African American Progression
Progression of African Americans The historical progression of African Americans has been one of great trials, tribulations, and triumph. The ancestors of African Americans fought long and hard to overcome obstacles on every hand. It was not an easy journey to say the least. From the slave house to the White House, African Americans have made significant progress from 1865 to the present time. In this paper, I will discuss the different issues that African Americans faced throughout history and how they were overcome. In unit one, which covers the time period of 1865-1876, life for African Americans was rough. One social/cultural issue that they faced was “black codes”. When the new government was created, it did not allow African
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Americans any political rights or make any effective provisions for black education. In addition, each state passed a series of “black codes” which only applied to African Americans. These “black codes” did grant African Americans some rights that had not been enjoyed by slaves. They legalized marriages performed under slavery and allowed black southerners to hold and sell property and to sue and be sued in state courts (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). Yet their primary purpose was to keep African Americans as property less agricultural laborers with inferior legal rights. The new free men could not serve on juries, testify against whites, or work as they pleased. South Carolina forbade blacks to engage in anything other than agricultural labor without a special license; Mississippi prohibited them from buying or renting farmland. Most states provided that black people who were vagrants could be arrested and hired out to landowners. Many northerners were infuriated by the restrictive black codes (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). The Black Codes also prohibited blacks from serving in state militias. A principle reasons for these laws was probably a concern for insurrections and armed violence. However, a corollary concern was that the presence of armed black soldiers encouraged undesirable attitudes in blacks. For example, in Florida, the state legislature drafted resolution requesting that black Union Army troops be withdrawn from their lands because their presence alarmed whites and encouraged insubordination among blacks. Florida also passed laws prohibiting blacks from carry fire-arms or weapons. If blacks wanted to own a gun, these laws often required blacks to obtain a license from the county judge and to have witnesses, usually white, vouch for their non-violent temperament.
The vagrancy statutes were particularly harsh on freed blacks. While these statutes did not specifically target blacks in their language, they were predominately applied to blacks because of their impoverished condition (Bindas, 2003) In general, vagrancy statutes stipulated that any person a law enforcement officer or judge deemed to be unemployed and not owning property could be arrested and charged as a vagrant. It was easy to arrest blacks for violating vagrancy laws because the freed blacks lacked wealth and land owning to their previous condition of servitude, and to a lesser extent because the federal government reneged on its promise to deliver forty acres and a mule to 40,000 freed slaves (Bindas, 2003).
The African Americans’ response to the “black codes” was a simple one: Patience. They waited on the change that was promised to them. Their patience paid off. In March 1865, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill designed to overturn the most severe provisions of the black coeds. The law made African Americans citizens of the United States and granted them the right to own property, make contracts, and have access to courts as parties and witnesses. For most Republicans Johnson’s action was the last straw, and in April 1866 Congress overrode his veto. African Americans were making progress (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). In Unit two, life for African Americans had made slight improvements. During this time period, which was from 1877-1920, one religious issue that they faced was branching out and forming their own independent churches.
