I.

Introduction

African Americans (American Blacks or Black Americans), racial group in the United States whose dominant ancestry is from sub-Saharan West Africa. Many African Americans also claim European, Native American, or Asian ancestors. A variety of names have been used for African Americans at various points in history. African Americans have been referred to as Negroes, colored, blacks, and Afro-Americans, as well as lesser-known terms, such as the 19th-century designation Anglo-African. The terms Negro and colored are now rarely used. African American, black, and to a lesser extent Afro-American, are used interchangeably today.

Recent black immigrants from Africa and the islands of the Caribbean are sometimes classified as African Americans. However, these groups, especially first- and second-generation immigrants, often have cultural practices, histories, and languages that are distinct from those of African Americans born in the United States. For example, Caribbean natives may speak French, British English, or Spanish as their first language. Emigrants from Africa may speak a European language other than English or any of a number of African languages as their first language. Caribbean and African immigrants often have little knowledge or experience of the distinctive history of race relations in the United States. Thus, Caribbean and African immigrants may or may not choose to identify with the African American community.

According to 2000 U.S. census, some 34.7 million African Americans live in the United States, making up 12.3 percent of the total population. 2000 census shows that 54.8 percent 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 African American residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000. Washington, D.C., had the highest proportion of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with African Americans making up almost 60 percent of the population.

II.

The African American Experience

African American history is intertwined with that of blacks in Latin America and the Caribbean (see Blacks in Latin America). Like other blacks in the western hemisphere, the overwhelming majority of African Americans were brought to North America as slaves between the 1700s and the early 1800s (see Slavery in the United States). As slaves, they were considered the property of their owners and had no rights. African slaves could be found in all 13 of the British colonies, as well as the Spanish colony of Florida and the French colony of Louisiana.

After the American Revolution (1775-1783), changing economic conditions resulted in the decline of slavery in the North. However, the spread of cotton cultivation encouraged the growth of slavery in the South. By 1860, 4 million slaves accounted for one-third of the total population of the southern states. About 500,000 free blacks lived throughout the United States, slightly more than half residing in the southern states. In the North, many free blacks became abolitionists, activists dedicated to ending slavery and bringing about black equality.

In 1863, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), U.S. president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the southern states at war with the North. The 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1865, outlawed slavery in the United States. In 1868 the 14th amendment granted full U.S. citizenship to African Americans. The 15th amendment, ratified in 1870, extended the right to vote to black males.

In the South, such rights were enforced only by the presence of Union troops, who occupied the region during the period known as Reconstruction. When Union troops withdrew from the South in 1877, white Southerners quickly reversed these advances. Racist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, used terrorism to keep blacks from voting, holding office, and enforcing labor contracts. Whites also began establishing a thorough system of segregation in the United States. Laws limiting blacks’ access to transportation, schools, restaurants, and other public facilities, sprang up throughout the South. Although legal systems of segregation were not established in the North or West, informal segregation was enforced in both of these regions.

Blacks responded to these setbacks by forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. The NAACP mounted legal challenges to segregation and lobbied legislatures on behalf of black Americans. African Americans also created an independent community and institutional life. They established schools, banks, newspapers, and small businesses to serve the needs of their community.

Between 1910 and 1950, in the largest internal migration in U.S. history, over 5 million African Americans moved from southern plantations to northern cities in hopes of finding better jobs and greater equality. In the 1920s the concentration of blacks in urban areas led to the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which used art, music, and literature to demonstrate the creative abilities of African Americans. A new generation of African American political leaders, such as black nationalist Marcus Garvey and union organizer A. Philip Randolph, also found support among urban African Americans.

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This decision led to the dismantling of legal segregation in all areas of southern life, from schools to restaurants to public restrooms. Energized by leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights movement in the United States gained new momentum in the mid-1950s. Civil rights groups organized nonviolent protests, such as marches and sit-ins, to rally the black community.

Many Southern whites attempted to hold onto segregation through continued violence. By the mid-1960s some African Americans began to question the effectiveness of nonviolent protest. More militant black leaders, such as Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party, called for blacks to defend themselves, using violence if necessary. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Black Power movement urged African Americans to look to Africa for inspiration and emphasized African American solidarity rather than integration.

