African Americans are people in the United States who have ancestors from Africa. Many African Americans have non-African ancestors as well. African Americans are also known as black Americans.

Slavery

Most African Americans have ancestors who were slaves. Slaves were people taken from their African homelands and shipped to the Americas. There, white people forced them to work without pay and in harsh conditions. English settlers brought the first African slaves to the colony of Virginia in the early 1600s. By 1790 black people made up nearly one fifth of the population of the United States. Most slaves lived and worked on plantations, or large farms, in the South.

Many people called abolitionists worked to end slavery. These included black people as well as white people. Harriet Tubman, a black abolitionist, organized the Underground Railroad, which was a way for slaves to escape to the North.

The American Civil War

The American Civil War broke out in 1861. This was a war between the Northern and Southern states, partly over the issue of slavery. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This document freed the slaves in the Southern states.

The North won the Civil War in 1865. That year, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ended slavery throughout the United States. In 1868 the 14th Amendment gave African Americans U.S. citizenship. In 1870 the 15th Amendment guaranteed them the right to vote.

Reconstruction

The period following the war was known as Reconstruction. African Americans were finally free, but most of them lived in terrible poverty. In the South many worked as sharecroppers. This meant that they farmed a piece of land owned by someone else. Their pay was a share of the crops they produced.

In addition, African Americans continued to suffer from discrimination (unfair treatment) and violence. Schools and other public places were often segregated. This meant that blacks and whites could not mix in those places. Violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan kept most blacks from voting in the South. These groups also hurt or killed many blacks.

First Civil Rights Efforts

In the late 1800s an ex-slave named Booker T. Washington became a powerful voice for African Americans. He believed in training African Americans to do certain jobs so that they could find work.

Other African American leaders disagreed with Washington. W.E.B. Du Bois thought that the government should guarantee to blacks the same rights that whites had. These rights—such as the right to vote or the right to go to a public school—are called civil rights. Du Bois and others formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to help African Americans to gain full civil rights.

Great Migration

During World War I (1914–18) large numbers of African Americans began to leave the South. They moved to cities in the North and West. There they hoped to find jobs and to escape discrimination. However, many were forced to live in poor, segregated areas.

This movement north, called the Great Migration, continued through the 1960s. By 1970 about 6 million African Americans had moved out of the South.

Civil Rights Movement

By the 1950s the NAACP had begun to use the court system to fight for civil rights for African Americans. One major success came in 1954. In that year the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools.

These efforts soon turned into an organized fight for equal rights. This was called the civil rights movement. A Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., soon became the leader of the movement. He led a major protest, called the March on Washington, in 1963.

In 1964 the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. This law banned discrimination based on race in schools, jobs, and many other areas.

Black Power Movement

Despite these successes, some African Americans grew impatient with the slow pace of change. They began a more extreme movement called the black power movement. Malcolm X and a group called the Black Panthers were some of the movement's leaders. They believed that blacks should use violence, if necessary, to get power and justice.

During the 1960s violent riots did break out in black neighborhoods in many cities. The African Americans who rioted were angry about violent treatment by police, a lack of jobs, and poor housing.

Late 1900s

After the 1960s the civil rights movement broke into many separate groups. Still, African American leaders continued their work to end discrimination.

In addition, many African Americans gained positions of power. In 1967 Thurgood Marshall became the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to Congress. In 2001 Colin Powell became the first black U.S. secretary of state.

African Americans Today

In 2000 there were about 36 million Americans with African roots. They made up about 13 percent of the total U.S. population. One quarter of African Americans lived in poverty, and discrimination against African Americans remains a problem today. Nevertheless, African Americans have made great gains since the end of slavery more than 140 years ago.