Before the war, most slaves had attended white churches or services supervised by whites. Once free, African Americans rapidly established their own congregations led by black preachers. In the first year of freedom, the Methodist Church South lost half of its black members (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). Within a decade the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches claimed southern membership in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping that of any other organizations. They were quickly joined in 1870 by a new southern-based denomination, the Colored (now "Christian") Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by original southern black leaders. Finally, in 1894 black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, an organization that is currently the largest black religious organization in the United States (Anner, 2010)
Southern blacks, most of who had been forbidden from learning to read, saw religion as a matter of oral tradition and immediate experience and emotion. Northerners, however, stressed that one could not truly be Christian unless one was able to read the Bible and understand the creeds and written literature that accompanied a more textually-oriented religious system (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). By 1906, the loosely organized holiness movement gave birth to an offshoot, Pentecostalism that would become tremendously important in subsequent decades. That year, during a holiness revival at a Los Angeles church, worshippers were said to have received the gifts of the spirit (speaking and interpreting "tongues," among others) bestowed upon Christ’s followers at Pentecost. This feature came to be a hallmark of Pentecostal worship. Although like holiness, Pentecostalism began as a multiracial movement that emphasized equality before Christ, by World War I racial lines had formed, and separate black Pentecostal denominations had organized after being shut out by their white counterparts. By the late twentieth century, black Pentecostal denominations, led by the large and influential Church of God in Christ, would become an important component of black religious variety throughout the United States (Anner, 2010). In response to this religious issues, the African Americans joined together to form the aforementioned churches and religions. The outcome was absolute success because now the religions that were formed then have some of the largest organizations in the United States. Just like in slavery, religion offered African Americans a place of refuge in a hostile white world and provided them with hope, comfort, and a means of self-identification (Anner, 2010). In unit three from 1921-1945, life for African Americans was more of a search for a better life for themselves as well as their families. Most of the former slaves packed up and moved up North in search for a better way of life. They also encountered an abundance of racial hatred. One economic issue that they faced was lack of work and money. The jobs were difficult to find and living conditions were so ratchet (Williams 2010). When the Great Depression struck, black unemployment reached an all time high. By 1932 it reached 50 percent, twice the national level. By 1933 several cities reported between 25 and 40 percent of their black residents with no support except relief payments. Even skilled black workers who retained their jobs saw their wages cut in half, according to on study in Harlem in 1935 (Bahn 2005). In the 1930’s, migration out of the rural South dropped by 50 percent. As late as 1940 three of four African Americans still lived in rural areas, yet conditions there were just as bad as in cities. In 1934 one study estimated the average income for black cotton farmers at under $200 a year (Bahn, 2005). In response to this economic issue, George Baker moved from Georgia to Harlem and changed his name to M.J. Divine. He founded a religious cult that promised followers and afterlife of full equality. He preached economic cooperation and opened shelters, or “heavens,” for regenerate “angels” whether they were black or white. In Detroit, another African American by the name of Elijah Poole changed his name to Elijah Muhammad and in 1931 he established the Black Muslims. He wanted African Americans to not fall victim to the Great Depression, come together, and form an all-black nation. The outcome of that was overheated racial prejudice (Bahn 2005). The time period of 1946-1976 was covered in unit four. By now, life for African Americans was the best that they could have known. They were in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. Promises of change and a better life were well within reach. One social/cultural issue that they faced was a total lack of education. African Americans viewed education as a way of getting ahead. In the years before the Civil War, state-supported public education was almost nonexistent in the South. Providing education was seen as the role of the church or the family, not the state. Those schools that did exist were mostly for white males, with some state funds offered to help poor families pay tuition. Because most white women didn 't work outside the home and therefore didn 't earn salaries, and African Americans were enslaved, educating women and African Americans was deemed unnecessary (Opie 2009). Black adults had good reasons for seeking literacy. They wanted to be able to read the Bible, to defend their newly gained civil and political rights, and to protect themselves from being cheated (Johnson 2002). In the 1970s, significant changes were made in many of the school systems throughout the United States. Racial segregation came to an official end and the integration of public schools began to take shape. In 1965, only 34 percent of Blacks over 25 had completed high school. Substantial efforts to improve the education of all students took place throughout the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in the narrowing of the large gap between white and Black high school graduation rates (Hammond 2010). In response to the educational issue, African Americans decided it was time to take a stand and learn to read and write for them. Throughout the years, some of them had been secretly educated, but now it was time to have the ability to be educated without there being consequences. The outcome was that more African Americans started attending school, more colleges were built to accommodate segregation, and more African Americans were moving up in the world. Lastly, African Americans need to be explored in unit five’s time period. This period covers 1976 to the present. During this time period life for African Americans is the best out of all of them. One political issue they faced was not having African Americans in major political roles being elected President of the United States. During this time period, African Americans made great strides in politics paving the way to the White House. The road to the White House was not an easy one. Throughout Reconstruction, African Americans never held office in proportion to their voting strength. No African American was ever elected governor, and only in South Carolina, where more than 60 percent of the population was black, did they even control one house in the legislature. During Reconstruction between 15 and 20 percent of the state officers and 6 percent of members of Congress were African Americans.
