. James Webb has popularized this thesis.
- Berthoff, Rowland. "Celtic Mist over the South," Journal of Southern History 52 (1986): 523-46 is a strong attack; rejoinder on 547-50
- McWhiney, Grady. Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (1984).
- McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (1988). Major exploration of cultural folkways.
- Meagher, Timothy J. The Columbia Guide to Irish American History. (2005), overview and bibliographies; includes the Catholics.
- Miller, Kerby. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988). Highly influential study.
- Miller, Kerby, et al eds. Journey of Hope: The Story of Irish Immigration to America (2001), major source of primary documents.
- Porter, Lorle. A People Set Apart: The Scotch-Irish in Eastern Ohio (1999; ISBN 1887932755) highly detailed chronicle.
- Quinlan, Kieran. Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South (2004), critical analysis of Celtic thesis. [http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&id=18Ep1zJm8ssC&dq=McWhiney,+Grady.+Cracker+Culture:&prev=http://books.google.com/books%3Flr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26q%3DMcWhiney,%2BGrady.%2BCracker%2BCulture:%26start%3D20&lpg=PA40&pg=PA42&sig=9esCP_ypjUnPxF_lqk6qMXs2hM0 partly online]

Popular History and Literature

- Baxter, Nancy M. Movers: A Saga of the Scotch-Irish (The Heartland Chronicles) (1986; ISBN 0961736712) Novelistic.
- Chepesiuk, Ron. The Scotch-Irish: From the North of Ireland to the Making of America (ISBN 0786406143)
- Glasgow, Maude. The Scotch-Irish in Northern Ireland and in the American Colonies (1998; ISBN 078840945X)
- Greeley, Andrew. Encyclopedia of the Irish in America
- Johnson, James E. Scots and Scotch-Irish in America (1985, ISBN 0822510227) short overview for middle schools
- Kennedy, Billy. Faith & Freedom: The Scots-Irish in America (1999; ISBN 1840300612) Short, popular chronicle; he has several similar books on geographical regions
- Kennedy, Billy. The Scots-Irish in the Carolinas (1997; ISBN 1840300116)
- Kennedy, Billy. The Scots-Irish in the Shenandoah Valley (1996; ISBN 1898787794)
- Lewis, Thomas A. West From Shenandoah: A Scotch-Irish Family Fights for America, 1729-1781, A Journal of Discovery (2003; ISBN 0471315788)
- Webb, James. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004; ISBN 0767916883) novelistic approach; special attention to his people's war with English in America.

External links

- [http://www.scotch-irishsociety.org/ Scotch-Irish Society of North Carolina]
- [http://www.ulsterscotssociety.com/ The Ulster-Scots Society of America]
- [http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/ Ulster-Scots Agency]
- [http://www.ulster-scots.co.uk/ Ulster-Scots Online]
- [http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/ulsterscots/ Institute of Ulster-Scots]
- [http://www.scotchirish.net/main.php4/ Scotch Irish.Net] Category:Ulster-Scots Category:Ethnic groups of the United States Category:History of Ireland Category:History of Scotland category:Scottish-Americans Category:Irish-Americans

African American

An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black), is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. Many African Americans have European and/or Native American ancestry as well. The term refers specifically to black African ancestry; not, for example, to white or Arab African ancestry, such as Moroccan or white South African ancestry. Blacks from non-African countries such as Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Great Britain, or Australia are theoretically referred to by their nation of origin and not African American, but in general the assumption is that if you are black, you are "African American".

