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In the context of
racism in the United States Racism has been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices, and actions (including violence) against Race (human categorization), racial or ethnic groups throughout the history of the United States. Since the early Colonial history of the Uni ...
, racism against African Americans dates back to the colonial era, and it continues to be a persistent issue in
American society The society of the United States is based on Western culture, and has been developing since long before the United States became a country with its own unique social and cultural characteristics such as American English, dialect, Music of the ...
in the 21st century. From the arrival of the first Africans in early colonial times until after the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, most
African Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...
were enslaved. Even free African Americans have faced restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms, being subjected to
lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of i ...
s,
segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of human ...
, Black Codes,
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
, and other forms of discrimination, both before and after the Civil War. Thanks to the civil rights movement, formal racial discrimination was gradually outlawed by the
federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...
and came to be perceived as socially and morally unacceptable by large elements of American society. Despite this, racism against Black Americans remains widespread in the U.S., as does
socioeconomic inequality Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses ...
between black and white Americans. In 1863, two years prior to emancipation, Black people owned 0.5 percent of the national wealth, while in 2019 it is just over 1.5 percent. In recent years research has uncovered extensive evidence of racial discrimination in various sectors of modern U.S. society, including the
criminal justice Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...
system,
businesses Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit." A business entity is not necessari ...
, the
economy An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
,
housing Housing refers to a property containing one or more Shelter (building), shelter as a living space. Housing spaces are inhabited either by individuals or a collective group of people. Housing is also referred to as a human need and right to ...
,
health care Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...
, the
media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...
, and
politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
. In the view of the United Nations and the US Human Rights Network, "
discrimination in the United States Discrimination comprises "base or the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit, especially to show prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or a similar social factor". This term is used to highlight the difference in t ...
permeates all aspects of life and extends to all communities of color."


Citizenship and voting rights

The
Naturalization Act of 1790 The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free whi ...
set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by
naturalization Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-national of a country acquires the nationality of that country after birth. The definition of naturalization by the International Organization for Migration of the ...
, which limited naturalization to "free white person , thus excluding from citizenship Native Americans,
indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as payment for some good or ser ...
,
slaves Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
, free Blacks, and later Asians. Citizenship and the lack of it had special impact on various legal and political rights, most notably suffrage rights at both the federal and state level, as well as the right to hold certain government offices, jury duty, military service, and many other activities, besides access to government assistance and services. The second Militia Act of 1792 also provided for the
conscription Conscription, also known as the draft in the United States and Israel, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it conti ...
of every "free able-bodied white male citizen". Tennessee's 1834 Constitution included a provision: "the free white men of this State have a right to Keep and bear arms for their common defense." Citizenship, however, did not guarantee any particular rights, such as the right to vote. Black Americans, for example, who gained formal U.S. citizenship by 1870, were soon disenfranchised. For instance, after 1890, less than 9,000 of Mississippi's 147,000 eligible African-American voters were registered to vote, or about 6%. Louisiana went from 130,000 registered African-American voters in 1896 to 1,342 in 1904 (about a 99% decrease). They were also subjected to Black Codes and discriminated against in the Southern states by
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
.
Voter suppression Voter suppression is the discouragement or prevention of specific groups of people from voting or registering to vote. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the o ...
efforts around the country, though mainly motivated by political considerations, often effectively disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities. In 2016, one in 13 African-Americans of voting age was disenfranchised, more than four times greater than that of non-African-Americans. Over 7.4% of adult African-Americans were disenfranchised compared to 1.8% of non-African-Americans. Felony disenfranchisement in Florida disqualifies over 10% of its citizens for life and over 23% of its African-American citizens.


Antebellum period

Slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
, as a form of
forced labor Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...
, has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. Slavery is not inherently racial ''per se.'' In the United States, however,
slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
, having been established in the colonial era, became racialized by the time of the
American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
(1775–1783), when slavery was widely institutionalized as a racial caste system which was based on African ancestry and skin color.


Slavery

The
Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
prospered, with more than 470,000 persons forcibly transported from Africa between 1626 and 1860 to what is now the United States. Prior to the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
, eight serving presidents were slaveholders, and slavery was protected by the U.S. Constitution. Creating wealth for the White elite, approximately one in four Southern families held Black people in slavery prior to the Civil War. According to the 1860 U.S. census, there were about 385,000 slave owners out of a White population of approximately 7 million in the slave states. White European Americans who participated in the slave industry sought to justify their economic exploitation of
Black people Black is a racial classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin and often additional phenotypical ...
by creating a "scientific" theory of White superiority and Black inferiority.
Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...
, a slave owner himself, called for science to determine the obvious "inferiority" of Black people that is regarded as "an extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism." He concluded that Black people were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." Groups of armed White men, who were called
slave patrol Slave patrols—also known as patrollers, patterrollers, pattyrollers, or paddy rollers—were organized groups of armed men who monitored and enforced discipline upon Slavery, slaves in the Antebellum South, antebellum U.S. southern states. T ...
s, were formed to monitor enslaved Black people. First established in South Carolina in 1704 and later established in other
slave states In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave s ...
, their function was to police slaves, especially runaways. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or rebellions, so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols so they could be used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or rebellions.


