The principle by which persons of African ancestry were considered the personal property of others prevailed in North America for more than two-thirds of the three and a half centuries since the first Africans arrived there. Its influences increased even though the English colonies won independence and articulated national ideals in direct opposition to slavery. In spite of numerous ideological conflicts, however, the slavery system was maintained in the United States until 1865, and widespread antiblack attitudes nurtured by slavery continued thereafter.

Prior to the American Revolution, slavery existed in all the colonies. The ideals of the Revolution and the limited profitability of slavery in the North resulted in its abandonment in northern states during the last quarter of the 18th century. At the same time, the strength of slavery increased in the South, with the continuing demand for cheap labor by the tobacco growers and cotton farmers of the Southern states. By 1850, 92% of all American blacks were concentrated in the South, and of this group approximately 95% were slaves.

Life on the plantations was hard, and no consideration was given to the cultural traditions of blacks. In the slave market men were separated from their wives, and frequently children were taken from their mothers. Family and tribal links were thus almost immediately cut. Fifty percent of the slaves were owned by 10% of the 385,000 slave owners. This concentration within a limited number of agricultural units had important consequences for the lives of most blacks.

Under the plantation system, gang labor was the typical form of employment. Overseers were harsh as a matter of general practice, and brutality was common. Punishment was meted out at the absolute discretion of the owner or the owner's agent. Slaves could own no property unless sanctioned by a slave master, and rape of a female slave was not considered a crime except as it represented trespassing on another's property. Slaves could not present evidence in court against whites. Housing, food, and clothing were of poor quality and seldom exceeded what was considered minimally necessary to maintain the desired level of work. Owners reinforced submissive behavior not so much by positive rewards as by severe punishment of those who did not conform. In most of the South it was illegal to teach a black to read or write.

Free blacks, whether living in the North or South, were confronted with attitudes and actions that differed little from those facing Southern black slaves. Discrimination existed in most social and economic activities as well as in voting and education. In 1857 the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of the U.S. Supreme Court placed the authority of the Constitution behind decisions made by states regarding the treatment of blacks. According to the Dred Scott decision, African Americans, even if free, were not intended to be included under the word "citizen" as defined in the Declaration of Independence and could, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges provided for in that document.

African Americans responded to their treatment under slavery in a variety of ways. In addition to such persons as Prosser, Vesey, and Turner, who openly opposed the slave system, thousands of blacks escaped from slavery and moved to the Northern United States or to Canada. Others sought ways to retain some sense of individuality and some vestige of their African heritage under difficult circumstances. Still others accepted the images of themselves that white America sought to project onto them. The result in some cases was the "Uncle Tom" or "Sambo" personality, the black who accepted his or her lowly position as evidence that whites were superior to blacks.

In spite of the absence of legal status and the adverse effects of the domestic slave trade, the African American family retained its traditional role in ordering the relations between adults and children. Much religious activity among slaves reflected the influences of African religious practices and served as a means by which slaves could develop and promote views of themselves different from those held by the slave owner. Outside the South, blacks established separate churches and, eventually, denominations within Protestantism, including many black Baptist churches. Another early denominational effort was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, initially called the Free African Society, which was founded (1787) in Philadelphia by Richard Allen.

When the South seceded (1860–61) because of the dangers to slavery it perceived in Lincoln's election, the North declared that it was not slavery but the act of secession that precipitated the Civil War. President Lincoln supported a Constitutional amendment that would have given federal protection to slavery in the Southern states. On his order slaves who escaped into the Union lines were returned to their owners by federal troops early in the war.

Later, as the cost of the war in men and materials mounted and national support for abolition grew, President Lincoln shifted his position. In 1862 his Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves to be free if the areas in which they were held were still in revolt against the Union on Jan. 1, 1863. Slaves within the Union and in areas of the Confederacy under Union control, however, were initially excluded from the provisions of the proclamation. Thus at its inception, the proclamation functioned principally as military propaganda: slaves were declared free only in those areas where no real authority existed to free them. In those areas under federal authority, no action was taken. Nevertheless, the Emancipation Proclamation represented a point of no return on the issue of slavery.