Nomenclature

The term "African American" has been in common usage in the United States since the late 1980s, when greater numbers of African Americans began to adopt the term self-referentially. Malcolm X favored the term "African American" over "Negro" and used the term at an OAAU (Organization of Afro American Unity) meeting in the early 1960s, saying, "Twenty-two million African-Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America." Former NBA player/coach Lenny Wilkens is another who used the term as a teenager when filling a job application. Many Blacks began to abandon the term "Afro-American", which had become popular in the 1960s and '70s, for "African-American," because they desired an unabbreviated expression of their African heritage that could not be mistaken or derided as an allusion to the afro hairstyle. The term became increasingly popular, and by the 1980s, Jesse Jackson and others pressed for its adoption and acceptance. Users of the term argued that "African-American" was more in keeping with the nation's immigrant tradition of so-called "hyphenated Americans", who were known by terms like "Irish-American", or "Chinese-American", "Polish-American"), which link people with their, or their ancestors', geographic points of origin. Terms used at various points in American history include Negroes, colored, Blacks and Afro-Americans. Negro and colored were common until the late 1960s, but are now less commonly used and considered derogatory. African American, Black and, to a lesser extent, Afro-American are used interchangeably today, but their precise meanings and connotations are in dispute. The term African American is sometimes problematic because of its imprecise cultural and geographic meaning. The term as originally applied refers to only those descended from a small number of colonial indentured servants and the estimated 500,000 Africans taken to British North America or the U.S. as slaves (of approximately 11 million Africans taken to the western hemisphere in general). In slightly broader usage, the term can include West Indian and Afro-Latino immigrants whose African ancestors also survived the Middle Passage or recent African immigrants/children of immigrants with American citizenship, but these groups tend to use the ethnic terms Latino or Hispanic, or identify themselves by their countries of origin (i.e., as Dominican or Jamaican instead of African American). The term does not include white, Indian or Arab immigrants from the African continent, as they are not generally considered 'Africans' by English-speaking people. The common interpretation of the term 'African American' is frequently, and controversially, challenged; including an infamous incident at a [http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/22/king.controversy.ap/ Nebraska High School] where a white South African student campaigned for a "Distinguished African American Student Award."

Current Demographics

Jamaican According to 2003 U.S. Census figures, some 37.1 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 12.9 percent of the total population. At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8 percent of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6 percent of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7 percent in the Midwest, while only 8.9 percent lived in the western states. Almost 88 percent of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000. Among cities of 100,000 or more, Gary, Indiana, had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with 85 percent, followed closely by Detroit, Michigan, with 83 percent. Atlanta, Georgia, has a large African-American population of about 65 percent. The nation's capital, Washington, D.C., had a 60 percent Black population.

African American history

Main article: African American history Blacks in America, like their White counterparts, are composed of many diverse ethnic groups. Over 40 identifiable ethnic groups from 25 different kingdoms were sold to the United States during the Atlantic Slave trade. These people came from an area spanning from present day Senegal all the way to Democratic Republic of Congo. Over time, Africans in America formed a new and common identity focused on their mutual condition in America as opposed to cultural and historic ties to Africa. Africans were sold and traded into bondage and shipped to the American South from 1619. In 1662 Virginia, the following law mentioned hereditary slavery and tied it to being born of a slave mother; its wording suggests that "negroes" but not "Englishmen" could be enslaved, and it was apparently clarifying an existing legal status, rather than establishing a new one.

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by the present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.

The 1662 law brought Virginia into line with Iberian laws that had been in effect since 1265. Over the next few decades, identical laws would be adopted throughout the British colonies. They would remain in effect until U.S. slavery ended over two centuries later. The new partus sequitur ventrem law had three long-term consequences. First, it set a psychological basis for popular culture's seeing slaves as less than fully human. Prior British common law had held that social status passed through the father; only livestock ownership had been matrilineal. Second, since biracial children of free mothers were free, it enabled the emergence of a population of legitimately freeborn Americans of mixed Afro-European ancestry who had no connection to slavery within living memory. Third, it meant that tens of thousands of future slaves would be genetically European, due to European alleles from free fathers gradually replacing African alleles from slave mothers, through random DNA mixing (meiosis) at each generation. Within two centuries, this would lead to such runaway slave advertisements as, "A beautiful girl, about twenty years of age, perfectly white, with straight light hair and blue eyes. — 1847 Hannibal MO," creating the never-to-be-resolved conflict in U.S. society between a dichotomous color line and the obvious fact of mixed heritage. In 1807, the importation of slaves by U.S. citizens became illegal, yet the practice continued. By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved Africans in the Southern United States, and another 500,000 Africans lived free across the country. Slavery was a controversial issue in American society and politics. The growth of abolitionism, which opposed the institution of slavery, culminated in the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, and was one reason for the secession of the Confederate States of America, which lead to the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederacy free under U.S. law. It included exceptions for those held in all territories that had not seceded, however, and thus did not immediately free a single slave, since U.S. law held no sway over the Confederacy at the time. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, freed all slaves, including those in states that had not seceded. During Reconstruction, African Americans in the South obtained the right to vote and to hold public office, as well as a number of other civil rights they previously had been denied. However, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern, white landowners reinstituted a regime of disenfranchisement and racial segregation, and with it a wave of terrorism and repression, including lynchings and other vigilante violence. The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American intellectual and cultural elite in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. One of the most prominent of these groups, the NAACP, galvanized by outspoken journalist and activist Ida B. Wells Barnett, led an anti-lynching crusade. In the 1950s, the organization mounted a series of calculated legal challenges to overturn Jim Crow segregation, culminating in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board was one of defining moments of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. It was part of a long-term strategy to strike down Jim Crow segregation in public education, the hospitality industry, public transportation, employment and housing, granting equal access to African Americans and ensuring their right to vote. The movement reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, Sr. At the same time, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and, later, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa called for African Americans to embrace black nationalism and black self-empowerment, propounding ideas of African (black) unity and solidarity and pan-Africanism.