Controlling free Blacks

During the 1820s and 1830s, the solution of the
American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn peop ...
(ACS) to the presence of free Black people was to persuade them to emigrate to Africa. In 1821, the ACS established the colony of
Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...
, and persuaded thousands of former slaves and free Blacks to move there. Some slaves were manumitted (set free) on the condition that they emigrate. The slave states made no secret that they wanted to get rid of free Blacks, who they believed threatened their investment, the slaves, encouraging escapes and revolts. The support for the ACS was primarily Southern. The founder of the ACS,
Henry Clay Henry Clay (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate, U.S. Senate and United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives. He was the seventh Spea ...
of Kentucky, stated that because of "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off".Maggie Montesinos Sale (1997). ''The slumbering volcano: American slave ship revolts and the production of rebellious masculinity''. p. 264. Duke University Press, 1997. Thousands of Black people were resettled in Liberia, where they formed an American English-speaking enclave which could not assimilate back into African life and as a result, most of them died of tropical diseases. White supremacist American governments emphasized the importance of the subjugation and control of other racial populations. In 1824 the Senate of South Carolina enacted a resolution echoing the wording of the
Supremacy Clause The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States ( Article VI, Clause 2) establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the "supreme Law of the Land", and th ...
of the
Constitution of the United States The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
, declaring that the paramount objective of its government was to prevent the insubordination of black citizens and any possible slave rebellions as well as any social or political causes which might instrumentally lead to such insubordination or insurrection, and declaring that this purpose was paramount over all other laws, constitutions, and domestic or international agreements:


Domestic slave trade

The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed by federal law from 1808, but smuggling continued, the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States being the Clotilda in 1859 or 1860. The domestic trade in human beings continued to be a major economic activity. Maryland and Virginia, for example, would export surplus slaves to the south. (See
Franklin and Armfield Office The Franklin and Armfield Office, which houses the Freedom House Museum, is a historic commercial building in Alexandria, Virginia (District of Columbia retrocession, until 1846, the District of Columbia). Built c. 1810–1820, it was first use ...
.) Enslaved family members could be split up (ie., sold off) never to see or hear of each other again. Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines. In the 1850s, more than 193,000 were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million in total were traded. The historian Ira Berlin called this forced migration of slaves the "Second Middle Passage", because it reproduced many of the same horrors as the
Middle Passage The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manu ...
(the name given to the transportation of slaves from Africa to North America). These sales of slaves broke up many families, with Berlin writing that whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people". Individuals lost their connection to families and clans. Added to the earlier colonists combining slaves from different tribes, many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. Most were descended from families who had been in the U.S. for many generations.