Responding to pressure from the civil rights movement, the U.S. government sought to open up political and economic opportunities for black Americans. The 1965 Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, which brought equality to black voters throughout the South, was the capstone to more than a decade of major civil rights legislation.

III.

Contemporary Issues

Politically and economically, blacks have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, brought unprecedented support and leverage to blacks in politics. In 1989, Virginia became the first state in U.S. history to elect a black governor, Douglas Wilder. In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 mayors and 38 members of Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus serves as a political bloc in Congress for issues relating to African Americans. The appointment of blacks to high federal offices—including Colin Powell (chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989-1993, and secretary of state, 2001-2005), Ron Brown (secretary of commerce, 1993-1996), and Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas—also demonstrates the increasing power of blacks in the political arena. Powell was followed by Condoleezza Rice, who succeeded him as secretary of state after serving as national security adviser.

Economically, blacks have also benefited from the advances made during the civil rights era. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed slightly. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, some 47 percent of African Americans owned their homes. However, African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, median income of African American household was $27,910 compared to $44,366 of non-Hispanic whites. Approximately one-fourth of the African American population lives in poverty, a rate three times that of white Americans. In 2000, 19.1 percent of black population lived below poverty level as compared to 6.9 percent of white population. The unemployment gap between blacks and whites has grown. In 2000, the unemployment rate among African Americans was almost twice the rate for whites. The income gap between black and white families also continues to widen. Employed blacks earn only 77 percent of the wages of whites in comparable jobs, down from 82 percent in 1975. In 2000, Only 16.6 percent of 25 years and older blacks earned bachelor’s or higher degrees in contrast to 28.1 percent of whites. Although rates of births to unwed mothers among both blacks and whites have risen since the 1950s, the rate of such births among African Americans is three times the rate of whites.

Black Americans have shorter life expectancies than the national average. Blacks suffer disproportionately from heart disease, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), hypertension, stroke, and diabetes. Blacks’ lack of access to quality health care contributes to these problems.

Black experiences with and attitudes towards the criminal justice system differ markedly from whites. Although rates of violent crime are dropping among blacks, more than one million African American men are currently in jail or prison. Homicide remains the leading cause of death among black men between the ages of 15 and 34. African Americans distrust the criminal justice system much more than whites do. In 1991 the beating of an unarmed black motorist, Rodney King, by four Los Angeles police officers was captured on videotape. An all-white jury later acquitted the police officers, sparking riots in Los Angeles and protests around the country.

IV.

Culture

African American culture is both part of and distinct from American culture. From their earliest presence in North America, Africans and African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, and language to American culture.

A.

Language

Distinctive patterns of language use among African Americans arose as creative responses to the hardships imposed on the African American community. Slave-owners often intentionally mixed people who spoke many different African languages to discourage communication in any language other than English on their plantations. Moreover, many whites were unwilling to allow blacks to learn proper English. One response to these conditions was the development of pidgins, simplified mixtures of two or more languages that speakers of different languages could use to communicate with each other. Some of these pidgins eventually became fully developed Creole languages spoken by certain groups as a native language. Significant numbers of people still speak some of these Creole languages, notably Gullah on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also called black English or Ebonics, is a dialect of English spoken by many African Americans that shares some features with Creole languages.

B.

Agriculture and Food

The cultivation and use of many agricultural products, such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, grits, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. African American foods reflect creative responses to racial and economic oppression. Under slavery, African Americans were not allowed to eat better cuts of meat, and after emancipation many were often too poor to afford them. “Soul food,” a cuisine commonly associated with African Americans in the South, makes creative use of inexpensive products. Pig intestines are boiled and fried to make “chitterlings.” Ham hocks and necks provide seasoning to soups, beans, and boiled greens. Other common foods, such as fried chicken and “hoppin’ John” (black-eyed peas and rice), are prepared simply.

C.

Religion

The vast majority of African Americans practice some form of Protestantism. Protestantism’s relatively loose hierarchical structure, particularly in the Baptist and Methodist denominations, has allowed African Americans to create and maintain separate churches. Separate churches enabled blacks to take up positions of leadership denied to them in mainstream America. In addition to their religious role, African American churches traditionally provide political leadership and serve social welfare functions. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first nationwide black church in the United States, was founded by Protestant minister Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1816. The largest African American religious denomination is the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., founded in 1895.