Contemporary issues

Main article: African American contemporary issues Many African Americans significantly have improved their social and economic standing since the Civil Rights Movement, and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. However, due in part to a legacy of racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage relative to whites. Economically, the median income of African Americans is roughly 55 percent of that of European Americans. Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime; poverty; and substance abuse. African Americans are frequently the targets of racial profiling. They are also more likely to be incarcerated. African Americans also have higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions and out-of-wedlock births relative to the general population. These problems and potential remedies have been the subject of intense public policy debate in the United States in general, and within the African American community in particular.

Culture

Main article: African American culture African American culture is an amalgam of influences, including African, Caribbean, European, and Latino cultures. From its music and dance, to speech, demeanor, and foodways, African American culture bears the strong imprint of West Africa, particularly in rural portions of the Deep South and Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina. African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today. Hip hop, rock, R&B, funk, and other contemporary American musical forms evolved from blues, jazz, and gospel music. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English spoken by many African Americans to varying degrees. African American authors have written many stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans, and African American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.

The term African American

Political overtones

The term African American carries important political overtones. Previous terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by whites and were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which became tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of their own choosing. With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Negro fell into disfavor among many African Americans. It had taken on a moderate, accommodationist, even Uncle Tomish, connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the U.S., particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced black as a group identifier—a term they themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier—a term often associated in English with things negative and undesirable, proclaiming, "Black is beautiful." In this same period, others favored the term Afro-American; this particular term never gained much traction, but by the 1990s, the term African American had emerged as the leading choice of self-referential term. Just as other ethnic groups in American society historically had adopted names descriptive of their families' geographical points of origin (such as Italian-American, Irish-American, Polish-American), many blacks in America expressed a preference for a similar term. Because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the U.S. under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker. For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses African pride and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embracing of the notion of pan-Africanism earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois and, later, George Padmore. A discussion of the term African American and related terms can be found in the journal article "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self Reference Among American Slave Descendants" in American Speech v 66 is 2 Summer 1991 p. 133-46.

Who is African American?

To be considered African American in the United States of America nowadays, not even half of one's ancestry need be black African. Since the early 20th century, the nation's answer to the question "Who is black?" has been that a "black" is any person with any known African ancestry. This definition reflects the experience with racism, white supremacy, slavery, and, later, with Jim Crow laws. But this definition was not always the case.