As the war moved into various parts of the South, the actions of African Americans demonstrated the falsehood of the Southern claim of a satisfied slave population. Information and provisions were turned over to the Union troops, and slaves fled into the lines of approaching Union armies in such numbers as to create logistical problems. Letters and diaries of slave owners and their families contain frequent references to increased difficulty in controlling slaves as the fighting neared.

Beginning in 1862, provisions were made for enlisting blacks into the Union army. They were organized into all-black units referred to as the U.S. Colored Troops. Of the 209,000 blacks who entered service, 93,000 came from Confederate states. Units composed of soldiers from this area included the 1st and 3d Louisiana Native Guard and the 1st South Carolina Volunteers. The Confederacy at first refused to recognize blacks as soldiers. Unlike other Union troops who were captured, black soldiers were at first not allowed to surrender, and many were shot. The most infamous of such occurrences was at Fort Pillow, which fell to Confederate troops under Gen. Nathan B. Forrest (later a founder of the Ku Klux Klan).

African Americans took part in more than 200 battles and skirmishes. In all, 68,178 died in battle or as the result of wounds or disease during the war. Lower pay for blacks and other forms of discrimination were common. In spite of this, desertion among blacks was more than 50% lower than for the Union army as a whole.

The radical curtailment of African American voting rights in the South facilitated the institutionalized separation of blacks from whites in various aspects of everyday life. Blacks were excluded from participation on juries and were refused service in hotels, restaurants, and amusement parks. They were forced to occupy separate sections in vehicles of public transportation and in public gathering places, and separate educational systems were provided for each race. By the outbreak of World War I, so-called Jim Crow laws, which legalized segregation of blacks and whites, existed throughout the South. Jim Crow existed in other parts of the United States as well, either by law as in the South or by local practice.

The judicial stamp of approval for Jim Crow came in 1896 with the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, whereby the U.S. Supreme Court declared constitutional a Louisiana law requiring separation by race on railroad coaches. The court held that enforcing such separation was a legitimate use of the police power of the states so long as equal facilities were provided. Such facilities for African Americans were invariably inferior to those for whites, however. This inequality was perhaps most devastating in the area of education. As late as the start of World War II certain Southern school districts did not provide 12 years of public education for blacks. In addition, blacks frequently suffered discrimination in the distribution of tax moneys for support of schools. Publicly supported colleges in the South were likewise few and of poor quality.

The powerlessness of African Americans during the post-Reconstruction period is exemplified in the high incidence of lynchings (3,402) that occurred between 1882 and 1938. The several attempts to secure passage of a federal antilynching bill during this period were all unsuccessful. In spite of efforts by Southern whites to suppress blacks politically and to deny them social equality, the activities and efforts of blacks after Reconstruction to improve their economic condition and exercise their political rights met with some measure of success. In 1870, 80% of the African American population over 10 years of age was illiterate; by 1900 illiteracy among blacks was reduced by almost 50%. Farm ownership, although still low, increased significantly; by 1901 about 25% of black farmers in the South owned their own land. Seven blacks were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for a cumulative total of 13 terms between 1877 and 1901, and Jim Crow legislation was challenged in the courts, albeit unsuccessfully.

A variety of organizations sought to advance the rights of African Americans, the best known among them being the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909. One of its founders, William E. B. Du Bois, was the leading spokesperson for full and immediate rights for blacks. In spite of his and other efforts directed toward full racial equality during this period, historians have generally focused on the accommodation of African Americans to post-Reconstruction racism. The accommodation espoused by some blacks was symbolized in the activities of the black educator Booker T. Washington, who cautioned blacks to be patient and to work hard toward attaining economic equality before striving for civil rights. His ideas fitted well with the views of many conservative whites but were opposed by many black leaders, among them Du Bois.

