United States Black History

February is Black History Month in The United States - an annual celebration that has existed since 1926.

Scholar Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who was determined to bring Black History into the mainstream public arena. Woodson devoted his life to making "the world see the Negro as a participant rather than as a lay figure in history."

Dr. Carter G. Woodson

In 1926 Woodson organized the first annual Negro History Week, which took place during the second week of February. Woodson chose this date to co-incide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln - two men who had greatly impacted the black population. Over time, Negro History Week evolved into the Black History Month that we know today - a four-week-long celebration of African American History.

During the course of the slave trade, millions of Africans became involuntary immigrants to the New World. Some African captives resisted enslavement by fleeing from slave forts on the West African coast. Others mutinied on board slave trading vessels, or cast themselves into the ocean. In the New World there were those who ran away from their owners, ran away among the Indians, formed maroon societies, revolted, feigned sickness, or participated in work slow downs. Some sought and succeeded in gaining liberty through various legal means such as "good service" to their masters, self-purchase, or military service. Still others seemingly acquiesced and learned to survive in servitude.

The European, American, and African slave traders engaged in the lucrative trade in humans, and the politicians and businessmen who supported them, did not intend to put into motion a chain of events that would motivate the captives and their descendants to fight for full citizenship in the United States of America. But they did. When Thomas Jefferson penned the words, "All men are created equal," he could not possibly have envisioned how literally his own slaves and others would take his words. African Americans repeatedly questioned how their owners could consider themselves noble in their own fight for independence from England while simultaneously believing that it was wrong for slaves to do the same.

The first Africans at Jamestown were purchased as indentured servants from the Dutch. Over the course of two centuries, however, most Africans in the Americas were bought and sold as a source of slave labor, were denied the most basic human rights and were often subject to abusive treatment.

Antislavery sentiments in America date back to the 1600s. However, the abolition movement didn't come to the forefront until the early 1800s, when the first abolitionist periodicals were published. The movement gained momentum over the next few decades, leading to Lincoln's 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in rebel states.

Not all blacks were enslaved during the period prior to the Civil War. However, these free blacks were not treated as equal citizens. Free blacks, found primarily in Northern states, had to carry papers proving they were not slaves. Otherwise, they faced capture and transport to the South where they could be sold into slavery.

Although they often received lower pay, performed menial duties and faced further discrimination, black soldiers were allowed to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War. They fought in segregated units, under the command of white officers.

Co. E, 4th U.S. Infantry, Ft. Lincoln

From 1865 to 1877, the Constitution was amended three times to provide equal rights to black Americans. Slavery was abolished, and citizenship and voting rights were guaranteed.

Following the formal period of Reconstruction, laws were passed, severely limiting the freedoms given to blacks. Poll taxes and literacy tests made voting difficult, while Jim Crow laws, upheld by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, created segregated public facilities. Schools such as Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute provided quality education for blacks.

During World War I, many blacks fled the South seeking new jobs in factories in Northern cities. This great migration continued through the early 1940s. This time period also brought an increased popularity in music and the arts, centered in the Harlem Renaissance.

In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, segregated schools were declared unconstitutional. This landmark decision sparked the modern Civil Rights movement. Led by Martin Luther King Jr., blacks engaged in a series of nonviolent protests throughout the South to bring about the end of segregation and racial domination. Blacks gained political power as they were elected to office at all levels of government.

Credit: The Library of Congress