Antebellum Social Customs¹

Before 1690 or so, colonial social divisions reflected class (planters, craftsmen, forced laborers) and religion (Christians, "heathens") but did not emphasize ethnic origin. Afro-European intermarriage was common. The endogamous color line was invented in 1691 Virginia, when intermarriage was legislated to be a crime. Over the next 30 years, Afro-European intermarriage was outlawed throughout 12 of the 13 colonies (SC being the exception) and the terms Black and White took on today's meaning. For the next century and a half, as reflected in U.S. literature, popular culture, and court cases, Americans defined which side of the color line you were on by three rules: appearance, association, and blood fraction. Appearance meant that you would not be accepted as White if you looked African. Association meant that if your all friends were Black, then you would not be accepted as White even if you looked European. Blood fraction meant that if you had more than a statutory fraction of Black ancestry, then you could not become legally White even if you looked European and associated only with Whites. Although the three rules were formally documented and enforced by the courts, each rule’s details varied from state to state. For example, the same biracial person of mostly European ancestry might be seen as a light-skinned Black in Virginia, but White-looking in Spanish Florida and the French Gulf Coast. In Barbadian South Carolina, the rule of association was heavily influenced by wealth; money whitened as in today's Brazil. And the legal blood fraction limit ranged from 1/8 (as in North Carolina) to 1/2 (Ohio). During this period, hundreds of individuals, including famous ones like Jefferson's son Eston Hemmings, painter John James Audubon, and Florida's first U.S. senator David Levy Yulee, were socially accepted as White despite acknowledging slight Black ancestry (rather like Carol Channing today).

The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule²

The one-drop rule of invisible Blackness arose in the mid-1830s in the Ohio Valley and spread to the south after the Civil War. Those who advocated the notion that you could look completely European and self-identify as White, but still be involuntarily Black due to an undetectable trace of Black ancestry, were a minority at first, and the idea was rejected both by popular culture and the law. But as 19th century was ending, the one-drop rule became increasingly accepted in the South. By 1900 it had become the law of the land in court cases. In the 1910-1930 period its acceptance spread throughout the nation, and it was made statutory and enforced in most states. Incidentally, not everyone uses the term one-drop rule thus. To some, the term is synonymous with Marvin Harris’s “hypodescent,” meaning that Americans who look slightly African are considered Black, even if their African admixture is less than 50 percent. This differs from the Caribbean, where you are White if you look preponderantly European. To others, one-drop rule refers to the U.S. folkloric belief that anyone who has even one drop of African blood in his veins is marked by some subtle physical trait, a clue that reveals the African ancestry. Some say that it is revealed in the color of the half-moons at the base of the thumbnails, or in the shape of the heels, or in blue or purple marks at specific locations on the body. To them, one-drop rule is the belief that no matter how diluted African blood may be, a residue of visible evidence will always remain, generation after generation. This is nonsense, of course, since about one-third of White Americans have detectable recent African genetic admixture in their DNA from ancestors who passed through the color line. The one-drop rule, on the other hand, is the idea that you can look completely European and self-identify as White, but still be involuntarily Black due to an undetectable trace of Black ancestry. Why were Americans the only society to adopt such a strange rule of group membership (undetectable and intangible by definition)? The question has interested anthropologists and historians. The four most popular theories are: that it maintained and expanded the agricultural labor force, that it was embraced by Black leadership to enhance ethnic solidarity, that it was used by White supremacists to support the notion of White racial purity, and that it was wielded as a threat to keep compassionate White families in line by exiling them to Blackness if they defended or befriended Blacks during the Jim Crow period of White-on-Black terror and oppression. Of course, these