Segregationists countered this optimism with an upsurge of lynchings, riots, and other antiblack violence after World War I, however. The Ku Klux Klan was revived and gained impetus in Northern as well as Southern states during the 1920s. These actions blunted the efforts of blacks in politics, but the changing attitudes among blacks found other forms of expression. The 1920s was a period of notable accomplishment in African American literature, music, and art, and race consciousness increased. The latter is reflected in the writings of the influential black leader Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and an ardent proponent of black nationalism.

African Americans initially were less affected than whites by the Depression of the 1930s because the economy of the black community was already depressed. Before long, however, the worsening economic conditions hit blacks, as the group at the low end of the economic scale, the hardest. Reforms attempted by the New Deal almost exclusively concerned economic matters. No effort was made to alleviate the hardship suffered by blacks because of their racial-minority status. In New Deal efforts to aid the poor, however, blacks encountered the first assistance from government since Reconstruction. Franklin D. Roosevelt's sensitivity to the existence of racism, coupled with growing disaffection with the Republican party, caused more and more voting blacks to support the Democratic party. This was often an uncomfortable decision for blacks, because under the seniority practices followed by Congress, control by Democrats placed avowed segregationists in major positions of legislative leadership. The shift continued, however, and since the New Deal period African Americans have increasingly voted for Democrats.

With the outbreak of World War II, wholehearted African American support was given to the war effort with the hope that the fight against Nazi racism would weaken racism in the United States. Of the 891,000 blacks who joined the military, approximately half a million served overseas. African American combat units included the 92d and 93d divisions and a small group of air force pilots. As in World War I the majority of blacks were organized into service units, and many were never trained in the use of basic weapons. In an attempt to encourage and improve job training for minority-group workers in war industries, President Roosevelt established a national Fair Employment Practices Committee. The war ended, however, with no major attack on discrimination in employment and in labor unions, and Jim Crow practices persisted in many parts of both the North and the South.

Violence against black and white civil rights activists was commonplace. Three civil rights workers were brutally murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964; four African American children were murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963; and dozens of black churches throughout the South were burned or bombed. Two whites and one black were murdered during the 1965 demonstrations in Selma, Ala. In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., the recognized leader of the civil rights movement, was assassinated.

The federal response to the violent reaction of segregationists was the passage of several new laws, the most important of which were enacted in 1964 and 1965. The Civil Rights Act (1964) undermined the remaining structure of Jim Crow laws and provided federal protection in the exercise of civil rights. The Voting Rights Act (1965) provided for federal action to put an end to interference by local governments and individuals with the right of African Americans to register and vote. Both these laws were upheld in challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court. (See integration, racial.)

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968, a new wave of riots spread across the country. A report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, identified more than 150 riots between 1965 and 1968. In 1967 alone, 83 people were killed (most of them black), 1,800 were injured, and property valued at more than $100 million was destroyed.

The growing black-consciousness movement and the aggressive civil rights activism of the late 1960s resulted in what some have termed the white backlash. White supporters of moderate black organizations and activities declined. Harassment of some activists — especially the Black Panther party and Black Muslims, or Nation of Islam — became common. Federal programs beneficial to poor ghetto youth were cut back, and the direction taken by the Supreme Court weakened the base for progress set under Chief Justice Earl Warren. Evidence began to leak out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had sought to discredit and destroy Martin Luther King, Jr., as a leader and had participated in efforts to reduce the effectiveness of some African American organizations.

The concept of black pride had been earlier articulated in such slogans as "black is beautiful" and "black power." The latter, introduced (1966) by Stokely Carmichael, the chairman at that time of SNCC, became the rallying cry for the more radical civil rights activists of the latter half of the 1960s. It found organizational expression in the Black Panther party, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, the Black Muslims, and other groups. Leading spokespersons of the concept of racial pride included Malcolm X, Imamu Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones), Ron Karenga, and Huey Newton. This concept frightened some whites who perceived it as racism.