A significant number of African Americans are Black Muslims. The most prominent Black Muslim group is the Nation of Islam, a religious organization founded by W. D. Fard and Elijiah Poole in 1935. Poole, who changed his name to Elijiah Muhammad, soon emerged as the leader of the Nation of Islam. Elijiah Muhammad established temples in Detroit, Chicago, and other northern cities. Today, Louis Farrakhan leads the Nation of Islam. A small number of African American Muslims worship independently of the Nation of Islam, as part of the mainstream Islamic tradition.

D.

Holidays

In 1926 African American scholar Carter Godwin Woodson organized the first Negro History week, to focus attention on previously neglected aspects of the black experience in the United States. Woodson chose February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, as well as the anniversary of the founding of the NAACP. Renamed Black History Week in 1972, the observance was extended to become Black History Month in 1976. During February, lectures, exhibitions, banquets, cultural events, and television and radio programming celebrate the achievements of African Americans. Since 1978 the U.S. Postal Service has participated in Black History Month by issuing commemorative stamps honoring notable African Americans.

In 1983 the U.S. Congress established a national holiday in honor of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The holiday is observed annually on the third Monday in January, a day that falls on or near King’s birthday of January 15. Like Black History Month, Martin Luther King Jr. Day emphasizes educational observances, such as lectures and exhibits about King’s life and philosophy.

African American scholar Maulana Karenga invented the festival of Kwanzaa in 1966 as an alternative to the increasing commercialization of Christmas. Derived from the harvest rituals of Africans, Kwanzaa is observed each year from December 26 through January 1. Participants in Kwanzaa celebrations affirm their African heritage by drinking from the Unity cup, lighting red, black, and green candles, exchanging heritage symbols, such as African art, and recounting the lives of people who struggled for African and African American freedom. People who celebrate Kwanzaa hope to strengthen the black community by adhering to seven guiding principles, designated by terms from the Swahili language: umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith).

V.

African American Arts

A.

Music

African American music has influenced musical tastes around the world. Africans introduced Americans to musical rhythms and instruments quite different from the musical traditions of Europeans or Native Americans. In some cases, African musical traditions have blended into American culture with little notice. The banjo, now associated primarily with the bluegrass music popular among white Southerners, was originally an instrument used in African religious ceremonies. Southern slaves adapted the instrument to suit secular (nonreligious) musical styles in the 18th and 19th centuries.

African Americans blended African musical forms with European Christian hymns to create distinctive religious songs known as spirituals. In the early 20th century, the tradition of slave spirituals developed into gospel music, a religious song form which incorporated melodies and rhythms from popular music. Black church choirs around the country continue to sing both gospel and spirituals.

African Americans have also created many secular musical styles. Ragtime music developed among blacks in the urban areas of the North and South after the American Civil War. Another musical style with roots in the African American experience, known as the blues, emerged in the early 1900s. The blues feature vocalists who craft their songs—typically reflections on personal events or emotions—to fit their own distinctive styles.

Both ragtime and the blues contributed to the development of jazz, considered by many to be the most original and complex of American musical forms. Whereas jazz largely eclipsed ragtime, the blues have continued to exist alongside jazz. Jazz musicians often improvise solos based on a theme or melody. Such innovative performers as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman adapted jazz to a wide variety of styles.

In the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans pioneered new forms of popular music such as rhythm-and-blues and rock and roll (see Rock Music). In the 1960s the Motown Record Company popularized many African American musical groups, including Diana Ross and The Supremes, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. The Motown sound emphasized vocal harmonies and lyrics that addressed topics ranging from love to political protest.

In the 1980s and 1990s, rap emerged as the newest form of black musical expression. Combining social commentary with rhythmic lyrics, heavy bass beats, and remixed or original melodies, rap is one of the most controversial of black musical forms. Performers such as Tupac Shakur, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, and Sister Souljah often describe the lives of poor blacks in stark terms, including experiences with racism and police brutality. So-called gangster rappers, who openly express distrust of the criminal justice system and often celebrate criminal activity, are especially controversial.