explanations are not mutually exclusive, and may have operated in combination. The first theory is that the one-drop rule maintained or expanded the labor force by subjecting those of mixed ancestry to forced labor. Its strength lies in explaining why the one-drop rule triumphed in the early 20th century. This was the very period when much of the South's Black agricultural labor force fled to the North in the Great Migration. The one-drop rule shifted the color line pale-wards, trapping many who had been previously seen as White. The theory's weakness is that it is sometimes erroneously applied to slavery. This is an error because no court case ever ruled that someone was a slave merely because of his or her "race." Slavery was matrilineal. Hundreds of people of sub-Saharan phenotype were routinely freed following case law set by Higgins v. Allen, 1796 Maryland by proving that a matrilineal ancestor was free. Indeed, having mixed ancestry was useful because, ever since Gobu v. Gobu, 1802 North Carolina; Hudgins v. Wrights, 1806 Virginia; and Adelle v. Beauregard, 1810 Louisiana, the law of the land (subsequently followed in hundreds of cases) was that biracial individuals were presumed to be free unless proven otherwise. But most importantly, the one-drop rule was not adopted—indeed, it was virtually unknown—in the South until long after slavery was dead. (See Race.) The explanation that the one-drop rule was embraced by Black leadership in order to enhance ethnic solidarity matches the timing and direction of the rule's spread. The rule was advocated by both Martin R. Delany (1812-1885) and Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) before the Civil War. It was carried south after the war by the Black Yankees who built the schools, printed the newspapers, and opened the businesses that taught the newly freed to flourish as Americans. It was defended and supported by Black political leadership throughout the Jim Crow terror. The one-drop system of racial designation was a significant factor in African-American ethnic solidarity since antebellum times. African Americans generally shared a common lot in society and, therefore, common cause—regardless of their ethnic admixture and social and economic stratification. This theory's weakness is that it cannot stand alone. It seems unlikely that a minority population (Black) could somehow cause mainstream society (White) to adopt and impose a law that helped only Blacks. After all, one-drop rule was enforced by White elites through the judicial system. The theory that the one-drop rule was used by White supremacists in order to support the notion of White racial purity has the advantage that it reflects the excuses given by the very legislators who wrote the laws and the judges who enforced them. They claimed that they wanted to preserve the "purity of the white race" from being "polluted" by Black blood. White supremacists, whose motivation was racist, considered anyone with African ancestry tainted, inherently inferior morally and intellectually and, thus, subordinate. The theory's drawback is that articulate public figures, such as lawmakers and judges, do not always tell the truth, even to themselves. The theory that the one-drop rule was used to keep compassionate White families in line is psychologically compelling and matches court evidence of how the rule was enforced. Between 1900 and 1920, over a hundred court cases were held to decide whether an accused family was truly White or unknowingly Black. About forty of those cases were then appealed to state supreme courts. In not one of those forty cases was any genealogical evidence produced. In no case did an accuser reveal an ancient birth certificate, marriage license, school record, or the like. Instead, the testimony was that: An aunt was seen laughing at a joke told by a Black maid. An uncle was seen shaking hands with a Black carpenter who had been hired to build a chicken-coop. A 15-year-old niece was seen flirting with a Black boy of the same age. The testimony that banished families to Blackness was always about establishing one-on-one family-to-family relationships across the color line. The theory is compelling because it is a well-known law of group psychology that when a powerful group bullies a weak group, any member of the bullying group who befriends and tries to defend a victim will be expelled to the bullied group and become a victim himself. During the Jim Crow wave of terror, the White community bullied the Black community. And so, any White family that befriended a Black family was expelled from Whiteness and made legally Black.