African Americans who held office generally came from the top levels of African American society. Among state and federal officeholders, perhaps four-fifths were literate, and more than a quarter had been free before the war. In their political values, African American leaders were more conservative than rural black population was (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). Needless to say, African Americans have made significant political progress since the Reconstruction days. In 1977, Andrew Young became the first United States ambassador that was African American. In 1983, Harold Washington was elected the first African American mayor of Chicago. Rev. Jesse Jackson unsuccessfully campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. In 1988, Colin Powell served as the first African American chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, and in 1982, Carol Moseley Braun was the first African American woman to be elected to the United States Senate (Bahn, Pears, & Warring 2005). All of these political achievements were wonderful for African Americans, but none of them can quite compare to the election of the first African American president. On January 20, 2009, President Barak Obama was sworn into the Oval office. So in response to the political issue, African Americans began to not only seek political offices, but they actually were successful in their campaigns. The outcome was that they achieved their ultimate goal of making it to the White House. In summary, the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of African Americans have been present throughout the historical progression of these people. However, they never gave up. From the slave house to the White house, African Americans have made significant progress from 1865 to the present time. Slavery ancestors fought long and hard to get African Americans to the place where they are today. President Obama is proof that through hard work and perseverance, there is no dream or goal that is unattainable.
References
Anner-Haley, C.. (2010). The Burden of Black Religion. Journal of Social History, 43(4), 1107-1108. Retrieved August 14, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2069424041).
Bahn, A., Pears, C., Warring, T. (2005). Sourcebooks in Making Freedom: African Americans in U.S. History. Multicultural Education, 12(4), 56-59. Retrieved August 14, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 867275681).
Bindas, K.J. (2003). The Historical Progression of the Civil Rights Struggle in the Gulf South, 1866-2000. African American Review, 37(4), 654-656. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 552221871).
Davidson, J. W., DeLay, B, Heyrman, C. L., Lytle, M. H., & Stoff, M. B. (2008). Nation of nations:A narrative of the American republic. Volume II since 1865. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Fuke, R.P., (2002). Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American History Canadian Journal of History, 37(3), 583-586. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 323666201).
Hammond, J.. (2010). The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom The Journal of American History, 97(1), 142-143. Retrieved August 13, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2070923261).
Johnson, W.. (2007). Slavery, Reparations, and the Mythic March of Freedom. Raritan, 27(2), 41-67,180. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from
Research Library. (Document ID: 1400323941).
Opie, F.. (2009). African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture. The Journal of Southern History, 75(1), 215-216. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1645431501).
Williams, R., (2010). An in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory . Western Journal of Black Studies, 34(3), 380- 381. Retrieved August 15, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2069584761).
Americans any political rights or make any effective provisions for black education. In addition, each state passed a series of “black codes” which only applied to African Americans. These “black codes” did grant African Americans some rights that had not been enjoyed by slaves. They legalized marriages performed under slavery and allowed black southerners to hold and sell property and to sue and be sued in state courts (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). Yet their primary purpose was to keep African Americans as property less agricultural laborers with inferior legal rights. The new free men could not serve on juries, testify against whites, or work as they pleased. South Carolina forbade blacks to engage in anything other than agricultural labor without a special license; Mississippi prohibited them from buying or renting farmland. Most states provided that black people who were vagrants could be arrested and hired out to landowners. Many northerners were infuriated by the restrictive black codes (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). The Black Codes also prohibited blacks from serving in state militias. A principle reasons for these laws was probably a concern for insurrections and armed violence. However, a corollary concern was that the presence of armed black soldiers encouraged undesirable attitudes in blacks. For example, in Florida, the state legislature drafted resolution requesting that black Union Army troops be withdrawn from their lands because their presence alarmed whites and encouraged insubordination among blacks. Florida also passed laws prohibiting blacks from carry fire-arms or weapons. If blacks wanted to own a gun, these laws often required blacks to obtain a license from the county judge and to have witnesses, usually white, vouch for their non-violent temperament.
The vagrancy statutes were particularly harsh on freed blacks. While these statutes did not specifically target blacks in their language, they were predominately applied to blacks because of their impoverished condition (Bindas, 2003) In general, vagrancy statutes stipulated that any person a law enforcement officer or judge deemed to be unemployed and not owning property could be arrested and charged as a vagrant. It was easy to arrest blacks for violating vagrancy laws because the freed blacks lacked wealth and land owning to their previous condition of servitude, and to a lesser extent because the federal government reneged on its promise to deliver forty acres and a mule to 40,000 freed slaves (Bindas, 2003).
