Academic Resources

African Americans

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledges the crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during his " I Have a Dream" speech

Among the flood of immigrants to North America, one group came unwillingly. These were Africans, 500,000 of whom were brought over as slaves between 1619 and 1808, when importing slaves into the United States became illegal. The practice of owning slaves and their descendants continued, however, particularly in the agrarian South, where many laborers were needed to work the fields.

The process of ending slavery began in April 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South, 11 of which had left the Union. On January 1, 1863, midway through the war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in those states that had seceded. Slavery was abolished throughout the United States with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the country's Constitution in 1865.

Even after the end of slavery, however, American blacks were hampered by segregation and inferior education. In search of opportunity, African Americans formed an internal wave of immigration, moving from the rural South to the urban North. But many urban blacks were unable to find work; by law and custom they had to live apart from whites, in run-down neighborhoods called ghettos.

Today, African Americans constitute 12.3 percent of the total U.S. population. In recent decades blacks have made great strides, and the black middle class has grown substantially. In 1996, 44 percent of employed blacks held "white-collar" jobs --managerial, professional, and administrative positions rather than service jobs or those requiring manual labor. That same year 23 percent of blacks between ages 18 and 24 were enrolled in college, compared to 15 percent in 1983. The average income of blacks is lower than that of whites, however, and unemployment of blacks -- particularly of young men -- remains higher than that of whites. And many black Americans are still trapped by poverty in urban neighborhoods plagued by drug use and crime.

• African American History and Studies - From Academic Info
• African American Biography - From University of Delawaere
• African American History - From University of Washington
• African American Mosaic - From The Library of Congress
• AFRO-American Almanac
• American Slave Narratives - From University of Virginia
• The Avalon Project - From Yale School of Law
• Diversity Databases - From University of Maryland
• Gateway to African American History - Web Portal from State Department
• Martin Luther King, Jr - Webportal from State Department
• Museum of Afro American History - Boston, Massachusetts
• Reports on Black America 1857 to 1874 - From Harper's Weekly
• The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow - From Public Broadcasting System
• W.E.B. Du Bois Papers - From University of Massachusetts