Black interpretations of classical music have generally found greater acclaim abroad than in the United States. William Grant Still, the foremost African American classical composer of the 20th century, wrote orchestral and solo works from the 1920s through the 1970s. In 1955 Marian Anderson became the first black singer to join New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, Jessye Norman, and Kathleen Battle subsequently rose to acclaim as opera performers. Pianist André Watts and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis have also achieved critical acclaim as interpreters of the European classical music tradition.

B.

Dance

Like music, African American dance is rooted in African and African American traditions. In Africa, dance is often an integral part of religious ceremonies. The degree to which African slaves were able to retain African dance forms in North America depended on their masters. In some parts of North America, dancing was frowned upon by some Protestant slave-owners as sinful. Since these slave-owners defined dancing as crossing the feet, slaves adapted their dances to conform to European beliefs, creating a shuffling motion with the feet that would be less offensive to Europeans. In places such as New Orleans and New York City, however, slave-owners allowed their African slaves to preserve their music and dance. Blacks often performed in public squares or at private ceremonies, and were sometimes rewarded with money or extra food for their virtuosity. Blacks also helped establish dance as a profession in the 20th century. In films and on stage, black dancers displayed their skills before both black and white audiences.

Beginning in the 1920s, tap dance became one of the best-known forms of dance performed by blacks. African American tap dancers, such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers, became famous throughout the world. In the mid-20th century, black dance companies headed by Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and others began preserving and reinterpreting African American and Caribbean dance forms.

Other African American dancers mastered European dance forms, often producing innovative combinations of the African and European traditions. Arthur Mitchell, the first African American to become a principal dancer with a leading ballet company, the New York City Ballet, founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1968. The company performs both traditional ballets and commissions new works that reflect the African American experience. Alvin Ailey, a student of the modern dance pioneer Lester Horton, founded the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in the late 1950s. The troupe quickly became one of the best-known American dance companies in the world.

Blacks also participated in the creation of nonprofessional dances. As with music, African American dance forms have greatly influenced popular culture. Many of the most popular dances of the 20th century, such as the Charleston and the Lindy Hop, are believed to have originated among African Americans.

VI.

Literature

A.

Early Writers

Poems, short stories, autobiographies, novels and plays written by African Americans provide a unique window into the black experience. Most slaves were denied the opportunity to learn to read. The achievement of literacy, and especially the publication of poetry and autobiographies, demonstrated to many people that blacks had the ability to create works of literary merit and achieve the same accomplishments as whites. Lucy Terry, an African-born Rhode Island slave who obtained her freedom in 1756, composed the first known poem by an African American. Terry’s poem, known as “Bars Fight,” which recounts a battle between Native Americans and whites that took place in 1746, was preserved in oral form until its publication in 1855. In 1773 African American poet Phillis Wheatley published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the first African American work of literature to be widely distributed.

Wheatley and other early African American writers focused on expressing Christian sentiments rather than proving the equality of blacks or ending slavery. However, beginning in the late 18th century, African American authors increasingly used their poetry, fiction, and autobiographical works to attack slavery and inequality. In the 1840s former slave Frederick Douglass became a leading writer and abolitionist, campaigning tirelessly for the end of slavery and inequality in the United States. Douglass, who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1838, wrote three autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892). Many other black writers told their own stories of enslavement and escape in books and in speeches, including William Wells Brown, William and Ellen Craft, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth.

While the autobiography was the most popular form of African American literature during the 19th century, African Americans also described their lives in poetry and fiction. Poet George Moses Horton, a Virginia slave, wrote of his desire for freedom in The Hope of Liberty (1829). William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853) was the first novel written by an African American author. Published in Britain in 1854, Clotel is a fictional account of slave children allegedly fathered by U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. The first novel published in the United States by an African American author and the first novel written by a black woman, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859) detailed the difficulties faced by Northern free blacks. Free black writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper published several volumes of poetry and four novels, as well as many stories, essays, and letters that balanced her desire for artistic expression with her commitment to abolition and women’s rights.

Independent black theater flourished in northern cities for a brief period in the 1820s. The first play by a black writer was Henry Brown’s The Drama of King Shotaway (1823), based on a slave insurrection on the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies. The script of the play has since been lost. By the 1830s white officials had shut down black theaters, claiming they caused disorderly conduct.