The African Americans’ response to the “black codes” was a simple one: Patience. They waited on the change that was promised to them. Their patience paid off. In March 1865, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill designed to overturn the most severe provisions of the black coeds. The law made African Americans citizens of the United States and granted them the right to own property, make contracts, and have access to courts as parties and witnesses. For most Republicans Johnson’s action was the last straw, and in April 1866 Congress overrode his veto. African Americans were making progress (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). In Unit two, life for African Americans had made slight improvements. During this time period, which was from 1877-1920, one religious issue that they faced was branching out and forming their own independent churches.
Before the war, most slaves had attended white churches or services supervised by whites. Once free, African Americans rapidly established their own congregations led by black preachers. In the first year of freedom, the Methodist Church South lost half of its black members (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). Within a decade the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches claimed southern membership in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping that of any other organizations. They were quickly joined in 1870 by a new southern-based denomination, the Colored (now "Christian") Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by original southern black leaders. Finally, in 1894 black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, an organization that is currently the largest black religious organization in the United States (Anner, 2010)
Southern blacks, most of who had been forbidden from learning to read, saw religion as a matter of oral tradition and immediate experience and emotion. Northerners, however, stressed that one could not truly be Christian unless one was able to read the Bible and understand the creeds and written literature that accompanied a more textually-oriented religious system (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). By 1906, the loosely organized holiness movement gave birth to an offshoot, Pentecostalism that would become tremendously important in subsequent decades. That year, during a holiness revival at a Los Angeles church, worshippers were said to have received the gifts of the spirit (speaking and interpreting "tongues," among others) bestowed upon Christ’s followers at Pentecost. This feature came to be a hallmark of Pentecostal worship. Although like holiness, Pentecostalism began as a multiracial movement that emphasized equality before Christ, by World War I racial lines had formed, and separate black Pentecostal denominations had organized after being shut out by their white counterparts. By the late twentieth century, black Pentecostal denominations, led by the large and influential Church of God in Christ, would become an important component of black religious variety throughout the United States (Anner, 2010). In response to this religious issues, the African Americans joined together to form the aforementioned churches and religions. The outcome was absolute success because now the religions that were formed then have some of the largest organizations in the United States. Just like in slavery, religion offered African Americans a place of refuge in a hostile white world and provided them with hope, comfort, and a means of self-identification (Anner, 2010). In unit three from 1921-1945, life for African Americans was more of a search for a better life for themselves as well as their families. Most of the former slaves packed up and moved up North in search for a better way of life. They also encountered an abundance of racial hatred. One economic issue that they faced was lack of work and money. The jobs were difficult to find and living conditions were so ratchet (Williams 2010). When the Great Depression struck, black unemployment reached an all time high. By 1932 it reached 50 percent, twice the national level. By 1933 several cities reported between 25 and 40 percent of their black residents with no support except relief payments. Even skilled black workers who retained their jobs saw their wages cut in half, according to on study in Harlem in 1935 (Bahn 2005). In the 1930’s, migration out of the rural South dropped by 50 percent. As late as 1940 three of four African Americans still lived in rural areas, yet conditions there were just as bad as in cities. In 1934 one study estimated the average income for black cotton farmers at under $200 a year (Bahn, 2005). In response to this economic issue, George Baker moved from Georgia to Harlem and changed his name to M.J. Divine. He founded a religious cult that promised followers and afterlife of full equality. He preached economic cooperation and opened shelters, or “heavens,” for regenerate “angels” whether they were black or white. In Detroit, another African American by the name of Elijah Poole changed his name to Elijah Muhammad and in 1931 he established the Black Muslims. He wanted African Americans to not fall victim to the Great Depression, come together, and form an all-black nation. The outcome of that was overheated racial prejudice (Bahn 2005). The time period of 1946-1976 was covered in unit four. By now, life for African Americans was the best that they could have known. They were in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. Promises of change and a better life were well within reach. One social/cultural issue that they faced was a total lack of education. African Americans viewed education as a way of getting ahead. In the years before the Civil War, state-supported public education was almost nonexistent in the South. Providing education was seen as the role of the church or the family, not the state. Those schools that did exist were mostly for white males, with some state funds offered to help poor families pay tuition. Because most white women didn 't work outside the home and therefore