Civil War and emancipation

During the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, the Militia Act of 1862, for the first time, allowed African Americans to serve in the Union militias as soldiers. However, Black members were discriminated against in pay, with Black members being paid half of White members. Besides discrimination in pay, colored units were often disproportionately assigned laborer work, rather than combat assignments.James McPherson, ''"The Negro's Civil War"''. General
Daniel Ullman Daniel Ullman, also spelled Ullmann (April 28, 1810 – September 20, 1892), was an American lawyer and politician from New York (state), New York. He also served as a Union Army general in the American Civil War, raising and leading USCT, color ...
, commander of the
United States Colored Troops United States Colored Troops (USCT) were Union Army regiments during the American Civil War that primarily comprised African Americans, with soldiers from other ethnic groups also serving in USCT units. Established in response to a demand fo ...
, remarked "I fear that many high officials outside of Washington have no other intention than that these men shall be used as diggers and drudges." Black members were organized into colored regiments. By the end of that war, in April 1865, 175 colored regiments were constituting about one-tenth of the Union Army. About 20 percent of colored soldiers died, their death toll being about 35 percent higher than that of white Union troops. The 1862 Militia Act, however, did not open military service to all races, only to Black Americans. In the Confederate army, non-white men were not permitted to serve as soldiers. President
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
's
Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Proclamation had the eff ...
, which took effect on January 1, 1863, marked a change in the federal government's position on slavery. (Up to that time, the federal government had never even taken a limited pro-emancipation stance, and it could do so only in 1862 because of the 1861 departure of almost all of the Southern members of Congress). Though the proclamation was welcomed by abolitionists, its application was limited. It did not apply, for example, to the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states of
Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...
,
Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...
,
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
,
Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
, and the new state of
West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...
, and it also did not apply in parts of
Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...
and
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
that were occupied by Union forces. In those states, slavery remained legal until abolished by state action or by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. While personally opposed to slavery (see Abraham Lincoln and slavery), Lincoln accepted the federal consensus that the Constitution did not give Congress the power to end it. But he was also Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. An action based on military necessity, against states that were in rebellion, would be appropriate as a step towards their defeat. The South of course interpreted the Emancipation Proclamation as a hostile act, but it allowed Lincoln to abolish slavery to a limited extent, without igniting resistance from anti-abolitionist forces in the Union. The slaves were not immediately affected by the proclamation, but advancing Union armies freed them. About four million Black slaves were freed in 1865. Ninety-five percent of Black people lived in the South, comprising one-third of its total population, while only five percent of Black people lived in the North, comprising only one percent of its total population. Consequently, fears of eventual emancipation were much greater in the South than in the North. Based on 1860 census figures, eight percent of males who were aged 13 to 43 died in the Civil War, including six percent in the North and eighteen percent in the South. Though the Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery throughout the United States, some Black Americans became subjected to revised forms of involuntary labor, particularly in the South, through the use of Black Codes that restricted African Americans' freedom and compelled them to work for low wages, and through the use of the exception in the Thirteenth Amendment, which permitted slavery "as a punishment for crime". They were also subject to
White supremacist White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ...
violence and selective enforcement of statutes. Land redistribution programs, such as the Homestead Acts, were most often closed to African Americans (or subject to harsh racist backlash), though some did succeed in obtaining land.


From the Reconstruction Era to World War II


Reconstruction era

After the Civil War, on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment, formally abolishing slavery, was ratified. The next year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which provided a range of civil rights and granted them to all persons who were born in the United States. Despite this, the emergence of Black Codes sanctioned acts of subjugation against Black people and they also continued to bar African Americans from exercising their
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
. The
Naturalization Act of 1790 The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free whi ...
had granted U.S. citizenship only to whites, and in 1868 the effort to broaden civil rights was underscored by the passage of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to " l persons born or naturalized in the United States", regardless of race. The
Civil Rights Act of 1875 The Civil Rights Act of 1875, sometimes called the Enforcement Act or the Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans. The bill was passed by the ...
followed, which was eliminated in a decision that undermined federal power to thwart private racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the last of the
Reconstruction Era The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abol ...
amendments, the 15th Amendment promised
voting rights Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in ...
to African American men (previously only white men of property could vote), and these cumulative federal efforts, African Americans began taking advantage of enfranchisement. They began voting, seeking office positions, and getting a
public education A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all students without charge. They are funded in whole or in part by taxation and operated by the government of the state. State-f ...
. By the end of Reconstruction in the mid 1870s, violent white supremacists came to power with the assistance of paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League and imposed
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
which deprived African-Americans of voting rights by instituting systemic and discriminatory policies of unequal
racial segregation Racial segregation is the separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, ...
. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with the passage and enforcement of Jim Crow laws, along with the posting of signs which were used to show Black people where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.Leon Litwack, ''Jim Crow Blues'', Magazine of History (OAH Publications, 2004) For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Segregated facilities extended from White-only schools to White-only graveyards.
Anti-miscegenation laws Anti-miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage sometimes, also criminalizing sex between members of different races. In the United Stat ...
, which forbade marriage and even sex between whites and non-whites (which typically covered Blacks but in some cases also Indians and Asians), existed in most of the states well into the 20th century, even after emancipation and even in states that advocated the abolition of slavery. Such anti-miscegenation laws existed in many states until 1967, when the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
unanimously ruled in ''
Loving v. Virginia ''Loving v. Virginia'', 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that the laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to ...
'' that such laws were
unconstitutional In constitutional law, constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applic ...
.


