In 2000, the United States census allowed respondents for the first time to tick a box marked “African American” in the race category. The new option marked official recognition of a term that had been gaining currency for some decades. Africa has always played a role in black identity, but it was in the tumultuous period between the two world wars that black Americans first began to embrace a modern African American identity. Following the great migration of black southerners to northern cities after World War I, the search for roots and for meaningful affiliations became subjects of debate and display in a growing black public sphere. Throwing off the legacy of slavery and segregation, black intellectuals, activists, and organizations sought a prouder past in ancient Egypt and forged links to contemporary Africa. In plays, pageants, dance, music, film, literature, and the visual arts, they aimed to give stature and solidity to the American black community through a new awareness of the African past and the international black world. Their consciousness of a dual identity anticipated the hyphenated identities of new immigrants in the years after World War II, and an emerging sense of what it means to be a modern American.

An introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. The diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration are all examined to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture.

Chronicles five hundred years of African-American history from the origins of slavery on the African continent through Barack Obama's second presidential term, examining contributing political and cultural events.

Teeming with interesting nuggets of fact and information, 100 African Americans Who Shaped American History includes such legendary men and women as Benjamin Banneker, Dred Scott, Mary Church Terrell, George Washington Carver and Bessie Smith. Also included are Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall and many, many more. Organized chronologically and meticulously researched, this book provides an educational look at the prominent role that these individuals played and how their varied talents, ideas and expertise contributed to American history. * Concise & Easy to Read Text * Fully Illustrated * Includes Index, Time Line, Trivia Quiz & Suggested Projects * Makes History Fun Bluewood Books' "100 Series" includes 28 additional fun and educational titles, including: * 100 Hispanic Americans Who Shaped American History * 100 Native Americans Who Shaped American History * 100 Scientists Who Shaped World History * 100 American Women Who Shaped American History * 100 Athletes Who Shaped Sports History * 100 Inventions That Shaped World History * 100 Artists Who Shaped World History * ...and many more

Blending a vivid narrative with more than 150 images of artwork, Painter offers a history--from before slavery to today's hip-hop culture--written for a new generation.

Over the last several decades, academic discourse on racial inequality has focused primarily on political and social issues with significantly less attention on the complex interplay between race and economics. African Americans in the U.S. Economy represents a contribution to recent scholarship that seeks to lessen this imbalance. This book builds upon, and significantly extends, the principles, terminology, and methods of standard economics and black political economy. Influenced by path-breaking studies presented in several scholarly economic journals, this volume is designed to provide a political-economic analysis of the past and present economic status of African Americans. The chapters in this volume represent the work of some of the nation's most distinguished scholars on the various topics presented. The individual chapters cover several well-defined areas, including black employment and unemployment, labor market discrimination, black entrepreneurship, racial economic inequality, urban revitalization, and black economic development. The book is written in a style free of the technical jargon that characterizes most economics textbooks. While the book is methodologically sophisticated, it is accessible to a wide range of students and the general public and will appeal to academicians and practitioners alike.

Since 1619, when Africans first came ashore in the swampy Chesapeake region of Virginia, there have been many individuals whose achievements or strength of character in the face of monumental hardships have called attention to the genius of the African American people. This book attempts to distill from many wonderful possibilities the 100 most outstanding examples of greatness. Pioneering scholar of African American Studies Molefi Kete Asante has used four criteria in his selection: the individual''s significance in the general progress of African Americans toward full equality in the American social and political system; self-sacrifice and the demonstration of risk for the collective good; unusual will and determination in the face of the greatest danger or against the most stubborn odds; and personal achievement that reveals the best qualities of the African American people. In adopting these criteria Professor Asante has sought to steer away from the usual standards of popular culture, which often elevates the most popular, the wealthiest, or the most photogenic to the cult of celebrity. The individuals in this book - examples of lasting greatness as opposed to the ephemeral glare of celebrity fame - come from four centuries of African American history. Each entry includes brief biographical information, relevant dates, an assessment of the individual''s place in African American history with particular reference to a historical timeline, and a discussion of his or her unique impact on American society. Numerous pictures and illustrations will accompany the articles. This superb reference work will complement any library and be of special interest to students and scholars of American and African American history.

The story of black Chicago is so rich that few know it all. It began long before the city itself. "The first white man here was a black man," Potowatami natives reportedly said about Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the brown-skinned man recognized as Chicago's first non-Indian settler. It's all here: from the site of DuSable's cabin--now smack-dab in the middle of Chicago's Magnificent Mile--to images of famous and infamous residents like boxers Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Louis. Here are leaders and cultural touchstones like Jesse Binga's bank, Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender, legendary filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, Ida B. Wells, the Eighth Regiment, Jesse Jackson, Oprah, and much more . . . including a guy named Obama. Here is the black Chicago family album, of folks who made and never made the headlines, and pictures and stories of kinship and fellowship of African Americans leaving the violent, racist South and "goin' to Chicago" to find their piece of the American Dream. Chicago has been called the "Second City," but black Chicago is second to none.

The first detailed examination of the link between the Chinese question and the Negro problem in nineteenth-century America, this work forcefully and convincingly demonstrates that the anti-Chinese sentiment that led up to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is inseparable from the racial double standards applied by mainstream white society toward white and nonwhite groups during the same period. Najia Aarim-Heriot argues that previous studies on American Sinophobia have overemphasized the resentment labor organizations felt toward incoming Chinese workers. This focus has caused crucial elements of the discussion to be overlooked, especially the broader ways in which the growing nation sought to define and unify itself through the exclusion and oppression of nonwhite peoples. This book highlights striking similarities in the ways the Chinese and African American populations were disenfranchised during the mid-1800s, including nearly identical negative stereotypes, shrill rhetoric, and crippling exclusionary laws. traditionally studied, this book stands as a holistic examination of the causes and effects of American Sinophobia and the racialization of national immigration policies.

It is a must-read for every American.