U.S. Social Customs Today³

In 1896, the United States Supreme Court missed an opportunity to stifle the one-drop rule before it became the law of the land two decades later. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court affirmed the legality of racial segregation and upheld the State of Louisiana's ruling that, despite being 7/8 white, Homer Plessy's one black great-grandparent rendered him legally non-white and, therefore, subject to being barred from whites-only railway carriages. Ironically, the Justices wanted to consider the issue of Plessy's "race" and encouraged Plessy's lawyers to argue the point. But Plessy's legal strategy was to stipulate that he was Black in order to focus on refuting the public benefit of segregation. Like Walter White a generation later, his goal was not to redefine himself as White (he could easily have done that without court permission); it was to kill segregation. With the advent of Affirmative Action and other entitlement programs, some have seen it advantageous to be accepted as African-American. The claims to Blackness by individuals who look White and were raised as White, have been rejected by some courts but upheld by others. It apparently depends upon community acceptance. The firefighter Malone brothers of 1985 Boston were convicted of "racial fraud" for acquiring Affirmative Action points added to test scores by claiming that a great-grandmother was Black—a claim that was violently opposed by the local Black community. On the other hand, the employers of Mary Walker of 1988 Denver, a schoolteacher of fair complexion, green eyes, light brown hair, and no documented Black ancestry, were court-ordered to accept her as Black because she was supported by the local Black community. Conversely, Mostafa Hefny of 1997 Detroit, a Black-looking immigrant from Africa (Egypt), was denied benefits because he was not "ethnically" African-American. And yet Mark Stebbins, an Afro-sporting Stockton California councilman who claimed to be of African heritage and raised in the African-American ethnicity lost his seat due to a recall vote paid for by an equally African-American (but Black separatist) opponent on the grounds that Stebbins's integrationist political agenda had made him no longer African-American enough. Again, whether you can benefit from entitlement programs meant for African Americans seems to depend on the support of the local African-American community. Some recent evidence suggests that the one-drop rule may be waning in America's popular culture. One way of measuring the tenacity of the one-drop-rule is by examining how Black/White interracial parents identify their children on the census “race” question. Such couples are not typical of most Americans. Nevertheless, if interracial parents accept the legitimacy of African-American ethnic self-identity while simultaneously rejecting the one-drop rule, you would expect half of their children to be identified as White and half as Black. That the children of Black/White interracial parents have been more often identified as Black than as White since 1880 demonstrates that the one-drop rule has been accepted for many decades. In fact, the fraction of such children labeled as unmixed White has fallen steadily from 50 percent in 1940 to 13 percent in 2000. This suggests that the one-drop rule continues to grow stronger among Black/White interracial parents. On the other hand, the fraction of such children labeled as unmixed Black dropped abruptly from 62 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2000. This suggests that it has recently become unfashionable to make first-generation biracial children deny their European ancestry. Whether this portends a crack in the one-drop rule remains to be seen. On the other hand, other recent evidence suggests that the one-drop rule is still invoked by Americans whenever it seems useful. As recently as 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the one-drop rule by refusing to hear a case against Louisiana’s “racial” classification criteria as applied to Susie Phipps (479 U.S. 1002). And authors have found it very profitable to "out" as Black famous historical Americans who looked White, were accepted as White in their society, and self-identified as White, merely because they acknowledged having slight African ancestry (Patrick Francis Healy, Michael Morris Healy, Jr., Calvin Clark Davis, John James Audubon, Mother Henriette Delille—a biracial Louisiana Creole). In the 1980s, parents of mixed-race children began to organize and lobby for the addition of a more inclusive term of racial designation that would reflect the heritage of their offspring. As a result, the term biracial has become more widely used and accepted to classify people of mixed race. In sum, how Americans have determined whether a person is African American (that is, a member of the U.S. Black endogamous community) or White (that is, a suitable marriage partner for Whites) has changed dramatically over the centuries and may be changing still.

Terms no longer in common use

The term Negro, which was widely used until the 1960s, today increasingly is considered passé and inappropriate or derogatory. It is still fairly commonly used by older individuals and in the Deep South. Once widely considered acceptable, Negro fell into disfavor for reasons already herein stated. The self-referential term of preference for Negro became black. Negroid is a term used by European anthropologists first in the 18th century to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on inconsistent, unscientific phenotypical standards, the term is controversial and imprecise. Because of its similarity to Negro, growing numbers of blacks have substituted the term Africoid which, unlike Negroid, encompasses the phenotypes of all indigenous African peoples. Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African Americans are mulatto and colored. Even so, the use of the word "colored" can still be found today in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. The American use of the term mulatto originally was used to mean the offspring of a "pure African black" and a "pure European white". The Latin root of the word is mulo, as in "mule", implying incorrectly that, like mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids, mulattoes are sterile crosses of two different species. For example, in the early 20th century, African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, who had slaves as mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. While not as common as "mixed" or "biracial," or even "multiracial," mulatto is still sometimes used to refer to people of mixed parentage and, despite its origin, is not considered inherently derogatory. The term quadroon referred to a person of one-fourth African descent, for example, someone born to a Caucasian father and a mulatto mother. Someone of one-eighth African descent technically was an octoroon, although the term often was used to refer to any white person with even a hint of black ancestry. Mulatto and terms with the -roon suffix persisted in a social context for a number of decades, but by the mid twentieth century, they no longer were in common use. With the end of slavery, there was no longer a strong commercial incentive to classify blacks by their African-European ancestral admixture. The occasional use of these terms, however, does still persist in electronic media, literature and in some social settings.