Post-Reconstruction era

The new century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Throughout the post Civil War period, racial stratification was informally and systemically enforced, to solidify the pre-existing social order. Although they were technically able to vote,
poll taxes A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. ''Poll'' is an archaic term for "head" or "top of the head". The sen ...
, pervasive acts of
terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
such as lynchings (often perpetrated by
hate group A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society. Acc ...
s such as the reborn
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
, founded in the Reconstruction South), and discriminatory laws such as grandfather clauses kept Black Americans (and many
Poor White Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes. In the United States, Poor White is the historical classification f ...
s) disenfranchised particularly in the South. Furthermore, the discrimination was extended to state legislation which "allocated vastly unequal financial support" for Black and White schools. In addition to this, county officials sometimes redistributed resources which were earmarked for Black people to White schools, further undermining educational opportunities. In response to
de jure In law and government, ''de jure'' (; ; ) describes practices that are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. The phrase is often used in contrast with '' de facto'' ('from fa ...
racism, protest and lobbyist groups emerged, most notably, the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909. This era is sometimes referred to as the
nadir of American race relations The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-bl ...
because racism,
segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of human ...
,
racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their Race (human categorization), race, ancestry, ethnicity, ethnic or national origin, and/or Human skin color, skin color and Hair, hair texture. Individuals ...
, and expressions of White supremacy all increased. So did anti-Black violence, including race riots such as the Atlanta race riot of 1906, the Elaine massacre of 1919, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, and the Rosewood massacre of 1923. The Atlanta riot was characterized as a "racial massacre of negroes" by the French newspaper '' Le Petit Journal''. The Charleston ''
News and Courier ''The Post and Courier'' is the main daily newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. It traces its ancestry to three newspapers, the ''Charleston Courier'', founded in 1803, the ''Charleston Daily News'', founded 1865, and ''The Evening Post'', f ...
'' wrote in response to the Atlanta riots:
"Separation of the races is the only radical solution of the negro problem in this country. There is nothing new about it. It was the Almighty who established the bounds of the habitation of the races. The negroes were brought here by compulsion; they should be induced to leave here by persuasion."


Great Migration

In addition, racism, which had been viewed as a problem which primarily existed in the Southern states, burst onto the nation's consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the rural Southern states to the industrial centers of the North and West between 1910 and 1970, particularly in cities such as
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
,
St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
, Chicago, Detroit, New York City (
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater ...
),
Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
, Los Angeles,
Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...
,
Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
, Phoenix, and
Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...
. Within Chicago, for example, between 1910 and 1970, the population fraction of African-Americans leapt from 2.0 percent to 32.7 percent. The demographic patterns of Black migrants and external economic conditions are largely studied stimulants regarding the Great Migration. For example, migrating Black people (between 1910 and 1920) were more likely to be literate than Blacks who remained in the South. Known economic push factors played a role in migration, such as the emergence of a split labor market and agricultural distress which resulted from the boll weevil destruction of the cotton economy. Southern migrants were often treated in accordance with pre-existing racial stratification. The rapid influx of Black people into the North and West disturbed the racial balance within cities, exacerbating hostility between both Black and White residents in the two regions. Stereotypic schemas of Southern Blacks were used to attribute issues in urban areas, such as crime and disease, to the presence of African-Americans. Overall, African-Americans in most Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Black people were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual Hampton Negro Conference in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South." Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants,
redlining Redlining is a Discrimination, discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of Race (human categorization), racial and Ethnic group, ethnic minorities. Redlining has been mos ...
and racial steering". A club central to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, was a whites-only establishment, with Black acts allowed to perform, but to a White audience. Throughout this period, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynchings—mob-directed hangings, usually racially motivated—increased dramatically in the 1920s. Urban riots—Whites attacking Blacks—became a northern and western problem. Many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, while many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as
White flight The white flight, also known as white exodus, is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the Racism ...
. Racially restrictive housing covenants were ruled unenforceable under the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1948 landmark
Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
case '' Shelley v. Kraemer''. Elected in 1912, President
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...
authorized the practice of racial segregation throughout the federal government's bureaucracy. In
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, Black people who served in the
United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the Military, military forces of the United States. U.S. United States Code, federal law names six armed forces: the United States Army, Army, United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps, United States Navy, Na ...
served in segregated units. Black soldiers were often poorly trained and equipped, and they were often put on the frontlines and forced to go on suicide missions. The U.S. military was still heavily segregated during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. In addition, no African-American was awarded the
Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest Awards and decorations of the United States Armed Forces, military decoration and is awarded to recognize American United States Army, soldiers, United States Navy, sailors, Un ...
during the war, and sometimes, Black soldiers who traveled on trains had to give their seats up to Nazi prisoners of war.


