What is African-American

History?

African-American

History

Lesson Objectives

1. define the meaning of “African-American” and “African-American History”

2.state a minimum of one reason why African-American history has experienced difficulty in being studied by main-stream schools.

3. analyze historical documents and answer a minimum of one question about what life was like for African-Americans in this period.

Lesson 1: What is African-American History?

Essential Vocabulary

African-AmericanAfrican-American HistoryBlackSlaveryRacismIntegration

Citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States.

However, some immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations, or their descendants, may be identified or self-identify with the term.

African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States

Who is African-American?

is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States.

It is a history goes back to 1619, when the first African slaves were brought to the British Colony of Virginia – the first time slaves appeared in what became the United States.

It is very important to remember, that you can’t study American history without studying African-American History!

February is set aside as black history month

What is African American History?

With the successes of the civil rights movement, a new term was needed to break from the past and help shed the reminders of legalized discrimination. In place of Negro, activists promoted the use of black as standing for racial pride, militancy and power.

The term black was used throughout but not frequently as it carried a certain stigma. In his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. uses the terms Negro 15 times and black four times. Each time he uses black it is in parallel construction with white (for example,, black men and white men).

Some argue African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates geography and historical origin.

Others have argued that "Black" is a better term because "African" suggests foreignness, despite the long presence of Black people in the US.

Still others believe the term black is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones.

So what does “Black” mean?

So what issues have African-Americans faced?

Slavery

Racism

Integration

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.

Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation.

Slavery in the United States was a form of slave labor which existed as a legal institution in North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865 following the American Civil War.

The first English colony in North America, Virginia, acquired its first Africans in 1619, after a ship arrived that carried a cargo of about 20 Africans. The practice established in the Spanish colonies as early as the 1560s was expanded into English North America

What was Slavery?

What is Racism?Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination.

Racism is popularly associated with various activities that are illegal or commonly considered harmful, such as extremism, hatred, xenophobia, (malignant or forced) exploitation, separatism, racial supremacy, mass murder (for the purpose of genocide), genocide denial, vigilantism (hate crimes, terrorism), etc.

"Racism" and "racial discrimination" are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of their somatic (i.e. "racial") differences. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term racial discrimination and ethnicity discrimination.

What is integration/desegregation?

Desegregation: is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, particularly desegregation of the school systems and the military.

Integration: includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely bringing a racial minority into the majority culture.

Desegregation is largely a legal matter, integration largely a social one.

Classwork: Homework:

So what are we doing now?