Black American population

The following gives the black population in the U.S. over time, based on U.S. Census figures. (Numbers from years 1920 to 2000 are based on U.S. Census figures as given on page 377 of the Time Almanac of 2005. note: The CIA World Factbook gives the current 2005 figure as 12.9% [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/us.html]

External links

- [http://www.saxakali.com/caribbean/shamil.htm African Americans in the Caribbean and Latin America]
- [http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmcensus1.html African Americans by the numbers]
- [http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhm1.html Black History Month]
- [http://www.sonofthesouth.net/Slavery_Pictures_.htm Slavery Pictures], Original 1860s
- [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=38705 Definition of African American] from MedicineNet
- [http://www.radioblack.com/ African American Music] Black American Radio Stations

Footnotes

#This section was adapted from chapters 6-13 of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230, which contains the detailed citations and references. Summaries of these chapters, with endnotes, are also available online at [http://backintyme.com/Essay040811.htm How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s]. #This section was adapted from chapters 20-21 of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230, which contains the detailed citations and references. Summaries of these chapters, with endnotes, are also available online at [http://backintyme.com/Essay050501.htm Jim Crow Triumph of the One-Drop Rule]. #This section was adapted from chapter 14 of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230, which contains the detailed citations and references. A summary of this chapters, with endnotes, is also available online at [http://backintyme.com/Essay050301.htm Features of Today’s One-Drop Rule]. Category:African Americans Category:Ethnic groups ja:アフリカン・アメリカン

British American

British American or American?

Number of British Americans

Scholarly Sources

External links

German American

First German Americans

German Americans throughout the country

Present Population

Amish, Mennonite and Hutterites

German Americans and World War I

German Americans and World War II

German-American Influence

German-American presidents

Black Belt (region of Alabama)

Alabama's Black Belt is a region of the state, part of the larger Black Belt Region of the Southern United States, which stretches from Texas to Virginia. This region includes some of the poorest counties in the United States. The name referred originally to the thin layer of exceptionally fertile black soil which encouraged cotton farming in the pioneer period of Alabama history. It may just as well now refer to the exceptionally high proportion of African American residents in these counties. :Major chararistics of Black Belt counties include: :
- Rich, dark loamy soil underlain by red clay. :
- Primary industry remains agriculture with little industrial or commercial development :
- Proportionally large African American population :
- High unemployment rate :
- Low rates of educational attainment :
- Isolated from major transportation infrastructure :
- Limited access to health care :
- Substandard housing stock In Alabama, the heart of the Black Belt is centered in western part of the state between the Appalachian foothills and the coastal plain. The list of counties comprising the Black Belt is often dependent on the context but traditionally includes Barbour, Bullock, Choctaw, Crenshaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, Macon, Marengo, Montgomery, Perry, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Sumter, and Wilcox. Sometimes the region is extended into the southern coastal plain to include Clarke, Conecuh, Escambia, Monroe, and Washington Counties. Though Montgomery County meets both the soil and demographic traits of the Black Belt is often excluded because of its significant urban development. Lamar does not meet the soil traits but is often included due to its lack of enterprise. In recent electoral maps, the Black Belt has appeared as a "Blue Belt" because of its strong support for the Democratic Party. With the exception of parts of the city of Birmingham, the outline of Alabama's Seventh Congressional District roughly matches the Black Belt region. Artur Davis currently represents that district in the United States House of Representatives.

References

- Tullos, Allen. "[http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2004/tullos/4a.htm The Black Belt]" [http://www.southernspaces.org Southern Spaces], (April 19, 2004)
- Rogers, William Warren, and Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flynt. Alabama: The History of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994. ISBN 0817307141

External links

- [http://cber.cba.ua.edu/edata/maps/blackbelt.jpg Map of Traditional Counties of the Alabama Black Belt] at the University of Alabama Center for Business and Economic Research.
- [http://www.al.com/specialreport/birminghamnews/?blackbelt.html Birmingham News special report] on Alabama's Black Belt
- [http://irhr.ua.edu/blackbelt/intro.html Black Belt Fact Book] from the Institute for Rural Health Research
- [http://www.house.gov/arturdavis/ Congressional Home Page of Artur Davis] (with District Map) Category:African-American history Category:Geography of Alabama