From World War II to the civil rights movement

The
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
were state and local laws which were enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protectio ...
" status for Black people. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those which were provided to Whites. The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for Whites and Blacks. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
in 1954 in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the ...
''. One of the first federal court cases which challenged segregation in schools was Mendez v. Westminster in 1946. Access to public benefits was also a matter of concern for African Americans, who were excluded from most of the gains acquired by white Americans via programs like the
G.I. Bill The G.I. Bill, formally the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I. (military), G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in ...
following
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. During the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, Most black working women, and many black men, were likewise excluded from
New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...
programs such as
unemployment insurance Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work du ...
and
Social Security Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance ...
. By the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. Membership in the NAACP increased in states across the U.S. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of
Emmett Till Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African American youth, who was 14 years old when he was abducted and Lynching in the United States, lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, ...
, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with his relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having
wolf-whistle A wolf whistle is a distinctive two-note glissando whistled sound made to show high interest in or approval of something or someone (usually a woman), especially at someone viewed as physically or sexually attractive. A modern wolf whistle dire ...
d at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head before being thrown into the Tallahatchie River, his body weighed down with a
cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...
fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. David Jackson writes that Mamie Till, Emmett's Mother, "brought him home to Chicago and insisted on an open casket. Tens of thousands filed past Till's remains, but it was the publication of the searing funeral image in ''Jet'', with a stoic Mamie gazing at her murdered child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism." News photographs were circulated around the country, and they drew an intense public reaction. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the U.S. Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of White supremacy". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, but they were speedily acquitted by an
all-White jury Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial ...
. In response to heightening discrimination and violence, non-violent acts of protest began to occur. For example, in February 1960, in
Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; ) is a city in Guilford County, North Carolina, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 299,035; it was estimated to be 307,381 in 2024. It is the List of municipalitie ...
, four young African American college students entered a Woolworth store and sat down at the counter but were refused service. The men had learned about non-violent protest in college, and continued to sit peacefully as Whites tormented them at the counter, pouring ketchup on their heads and burning them with cigarettes. The Greensboro sit-ins contributed to the formation of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later, the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emer ...
. Many more
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
s took place to non-violently protest against racism and inequality. Sit-ins continued throughout the South and spread to other areas. Eventually, after many sit-ins and other non-violent protests, including marches and boycotts, places began to agree to desegregate. In June 1963, civil rights activist and
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
member
Medgar Evers Medgar Wiley Evers (; July 2, 1925June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist and soldier who was the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. Evers, a United States Army veteran who served in World War II, was engaged in efforts ...
was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council. In his trials for murder De La Beckwith evaded conviction via all-White juries (both trials ended with hung juries). The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point during the civil rights era. On Sunday, September 15, 1963, with a stack of dynamite hidden on an outside staircase, Ku Klux Klansmen destroyed one side of the Birmingham church. The bomb exploded in proximity to twenty-six children who were preparing for choir practice in the basement assembly room. The explosion killed four Black girls, Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Denise McNair (11) and Addie Mae Collins (14). With the bombing occurring only a couple of weeks after
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil and political rights, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights move ...
's
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (commonly known as the March on Washington or the Great March on Washington) was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic righ ...
, it became an integral aspect of transformed perceptions of conditions for Black people in America. It influenced the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
(that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions) and
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights move ...
which overruled remaining Jim Crow laws. Nonetheless, neither had been implemented by the end of the 1960s as civil rights leaders continued to strive for political and social freedom. The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the
Maryland General Assembly The Maryland General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland that convenes within the State House in Annapolis. It is a bicameral body: the upper chamber, the Maryland Senate, has 47 representatives, and the lower ...
in 1691, criminalizing
interracial marriage Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different "Race (classification of human beings), races" or Ethnic group#Ethnicity and race, racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United Sta ...
. By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes, and by 1924 it was still in force in 29 states. In 1958, officers in
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
entered the home of Richard and Mildred Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years. The law was ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in ''
Loving v. Virginia ''Loving v. Virginia'', 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that the laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to ...
''. Segregation continued even after the demise of the Jim Crow laws. Data on house prices and attitudes towards integration suggest that in the mid-20th century, segregation was a product of collective actions taken by Whites to exclude Black people from their neighborhoods.''The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto'' David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, Jacob L. Vigdor ''The Journal of Political Economy'', Vol. 107, No. 3 (Jun. 1999), pp. 455–506 Segregation also took the form of
redlining Redlining is a Discrimination, discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of Race (human categorization), racial and Ethnic group, ethnic minorities. Redlining has been mos ...
, the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. Although in the U.S. informal discrimination and segregation have always existed, redlining began with the
National Housing Act of 1934 The National Act of 1934, , , also called the Better Housing Program, was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable. It created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA ...
, which established the
Federal Housing Administration The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), also known as the Office of Housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is a Independent agencies of the United States government, United States government agency founded by Pr ...
(FHA). The practice was fought first through passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (which prevents redlining when the criteria for redlining are based on race, religion, gender, familial status, disability, or ethnic origin), and later through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities. Although redlining is illegal some argue that it continues to exist in other forms. Up until the 1940s, the full revenue potential of what was called "the Negro market" was largely ignored by White-owned manufacturers in the U.S. with advertising focused on Whites. Black people were also denied commercial deals. On his decision to take part in exhibition races against racehorses in order to earn money, Olympic champion
Jesse Owens James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who made history at the Athletics at the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Olympic Games by becoming the first person to win four gold meda ...
stated, "People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals." On the lack of opportunities, Owens added, "There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway." In the reception to honor his Olympic success Owens was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the
Waldorf Astoria New York The Waldorf Astoria New York is a luxury hotel and condominium residence in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York. The structure, at 301 Park Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, is a 47-story, Art Deco landmark des ...
and instead forced to travel up to the event in a freight elevator. The first Black Academy Award recipient Hattie McDaniel was not permitted to attend the premiere of ''
Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * Gone with the Wind (novel), ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * Gone with the Wind (film), ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind ...
'' with Georgia being racially segregated, and at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles she was required to sit at a segregated table at the far wall of the room; the hotel had a strict no-Blacks policy, but allowed McDaniel in as a favor. Her final wish to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was denied because the graveyard was restricted to Whites only. As the civil rights movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern U.S, a Republican Party electoral strategy—the Southern strategy—was enacted to increase political support among White voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. Republican politicians such as presidential candidate
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...
and Senator
Barry Goldwater Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and major general in the United States Air Force, Air Force Reserve who served as a United States senator from 1953 to 1965 and 1969 to 1987, and was the Re ...
developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many White, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. In 1971, angered by African delegates at the UN siding against the U.S. in a vote to admit China and expel
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
, then Governor of California
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...
stated in a phone call to president Nixon, "To see those... those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" Nixon adopted Reagan's offensive language to complain about "cannibals jumping up and down" after the vote passed. Recorded conversations from Nixon's time in office further revealed his bigoted views of minorities, commenting on African Americans: "I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like." The perception that the Republican Party had served as the "vehicle of white supremacy in the South", particularly post 1964, made it difficult for the Party to win back the support of Black voters in the South in later years. In 1973, African American baseball legend
Hank Aaron Henry Louis Aaron (February 5, 1934 – January 22, 2021), nicknamed "Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank", was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1954 through 1976. Considered one ...
received hundreds of thousands of hate mail letters from fans, angry at him for trying to break the all-time homerun record at the time set by
Babe Ruth George Herman "Babe" Ruth (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional Baseball in the United States, baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nickna ...
. Aaron would eventually break Ruth's homerun record by hitting his 715th homerun on April 8, 1974. That same year, the
U.S. Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...
confirmed that Hank Aaron set the
Guinness World Record ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...
for most mail received by any private citizen in one year, receiving over 900,000 letters with a third of them being letters of hate.