In 1984 the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights activist in the 1960s, first campaigned in the primaries for the Democratic party presidential nomination. He won over 3 million primary votes (and about 75% of the black vote) but fell far short of winning enough convention delegates to gain the nomination. In 1988 his second failure to win the nomination was a history-making event — he ran second in the primary season, winning 6.6 million votes and about 30% of the delegates to become the first "serious" African American contender for the presidency. Jackson attracted 92% of the black vote and 12% of the white. He addressed issues of interest to a wide public, did much to register new voters, and secured himself a prominent place in national politics. In 1992, L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, the first elected African American governor in the United States, ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A steady increase in African American elected officials has taken place at all levels of government since the 1960s. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first black Supreme Court justice (succeeded by Clarence Thomas in 1991). Also in 1967, Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts became the first black member of the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. In 1993, Carol Moseley Braun became the first black woman U.S. senator. In the mid-1970s, 17 African Americans served in the House of Representatives, among them, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, and Andrew Young; by 2001 the number was 37.

From the mid-1960s through 2001, African American mayors of major cities included Carl Stokes and Michael R. White in Cleveland, Ohio; Tom Bradley in Los Angeles; Willie L. Brown, Jr. in San Francisco; Kenneth Gibson and Sharpe James in Newark, N.J.; Richard Hatcher in Gary, Ind.; Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, and Bill Campbell in Atlanta, Ga.; Ernest Morial in New Orleans, La.; Walter Washington, Marion Barry, Jr., Sharon Pratt Kelly, and Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C.; Coleman Young and Dennis W. Archer in Detroit; Harold Washington in Chicago; Willie Herenton in Memphis, Tenn.; Kurt Schmoke in Baltimore, Md.; Wilson Goode and John Street in Philadelphia; and David Dinkins in New York.

African Americans began to fill major appointive positions in force in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, when Patricia Roberts Harris became the first African American woman cabinet member as secretary of housing and urban development.

Despite the patterns of prejudice and inequality that historically restricted their opportunities, African Americans have made significant contributions in many other fields as well. The work of Charles Drew in hematology leading to the establishment of the American Red Cross blood bank and the appointment of Ralph Bunche as undersecretary of the United Nations in 1950 are examples. The first black American in space was U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Guion S. Bluford, who took part in a 1983 Space Shuttle flight.

During the years (1993–2001) of the Clinton administration, significant appointments were made of African Americans to high-profile positions (such as that of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary, and others), although there was some concern over a loss of momentum in the struggle for equality. A sense of frustration may have fueled a tendency toward separatist solutions, as represented by the views of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Adding perhaps to black frustration was the termination of most of California's affirmative-action programs after passage in 1996 of a ballot initiative. While no federal or state legislatures have passed similar affirmative action bans, the issue remains a potent one. That same year President Clinton also signed a welfare-reform law, raising much concern from advocates for the nation's poorer citizens. A year earlier, in the so-called trial of the century, the acquittal by a predominantly black jury of black football star O. J. Simpson, accused of murdering his white wife and her friend, revealed the dramatic polarization along racial lines between whites and blacks with regard to their trust in such institutions as the U.S. criminal justice system. More recently, racial profiling by police was another issue that no doubt contributed to black distrust of the system, and there were high-profile cases in New York and other cities of unarmed black men shot by police. In an attempt to address persistent race problems, President Clinton in June 1997 established a presidential advisory panel on race relations headed by historian John Hope Franklin. During his presidency, Clinton, besides addressing race relations at home, made two trips to the African continent.

In January 2001, George W. Bush became president after a month-long period following the November 2000 election when the presidential race was too close to call in Florida and during which many black voters complained of irregularities. Bush too has appointed African Americans to prominent positions in government. Among these are two cabinet appointees — Colin Powell as secretary of state and Roderick Paige as secretary of education — as well as national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, who heads the National Security Council. After a nearly 40-year period, Thomas Blanton, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in May 2001 for plotting the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church that killed four African American girls. Of the four men tied to the crime, only one other was ever convicted (in 1977), and he died in prison.

Henry Drewry