England

:For an explanation of often-confusing terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology). England is a nation and the largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom accounting for more than 83% of the total UK population. It occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with fellow home nations Scotland, to the north, and Wales, to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the sea. England is named after the Angles, one of a number of Germanic tribes believed to have originated in Angeln in Northern Germany, who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries. It has not had a distinct political identity since 1707, when Great Britain was established as a unified political entity; however, it has a legal identity separate from those of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as part of the entity "England and Wales;". England's largest city, London, is also the capital of the United Kingdom.

History

Main article: History of England England has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, although the repeated Ice Ages made much of Britain uninhabitable for extended periods until as recently as 20,000 years ago. Stone Age hunter-gatherers eventually gave way to farmers and permanent settlements, with a spectacular and sophisticated megalithic civilisation arising in western England some 4,000 years ago. It was replaced around 1,500 years later by Celtic tribes migrating from Western and continental Europe, mainly from France. These tribes were known collectively as "Britons", a name bestowed by Phoenician traders — an indication of how, even at this early date, the island was part of a Europe-wide trading network. The Britons were significant players in continental politics and supported their allies in Gaul militarily during the Gallic Wars with the Roman Republic. This prompted the Romans to invade and subdue the island, first with Julius Caesar's raid in 55 BC, and then the Emperor Claudius' conquest in the following century. The whole southern part of the island — roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales — became a prosperous part of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned early in the 5th century when a weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent. Unaided by the Roman army, Roman Britannia could not long resist the Germanic tribes who arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries, enveloping the majority of modern day England in a new culture and language and pushing Romano-British rule back into modern-day Wales and western extremities of England, notably Cornwall and Cumbria. Others emigrated across the channel to modern-day Brittany, thus giving it its name and language (Breton). But many of the Romano-British remained in and were assimilated into the newly "English" areas. The invaders fell into three main groups: the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles. As they became more civilised, recognisable states formed and began to merge with one another. (The most well-known state of affairs being the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.) From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the "Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the Kingdom of England was unified. In some sense, real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of "England" in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often regarded as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted, two generations later, by Alfred the Great (ruled 871–899). The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the language of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place-names in England and to a lesser extent Scotland are derived from celtic British names, including London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. Several place-name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, coomb for a small deep valley. Until recently it has been believed that those areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons were uninhabited at the time or the Britons had fled before them. However, genetic studies show that the British were not pushed out to the Celtic fringes – many tribes remained in what was to become England (see C. Capelli et al. A Y chromosome census of the British Isles. Current Biology 13, 979–984, (2003)). Capelli's findings strengthen the research of Steven Bassett of the University of Birmingham; his work during the 1990s suggests that much of the West Midlands was only very lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare
Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1)

The English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think that there are no other men than themselves, and no other world but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that 'he looks like an Englishman', and that 'it is a great pity that he should not be an Englishmen'.

Venetian ambassador to England
Early 16th century
Charlotte Augusta Sneyd
Italian Relations of England (p. 20)

Richard II] Richard II] In 1066, William the Conqueror and the Normans conquered the existing Kingdom of England and instituted an Anglo-Norman administration and nobility who, retaining proto-French as their language for the next three hundred years, ruled as custodians over English commoners. Although the language and racial distinctions faded rapidly during the middle ages, the class system born in the Norman/Saxon divide persisted longer — arguably with traces lasting to the modern day. While Old English continued to be spoken by common folk, Norman feudal lords significantly influenced the language with French words and customs being adopted over the succeeding centuries evolving to a Romance-Germanic hybrid of Middle English widely spoken in Chaucer's time. England came repeatedly into conflict with Wales and Scotland, at the time an independent principality and an independent kingdom respectively, as its rulers sought to expand Norman power across the entire island of Britain. The conquest of Wale

Demographics of Alabama

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British American

British American or American?

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England

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Antebellum Social Customs¹

The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule²

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