From the 1980s to the 2000s

While substantial gains were made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public employment, Black poverty and lack of education continued in the context of de-industrialization.Ronald Takaki, ''A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America'' (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1993), 400–414. Despite gains made after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, some violence against Black churches has also continued—145 fires were set to churches around the South in the 1990s, and a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina was committed in 2015 at the historic Mother Emanuel Church. From 1981 to 1997, the
United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...
discriminated against tens of thousands of Black American farmers, denying loans that were provided to White farmers in similar circumstances. The discrimination was the subject of the ''
Pigford v. Glickman ''Pigford v. Glickman'' (1999) was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging that it had racial discrimination, racially discriminated against African-American farmers in its allocation of farm lo ...
'' lawsuit brought by members of the National Black Farmers Association, which resulted in two settlement agreements of $1.06 billion in 1999 and of $1.25 billion in 2009. Numerous authors, academics, and historians have asserted that the War on Drugs has been racially and politically motivated. As the crack epidemic spread across the country in the mid 1980s, Congress would pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Under these sentencing guidelines, five grams of
crack cocaine Crack cocaine, commonly known simply as crack, and also known as rock, is a free base form of the stimulant cocaine that can be Smoking, smoked. Crack offers a short, intense Euphoria (emotion), high to smokers. The ''Manual of Adolescent Sub ...
, often sold by and to African-Americans, carried a mandatory five-year prison sentence. However, for powder cocaine, often sold by and to White Americans, it would take one hundred times that amount, or 500 grams, for the same sentence, leading many to criticize the law as discriminatory. The 100:1 sentencing disparity was reduced to 18:1 in 2010 by the Fair Sentencing Act. According to the
National Security Archive The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the N ...
, during the 1980s, US officials, including
Oliver North Oliver Laurence North (born October 7, 1943) is an American political commentator, television host, military historian, author, and retired United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. A veteran of the Vietnam War, North was a National Sec ...
, collaborated with and protected known drug traffickers as part of efforts to fund the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
funded right-wing Nicaraguan Contra rebels. In 1989, the Kerry Committee report concluded the Contra drug links included... "Payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies". In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote the Dark Alliance series for the
San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...
where he asserted that the CIA-backed Contras played a major role in the crack epidemic. The series caused outrage in the African-American community, particularly in South Central Los Angeles, where Congresswoman Maxine Waters served, and subsequently praised the series. During the 1980s and '90s, a number of riots occurred that were related to longstanding racial tensions between police and minority communities. The 1980 Miami riots were catalyzed by the killing of an African-American motorist by four White Miami-Dade Police officers. They were subsequently acquitted on charges of manslaughter and evidence tampering. Similarly, the six-day
1992 Los Angeles riots The 1992 Los Angeles riots were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County, California, United States, during April and May 1992. Unrest began in South Los Angeles, South Central Los Angeles on April 29, after ...
erupted after the acquittal of four White
LAPD The City of Los Angeles Police Department, commonly referred to as Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), is the primary law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, United States. With 8,832 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the th ...
officers who had been filmed beating
Rodney King Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965June 17, 2012) was a Black American victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was severely beaten by Police officer, officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) during his arrest after a high spe ...
, an African-American motorist. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director of the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has identified more than 100 instances of mass racial violence in the United States since 1935 and has noted that almost every instance was precipitated by a police incident.