After the Civil War, black writers continued to publish autobiographies, fiction, and poetry that reflected and interpreted the experiences of African Americans. Charles Chesnutt became the first black writer of fiction to receive widespread support from the mainstream white publishing industry. Between 1899 and 1905, Chesnutt published two collections of short stories and three novels, and became the most influential black writer in the United States. Up From Slavery (1901), by educator Booker T. Washington, continued the tradition of black autobiography. Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote many of his poems in African American dialect.

B.

The Harlem Renaissance

During the 1920s, African American literature attained new popularity in the mainstream and among blacks. Among the most important developments of this period was the rise of a cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. This movement received its name from the largely African American Harlem neighborhood in New York City that was home to many of the foremost black artists, musicians, and writers of the day. Poets, such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Angelina Weld Grimke, produced works that faithfully reflected the black experience but appealed to wider audiences. Novelists, such as Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, and Jessie Fauset, enjoyed similar success. Harlem Renaissance poets and novelists gained contracts with major publishing houses, won national awards, and published their works in national magazines. Wealthy white people eager to contribute to the flowering of black arts often provided financial support and encouragement to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The first Broadway drama written by an African American was Willis Richardson’s The Chip Woman’s Fortune, staged in 1923. Richardson, Hurston, and Hughes all wrote and staged plays during this time. The literature of the Harlem Renaissance explored a wide spectrum of black life. While Hurston’s novels depicted African American life in the rural South, Fauset’s novels focused on middle-class urban blacks in the North. Thurman criticized color consciousness among blacks, while McKay critiqued the Harlem Renaissance movement itself.

C.

The Post-Harlem Renaissance Period

The end of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s did not halt the production of black literature. Rather, the success of the Renaissance movement laid the foundation for continued black efforts in literature. The Harlem Renaissance had established literature as part of the movement for black civil rights. Most individual white patrons were unable to continue supporting black artists during the Great Depression and World War II (1939-1945). However, the NAACP and the Urban League, through their magazines Crisis and Opportunity, continued to publish black writers and provide monetary support. Mainstream publishing houses also continued to show interest in black writers. The first novel published by African American writer Richard Wright, Native Son (1940), was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Novelists such as Wright, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, and Frank Yerby specialized in urban realism, describing the triumphs and tragedies of black life in the large cities of the United States. Many critics consider the novel Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison, to be one of the greatest literary works of the mid-20th century. The book’s unnamed narrator explores African American political movements and individual emptiness.

The works of playwright Lorraine Hansberry and poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden echo the themes of urban realism. Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1958) was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. One year later, Hansberry became the first black and the youngest writer to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

D.

The Black Arts Movement and Beyond

The Black Arts movement of the 1960s produced writers even more stark in their depiction of urban realities and black political anger than their forerunners in the urban realism school. These writers, such as poet Nikki Giovanni and playwright Amiri Baraka, brought confrontational directness and the language of black America to their works. Their works breathed new energy and urgency into the poetry and drama of the era.

Since the 1960s, black writers have continued to explore the black experience, increasingly gaining national and international recognition. Works such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) by Maya Angelou and Brothers and Keepers (1984) by John Edgar Wideman have continued the tradition of black autobiography. August Wilson has explored the central conflicts facing blacks in each decade of the 20th century in an ongoing cycle of ten plays, which have won great acclaim and earned two Pulitzer Prizes. From 1993 to 1995, Rita Dove served as poet laureate of the United States, the first black woman to fill that position. Novelist Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.

VII.

Visual Arts

Since their arrival in North America, African American artists have straddled the line between European and African artistic traditions. Under slavery, black artists helped create many of the greatest achievements of American art and architecture, ranging from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to the ironwork of the French Quarter in New Orleans. However, the professional black artists of the 19th century were few, often isolated from each other, and ostracized by whites. The first known black portrait painter was Joshua Johnston of Baltimore, Maryland. Although experts have attributed more than 80 portraits to him, next to nothing is known of his life. Other now-anonymous or little-known black artists worked in a range of decorative and fine arts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, black artists contributed to the major art movements of the time. In the mid-1800s Robert Duncanson painted romantic landscapes in the style of the Hudson River School. His Blue Hole, Little Miami River (1851) depicted a wilderness scene familiar to many fugitives from slavery. Another landscape painter, Edward Bannister, won one of the highest art prizes at the 1876 U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. At the same exposition, sculptor Edmonia Lewis exhibited The Death of Cleopatra, which shocked viewers by representing the dead body of Cleopatra. Henry Ossawa Tanner painted scenes from everyday life and religious subjects. Tanner’s paintings gained international recognition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A.