didn 't earn salaries, and African Americans were enslaved, educating women and African Americans was deemed unnecessary (Opie 2009). Black adults had good reasons for seeking literacy. They wanted to be able to read the Bible, to defend their newly gained civil and political rights, and to protect themselves from being cheated (Johnson 2002). In the 1970s, significant changes were made in many of the school systems throughout the United States. Racial segregation came to an official end and the integration of public schools began to take shape. In 1965, only 34 percent of Blacks over 25 had completed high school. Substantial efforts to improve the education of all students took place throughout the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in the narrowing of the large gap between white and Black high school graduation rates (Hammond 2010). In response to the educational issue, African Americans decided it was time to take a stand and learn to read and write for them. Throughout the years, some of them had been secretly educated, but now it was time to have the ability to be educated without there being consequences. The outcome was that more African Americans started attending school, more colleges were built to accommodate segregation, and more African Americans were moving up in the world. Lastly, African Americans need to be explored in unit five’s time period. This period covers 1976 to the present. During this time period life for African Americans is the best out of all of them. One political issue they faced was not having African Americans in major political roles being elected President of the United States. During this time period, African Americans made great strides in politics paving the way to the White House. The road to the White House was not an easy one. Throughout Reconstruction, African Americans never held office in proportion to their voting strength. No African American was ever elected governor, and only in South Carolina, where more than 60 percent of the population was black, did they even control one house in the legislature. During Reconstruction between 15 and 20 percent of the state officers and 6 percent of members of Congress were African Americans.
African Americans who held office generally came from the top levels of African American society. Among state and federal officeholders, perhaps four-fifths were literate, and more than a quarter had been free before the war. In their political values, African American leaders were more conservative than rural black population was (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff 2008). Needless to say, African Americans have made significant political progress since the Reconstruction days. In 1977, Andrew Young became the first United States ambassador that was African American. In 1983, Harold Washington was elected the first African American mayor of Chicago. Rev. Jesse Jackson unsuccessfully campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. In 1988, Colin Powell served as the first African American chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, and in 1982, Carol Moseley Braun was the first African American woman to be elected to the United States Senate (Bahn, Pears, & Warring 2005). All of these political achievements were wonderful for African Americans, but none of them can quite compare to the election of the first African American president. On January 20, 2009, President Barak Obama was sworn into the Oval office. So in response to the political issue, African Americans began to not only seek political offices, but they actually were successful in their campaigns. The outcome was that they achieved their ultimate goal of making it to the White House. In summary, the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of African Americans have been present throughout the historical progression of these people. However, they never gave up. From the slave house to the White house, African Americans have made significant progress from 1865 to the present time. Slavery ancestors fought long and hard to get African Americans to the place where they are today. President Obama is proof that through hard work and perseverance, there is no dream or goal that is unattainable.
References
Anner-Haley, C.. (2010). The Burden of Black Religion. Journal of Social History, 43(4), 1107-1108. Retrieved August 14, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2069424041).
Bahn, A., Pears, C., Warring, T. (2005). Sourcebooks in Making Freedom: African Americans in U.S. History. Multicultural Education, 12(4), 56-59. Retrieved August 14, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 867275681).
Bindas, K.J. (2003). The Historical Progression of the Civil Rights Struggle in the Gulf South, 1866-2000. African American Review, 37(4), 654-656. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 552221871).
Davidson, J. W., DeLay, B, Heyrman, C. L., Lytle, M. H., & Stoff, M. B. (2008). Nation of nations:A narrative of the American republic. Volume II since 1865. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Fuke, R.P., (2002). Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American History Canadian Journal of History, 37(3), 583-586. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 323666201).
Hammond, J.. (2010). The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom The Journal of American History, 97(1), 142-143. Retrieved August 13, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2070923261).
Johnson, W.. (2007). Slavery, Reparations, and the Mythic March of Freedom. Raritan, 27(2), 41-67,180. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from
Research Library. (Document ID: 1400323941).
Opie, F.. (2009). African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture. The Journal of Southern History, 75(1), 215-216. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1645431501).
Williams, R., (2010). An in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory . Western Journal of Black Studies, 34(3), 380- 381. Retrieved August 15, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2069584761).