Curriculum

The curriculum in U.S. schools has also contained racism against non-white Americans, including Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans. Particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, school textbooks and other teaching materials emphasized the biological and social inferiority of Black Americans, consistently portraying Black people as simple, irresponsible, and oftentimes, in situations of suffering that were implied to be their fault (and not the effects of slavery and other oppression).Elson, Ruth Miller (1964). ''Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century''. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.Au, Wayne, 1972–. Reclaiming the multicultural roots of U.S. curriculum : communities of color and official knowledge in education. Brown, Anthony Lamar, Aramoni Calderón, Dolores, Banks, James A. New York. . . Black Americans were also depicted as expendable and their suffering as commonplace, as evidenced by a poem about "Ten Little Nigger Boys" dying off one by one that was circulated as a children's counting exercise from 1875 to the mid-1900s. Historian Carter G. Woodson analyzed the American curriculum as completely lacking any mention of Black Americans' merits in the early 20th century. Based on his observations of the time, he wrote that American students, including Black students, who went through U.S. schooling would come out believing that Black people had no significant history and had contributed nothing to human civilization.


From 2008 to the present

Some Americans saw the presidential candidacy of
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
, who served as president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and was the nation's first
Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
president, as a sign that the nation had entered a new, post-racial era. The election of President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
in 2016, who was a chief proponent of the racist birther movement in the U.S. (which argued that Obama was not born in the United States) and ran a racially tinged campaign, has been viewed by some commentators as a racist backlash against the election of Barack Obama. Both before and after the election, Trump's speeches and actions have widely been considered either racist or racially charged. During the mid-2010s,
American society The society of the United States is based on Western culture, and has been developing since long before the United States became a country with its own unique social and cultural characteristics such as American English, dialect, Music of the ...
has been impacted by a resurgence of high levels of racism and discrimination. One new phenomenon has been the rise of the "alt-right" movement: a
White nationalist White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a Race (human categorization), raceHeidi Beirich and Kevin Hicks. "Chapter 7: White nationalism in America". In Perry, Barbara ...
coalition which advocates the expulsion of sexual and racial minorities from the United States. Since the mid-2010s, the
Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...
and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
have identified White supremacist violence as the leading threat of
domestic terrorism in the United States In the United States, domestic terrorism is defined as definition of terrorism, terrorist acts that were carried out within the United States by U.S. citizens and/or U.S. permanent residents. As of 2021, the United States government considers w ...
. Many Americans cite the
2008 United States presidential election Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John Mc ...
as a step forward in race relations: White Americans played a role in the election of
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
, the country's first Black president. In fact, Obama received a greater percentage of the White vote (43%), than did the previous Democratic candidate,
John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the Presidency of Barack Obama#Administration, administration of Barac ...
(41%). Racial divisions persisted throughout the election; wide margins of Black voters gave Obama an edge during the presidential primary, where 8 out of 10 African-Americans voted for him in the primaries, and an MSNBC poll found that race was a key factor in whether a candidate was perceived as being ready for office. In South Carolina, for instance, "Whites were far likelier to name Hillary Clinton, Clinton than Obama as being most qualified to be commander in chief, likeliest to unite the country and most apt to capture the White House in November. Black people named Obama over Clinton by even stronger margins—two- and three-to one—in all three areas." In 2013, Sociology, sociologist Russ Long stated that there is now a more subtle form of racism that associates a specific race with a specific characteristic. In a 1993 study conducted by Katz and Braly, it was presented that "blacks and whites hold a variety of stereotypes towards each other, often negative". The Katz and Braley study also found that African-Americans and Whites view the traits that they identify each other with as threatening, interracial communication between the two is likely to be "hesitant, reserved, and concealing". Interracial communication is guided by stereotypes; stereotypes are transferred into personality and character traits which then have an effect on communication. Multiple factors go into how stereotypes are established, such as age and the setting in which they are being applied. For example, in a study done by the Entman-Rojecki Index of Race and Media in 2014, 89% of Black women in movies are shown swearing and exhibiting offensive behavior while only 17% of White women are portrayed in this manner. In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old teenager, was Killing of Trayvon Martin, fatally shot by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer, claimed that Martin was being suspicious and called the Sanford police to report him. While on the