The 1920s

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a watershed in the development of a number of black artists. In the 19th century black artists often depicted classical or biblical scenes, typically avoiding overtly African American themes. In contrast, the artists of the Harlem Renaissance saw their heritage as an inspiration rather than a hindrance to their art. They increasingly depicted modern African Americans and incorporated influences from the varied artistic traditions of the African continent (see African Art and Architecture).

Many African American artists, such as sculptor Augusta Savage and painter William Johnson, moved from small towns in the South to large cities in the North in search of greater training and experience. The concentration of black artists and writers in urban areas encouraged interaction and collaboration. African American artists often illustrated books by Harlem Renaissance writers. The best-known African American artist of the 1920s, Aaron Douglas, provided illustrations for a number of books, including God’s Trombones (1927) by novelist James Weldon Johnson and The New Negro (1925) by scholar Alain Locke.

B.

The 1930s and 1940s

Like other American artists of the 1930s, black artists benefited from the support of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), a government agency that provided employment in many fields during the Great Depression. The WPA commissioned Douglas to paint a number of murals blending modernist and African influences. Inspired by the politically conscious work of Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera and José Orozco, other African American artists painted murals throughout the United States in the 1930s. Hale Woodruff’s murals at Talladega College in Alabama, painted in 1938 and 1939, depict the 1841 mutiny of African slaves aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and their subsequent trial in the United States (see Amistad case).

In the 1940s black artists experimented with a variety of styles to capture the distinctive spirit of their African American subjects. Sculptor Richmond Barthé took the African American figure as his subject. Barthé sculpted busts of famous African Americans, such as Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, as well as more monumental works such as The Boxer (1942). William Henry Johnson adopted a style he termed primitivism to evoke the lifestyle of rural African Americans. Although Johnson was highly sophisticated, his colorful primitivist paintings of religious subjects and everyday life resemble folk art. Painter Jacob Lawrence depicted the 20th-century migration of blacks to the North in a series of paintings titled ... And the Migrants Kept Coming (1940-1941). Romare Bearden created collages that combine drawings, paintings and photographs.

C.

Post-World War II Period

The popularity of abstract art in the 1950s discouraged many artists from representing recognizably African American images. Some black artists, such as painters Norman Lewis and Alma Thomas, sought to combine abstraction with African American themes. Lewis created abstract paintings that suggested the rhythms of jazz or the energy of the civil rights movement.

In the 1960s and 1970s many black artists found inspiration in the civil rights and black power movements. Some began to adopt increasingly confrontational political stances. In the 1970s Robert Colescott began painting politically charged parodies of famous European and American paintings. In George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook (1975), Colescott parodied the familiar painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) by replacing the figures of George Washington and Revolutionary War soldiers with characters from early 20th century minstrel shows. In 1997 Colescott became the first African American to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions in the world. Artist David Hammons created confrontational sculptural installations, such as Greasy Bags and Barbecue Bones (1975), which included grease-stained paper bags, sparerib bones, glitter, and hair.

In the early 1980s interest increased in so-called street artists, such as graffiti artists and urban muralists. Jean-Michel Basquiat, of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, began his career as a graffiti artist in New York City during the late 1970s. Before his untimely death in 1988, Basquiat had become a rising star in the New York art world. Basquiat’s paintings combine thick strokes of color, scrawled words, and cartoonish skeletons or other images.

In the 1990s many African American artists, such as painter Sam Gilliam and sculptor Martin Puryear, enjoy international acclaim. Black women artists, such as Adrian Piper and Faith Ringgold, address both feminist and African American issues in their work.

VIII.

