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24 January 2023
This article offers a chance to look at American history from the perspective of African Americans.
It’s actually difficult to summarize the experiences of a group of individuals as diverse, distinctive, and nuanced as African Americans.
The available space is modest. The trip might take more than 500 years to complete in just North America.
But each tale must start somewhere. Africa, the Cradle of Civilization, serves as the starting point of this expedition.
Unfortunately, the significant contributions made by Africans to Western art, science, and law during the past four centuries have been ignored.
However, despite being in the New World, there is still a tie to Africa.
The Journey of Black Americans
The trip to Africa the 1600s saw the beginning of what would become America.
King James of England wanted to establish a colony there.
The first permanent English colony in North America was established in 1607 and is located in Virginia.
Roanoke's original colony had vanished. Jamestown was expected to not only be successful, but also to be profitable.
There was little chance of that becoming successful.
Twenty Africans landed in this colony in 1619. The colonists had acquired them in exchange for provisions after capturing them from a Spanish slave ship.
Before this time, Africans lived in North America. Africans, however, were first brought to the region that would later serve as this nation's basis in 1619.
The colony's governing body, the House of Burgesses, was created in the same year.
With a royal authority to establish an independent colony in the name of King James, the affluent English held the power of the law.
Jamestown's social structure was centered on class. Slavery based on race was not yet practiced.
Africans were initially treated as servants with specific rights, liberties, and advantages. The Mayflower touched down in Massachusetts in 1620.
The Mayflower did not begin the African American experience
Within a few decades, slavery was established. The urban English who had discovered tobacco became dependent on the Africans, skillful planters from a rural society.
Smoking tobacco would make both rich and poor folks wealthy.
In this colony, the cultures of the Powhatan Indian, Angolan African, and English people will clash and converge.
They needed some land. The land needed to be worked by laborers. The legislation and the police were under English control.
Most Africans were deprive of legal safeguards and their inalienable rights as human beings as a result of laws that were passed due to gain, avarice, xenophobia, religion, and fear.
From this moment forward, the African American experience would be governed by a socio-racial hierarchy.
Black people who were not slaves or free would fight against legalized racism for decades.
There would be numerous fronts in the struggle for independence.
An education system for the children of free blacks was demanded in a petition to the Massachusetts legislature by the black civil rights activist Prince Hall in the seventeenth century.
Africans revolted against slavery during the day and fled it at night.
Their thirst for independence of the mind and body was unaffected by the severe punishments for their disobedience, including as branding, beatings, amputation, and death.
More severe rules and penalties were enacted in response to resistance.
I was astounded by the haughtiness of people who enacted torture into law as I read these statutes today.
But then, I am in awe of the Africans' tenacity in resisting them.
The complicated history of racial relations in America is woven into the very fabric of this nation.
The Declaration of Independence which was drafted with slaves present, mentions King George's oppression as well as some unalienable rights. "We the people" was the very first phrase in our Constitution.
In Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), the Supreme Court made it plain that African Americans were not treated as people and were surely not mentioned in the preamble of this wonderful text.
African-American slave Dred Scott sought redress in the legal system.
He was given the directive from Chief Justice Taney that somehow a black man was not an American citizen and had no privileges and should not be treated with respect.
The Constitution is a hallowed text to many Americans.
It made more citations to African Americans than any other group, and these references shed light on many aspects of the African American experience.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments are all well-known among lawyers. Fewer people are aware of the allusions to the Transatlantic Slave Trade or are aware that the Constitution has a clause about fugitive slaves.
To calculate the number of representatives in Congress, the ThreeFifths Rule divided each African by three.
Slavery was outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, with the exception of punishment for crimes.
The next six lines, "unless as punishment for a crime," show a brutal compromise that still looms over the history of African Americans.
The success of the Union depended heavily on African soldiers.
After the Civil War, African Americans' ascent to a proper position in American society was complicated.
African Americans' ancestors in Liberia and Sierra Leone are proof that colonization societies and early Lincoln advisors wanted to send Africans back to their native continent.
Every advancement made by black people in America is met with resistance.
With emancipation came chain gangs, the convict lease system, and the Black Codes, criminal statutes established to limit the newly created rights of Blacks.
The labor lost to freedom would be made up in the jails.
While it was bad business to imprison a slave, imprisoning free black people brought in a bonanza for companies and local governments all over the South.
African Americans gained legal status as citizens in 1868 after the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford.
The Fourteenth Amendment, which grants all people of African ancestry citizenship, immunities, privileges due process, and equal protection rights, was not ratified when Dred Scott was alive.
Do you think Dred Scott and Chief Justice Taney were aware of how their acts will affect the twenty-first century? How might Congressmen from 1868 respond to the contemporary reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, in which the equal protection clause— which was written specifically for African Americans in America— has evolved into a cornerstone of American values and serves as the basis for "reverse discrimination" practices?