call to police, Zimmerman began following Martin. Between ending his call with police and their arrival, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin outside of the townhouse he was staying at following an altercation. Zimmerman was injured in the altercation and claimed self-defense. The incident caused national outrage after Zimmerman was not charged over the shooting. The national coverage of the incident lead Sandford police to arrest Zimmerman and charge him with second-degree murder, but he was found not guilty at Trial of George Zimmerman, trial. Public outcry followed the acquittal, leading to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2014, the police shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, in Ferguson, Missouri led to widespread Ferguson unrest, unrest in the town. In the years following, mass media has followed other high profile police shootings of African-Americans, often with video evidence from police Body worn video (police equipment), body-worn cameras. Amongst 15 high-profile police shooting deaths of African-Americans, only one officer faced prison time. The U.S. Justice Department launched the National Center for Building Community Trust and Justice in 2014. This program collects data concerning racial profiling to create change in the criminal justice system concerning implicit and explicit racial bias towards African-Americans as well as other minorities. In August 2017, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination#Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued a rare warning to the US and its leadership to "unequivocally and unconditionally" condemn racist speech and crime, following violence in Charlottesville during a rally organized by White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, neo-Nazis and various right-wing militias in August. On June 17, 2015, a white man Charleston church shooting, killed nine people during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. All victims were African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. The perpetrator later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war. White women calling the police on Black people has become more publicized in recent years. In a 2020 article in ''The New York Times'' titled ''How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror'', Black columnist Charles M. Blow wrote, "historically, White women have used the violence of White men and the institutions these men control as their own muscle. Untold numbers of lynchings were executed because White women had claimed that a black man raped, assaulted, talked to or glanced at them. This exercise in racial extremism has been dragged into the modern era through the weaponizing of 9-1-1, often by White women, to invoke the power and force of the police who they are fully aware are hostile to black men". White women in the U.S. who used their White privilege as a weapon have been given a Karen (pejorative)#Origin, different name over the centuries by Black people, with Karen (pejorative), Karen a contemporary name. In May 2020, a White woman calling the police on a Central Park birdwatching incident, Black man bird-watching in Central Park, New York received wide publicity after it was caught on film. After he had asked her to put her dog on a leash (as per the rules in an area of the park to protect other wildlife), she approached him, to which he responded "Please don't come close to me", before she yelled, "I'm taking a picture and calling the cops. I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life." During her phone call, with the man standing a distance away from her and recording her, she spoke in an audibly distraught voice, "There's a man, African American, he is.. threatening me and my dog. Please send the cops immediately!". Other examples of White women calling the police on Black people include reporting an eight-year-old girl for selling bottles of water without a permit in San Francisco, reporting a Black family barbecuing in a park in Oakland, California, blocking a Black man from entering an apartment building in St. Louis, Missouri where he is a resident before calling the police, and a woman accusing a boy of groping her in a store in Brooklyn, New York, which was disproven by surveillance. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was Murder of George Floyd, murdered by a White Minneapolis Police Department officer, Derek Chauvin, who forced his knee on Floyd's neck for a total of 8 minutes 46 seconds, 9 minutes and 29 seconds. All four police officers present were fired the next day, and later arrested. Chauvin was charged with and later convicted of second-degree murder, and the other three officers were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. Floyd's murder sparked a George Floyd protests, wave of protests across the United States and worldwide. A white male gunman who was identified as Payton S. Gendron of Conklin, New York shot and killed 10 black people in the 2022 Buffalo shooting. He believed that White Americans were being replaced by Black people. In 2023, a white man shot and killed 3 black people inside a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida. He shot them to death with a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. A swastika was painted on one of the guns.


See also

* Anti-African sentiment, Afrophobia * Anti-Black sentiment, Negrophobia * Discrimination based on skin color * List of expulsions of African Americans * List of lynching victims in the United States * List of unarmed African Americans killed by law enforcement officers in the United States * White privilege


Notes


References


Further reading

* * * Raffel, Jeffrey. ''Historical dictionary of school segregation and desegregation: The American experience'' (Bloomsbury, 1998
online
* Werner, John Melvin. "Race riots in the United States during the age of Jackson: 1824-1849" (PhD dissertation,  Indiana University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing,  1972. 7314619). {{United States topics Anti-black racism in the United States,