The Motion Picture Industry

The first full-length film directed by an African American filmmaker was Oscar Micheaux’s 1919 film The Homesteader, based on his novel of the same name. After Micheaux’s last film in 1939, very few black directors were able to finance full-length feature films. In the 1970s African American directors produced a number of urban crime dramas known as blaxploitation films, including Gordon Parks's Shaft (1971) and Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971).

In the 1980s, a new generation of black filmmakers, independent of major Hollywood studios, began making films with unprecedented critical and commercial success. Director Spike Lee has been the most commercially successful. Lee’s films, such as Do The Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992), explore the complex issues facing black America and rigorously examine race relations in the United States. Other young black filmmakers include John Singleton, Leslie Harris, and Julie Dash.

For most of the 20th century, mainstream American motion pictures usually offered black actors only stereotypical roles, often as servants to whites. The first Academy Award presented to a black actor went to Hattie McDaniel for her role as Mammy, a faithful slave to Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind. Sidney Poitier was the first African American actor to become a major star in mainstream American motion pictures. Poitier’s films often dealt with politically charged subjects, such as racism and crime. He won an Academy Award for his performance as a drifter in Lilies of the Field (1963).

Other black actors gradually gained starring television series roles. Since the 1960s, Bill Cosby has broken down barriers and stereotypes in films and several television series. Actors such as Laurence Fishburne, Whoopi Goldberg, Cicely Tyson, and Morgan Freeman, have received great acclaim in a variety of roles. Despite such recent successes, black actors and actresses are still less frequently employed than their white counterparts.

IX.

Sports

When professional sports became established in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans were excluded. They responded by forming independent black sports teams or by traveling to countries such as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba to play in professional leagues.

African American baseball players participated in the Negro Leagues. Originally the Negro Leagues were a loose affiliation of teams. In 1920 star player and team owner Rube Foster founded the National Negro League, which included such powerful teams as the Kansas City Monarchs and the Indianapolis ABC’s. In 1933 another National Negro League was formed, which included the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. Both leagues attracted star players, such as Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and Satchel Paige. African Americans also played with barnstorming clubs, or traveling teams, such as the Indianapolis Clowns. Barnstorming clubs crossed the United States playing wherever opponents, black or white, amateur or professional, could be found. Traveling basketball teams, such as the Harlem Globetrotters, formed in 1929, also toured the country.

Although African Americans faced discrimination in team sports, the most violent reactions to African American participation in sports took place in boxing. After the controversial black boxer Jack Johnson defeated white boxer Jim Jeffries for the world heavyweight title in 1910, whites rioted and lynched black men throughout the country. Between 1919 and the 1930s, whites refused to fight blacks for the heavyweight title. Only in 1937 was black boxer Joe Louis officially recognized as world heavyweight champion.

Beginning in the late 1940s, professional sports leagues slowly began to integrate. Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier” of major league baseball in 1947 when he became the starting second baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. While players such as Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, and Roy Campenella also joined the major leagues, it was not until 1958 that every team included at least one African American player.

Integration in other sports followed. Founded in 1948, the National Basketball Association (NBA) began integrating in 1949, when the New York Knicks signed Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton. Althea Gibson integrated tennis when she became the first African American player in the United States Lawn Association (USLTA) in 1950. Arthur Ashe became the first African American to win a USLTA title in 1963. Both Ashe and Gibson later went on to win titles at Wimbledon, the first African Americans to do so.

Integration provided greater opportunities to individual black players, but black teams, such as the Harlem Globetrotters and Negro League teams, were excluded from the new system. As talented athletes joined the ranks of the NBA and major league baseball, the quality of play and fan support waned in the segregated leagues. The Harlem Globetrotters became a traveling entertainment act, while the Negro League teams simply disappeared.

African Americans have excelled in almost every professional sport. Many people think baseball player Willie Mays and basketball player Michael Jordan are the best players in the history of their sports. Boxer Muhammad Ali made good on his claim to be “the Greatest” by winning the world heavyweight championship three different times in the 1960s and 1970s. In football, Cleveland Browns’ fullback Jim Brown held the National Football League’s career rushing record from 1966 until 1984, when Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton replaced him in the record books. African American athletes continue to break new ground. In 1997 Tiger Woods, at age 21, became the first African American golfer to win the prestigious Masters golf tournament. His achievement sparked unprecedented interest in golf among blacks, particularly black youths.