African American men were granted access to join voters in 1870. Access to the political system was made possible by the Fifteenth Amendment.
That same year, Hiram Revels was elected as the nation's first African American senator. Black politicians at the federal, state, and municipal levels followed his lead.
Great strides were made possible by Reconstruction, the Freedman Bureau, and the federal troops who defended black people's rights throughout the South.
The construction of black institutions began at this point in the voyage.
In 1869, the Howard University School of Law was founded. Low literacy rates The professional class of African Americans expanded rapidly. The nation was once more at a turning point.
Political, economic, and social integration were all within reach. The political tide did, however, change. Restoration was completed.
The soldiers were taken out. African Americans were particularly susceptible to prejudice, terrorism, and enmity.
Those who desired retribution for the Civil War's defeat did so with no consequences.
Federal law provided only a limited level of protection, and state courts declined to dispense justice.
Millions of African Americans across the nation would follow in the footsteps of the many families who moved from Kentucky to Kansas in 1889 in quest of security, justice, and opportunity.
Homer Plessy's decision to appeal his conviction under Louisiana's Separate Car Act, which forbade blacks and whites from riding in separate railroad carriages or risk being imprisoned, was driven by this desire for a life free of bigotry.
Plessy appealed to the nation's highest court for justice.
The Supreme Court issued a rule in 1896 saying that states could separate people of different races as long as the treatment was "separate but equal." Apartheid was put into place 31 years after the end of slavery.
Justice Harlan's opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson demonstrates that non-Black people have always taken risks with their lives, freedom, and livelihood to combat racism.
The Constitution, according to Justice Harlan, is colorblind. He foresaw that the majority's choice would have long-term effects on our nation, but it went unheeded.
The struggle of African Americans in the 20th century reveals a desire to make America uphold its principles.
Black community clubs, fraternities, and civic organizations were founded to guarantee economic and educational progress despite prejudice. Women's clubs, healthcare professionals, and clergy all put in a lot of effort to meet the needs of the black community.
The NAACP challenged legalized segregation by collaborating with local attorneys.
Social scientists, authors, and activists banded together to combat the barrage of anti-black invective.
Steps toward progress were deliberate and slow.
Nobody will truly comprehend the human cost of that advancement.
Numerous people have died as a result of lynchings, race riots, and other types of terrorism. Racism also kills subtly through broken spirits, sickness, interminable labor, and poverty.
The war The country was at war in 1941. America's propaganda emphasized the need to struggle for independence abroad, but African Americans faced everyday racist harassment and humiliating treatment in the country.
Many black people fought the world war 11 standing with France but later migrated to the segregated American military from the segregated south.
In addition to the kind treatment they received from the French, several of them have declined to talk about the conflict or how the Veterans Administration treated them following their honorable release.
These African American service members from World War II returned to a nation with segregated housing, job, and educational prospects.
Charles Hamilton Houston, a bright legal mind, devoted his life to overturning Plessy v. Ferguson.
But Charles Houston could not live to see Brown V. Board of Education's verdict or to watch his protégé, Thurgood Marshall, defend the case.
Aftermath… After Brown, the nation was at a turning point. Americans of color waited impatiently for change. "With all deliberate speed" actually meant very little speed.
Suit-clad demonstrators stood peacefully and without violence for their rights.
The response was harsh and to be expected. However, this time, anger over unfulfilled expectations and broken promises led to civil unrest instead of civil disobedience.
More deaths were followed by riots.
The Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Fair Housing Act—more promises of progress— were notable pieces of federal legislation as a result of lobbying, demonstrations, and additional fatalities.
In order for the promises included in civil rights legislation to become a reality, hundreds of cases were brought in courts throughout the North and South.
The Journey to Success Some African Americans were finally able to take advantage of the chances they had been denied for such a long time.
There were more options for housing, jobs, education, and social activities. Despite the fact that school desegregation led to riots across the nation.
The increased resources were unable to compensate for the isolation from some communities or the painful lessons of racism.
America is at a crossroads once more. residing in the White House is a black family.
Barack Obama, the president, became the third African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
African Americans are CEOs and Commander in Chiefs, as well as astronauts and ballerinas, neurosurgeons and Supreme Court justices, racing car racers and teachers of racial justice.
Racial inequities yet persist widely.
Too many African Americans continue to lose their lives and means of support due to racism, which is also responsible for criminal injustice, poor health, underemployment, insufficient education, and subpar housing.
At last…
Our destiny are intimately linked, regardless of how racism manifests in this day and age. The journey of African Americans is one of tenacity, self-determination, and the pursuit of justice. The journey of African Americans is the journey of America.
