African Americans in Florida

Last updated
African Americans in Florida
Afroamerica.svg Flag of Florida.svg
Portrait of an African American family- Gainesville, Florida (6909517529).jpg
African American family in Gainesville, Florida.
Total population
3,337,159 [1] (2014)
Regions with significant populations
North Florida and Miami metropolitan area [2]
Languages
Southern American English, African-American Vernacular English, Haitian Creole, Jamaican Patois, Cuban Spanish, Gullah, Afro-Seminole Creole, Miami English, Caribbean English, African languages
Religion
Christianity, Haitian Voodoo, Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, Black Catholicism, Jehovah's Witness, Irreligion, Santería, [3] Rastafari
Related ethnic groups
Afro-Cubans, Afro-Caribbeans, Black Seminoles, Gullah, West Indian Americans, Black Hispanic and Latino Americans, Bahamian Americans, Jamaican Americans, Haitian Americans, Hispanics in Florida, Indigenous peoples of Florida, White Americans in Florida
African-American Research Library and Cultural Center Picture of Broward County's African American Research Library.jpg
African-American Research Library and Cultural Center

African Americans in Florida or Black Floridians are residents of the state of Florida who are of African ancestry. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans were 16.6% of the state's population. [4] The African-American presence in the peninsula extends as far back as the early 18th century, when African-American slaves escaped from slavery in Georgia into the swamps of the peninsula. Black slaves were brought to Florida by Spanish conquistadors.[ citation needed ]

Contents

History

The history of African Americans in Florida can be divided into several eras, the dates varying by location: 1) Slavery until 1865. A few slaves had been freed, but were never free from the threat of being again enslaved. 2) Reconstruction after the American Civil War. 3) Remainder of 19th century. 4) Terrorist activity against African Americans. 5) Civil Rights Era. 5) Late 20th-21st century.

The history of Black people in Florida dates back to the pre-American period, beginning with the arrival of Congolese-Spanish conquistador Juan Garrido in 1513, the enslaved Afro-Spanish explorer Estevanico in 1528, and the landing of free and African enslaved persons at Mission Nombre de Dios in the future St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. [5]

The first Black city in the state came in the latter region when a military outpost of free Black settlers was established at Fort Mose when the Black population became numerous in St Augustine. The uptick was largely due to fugitive slaves from British colonies in North America to Spanish Florida where they were promised freedom in exchange for military service and conversion to Catholicism. [5]

Florida was later acquired by the British, bringing the First Spanish Period to an end and the departure of the Spanish population (including blacks) to Cuba. African-American slaves soon became the main Black population in the state. [5] The Spanish regained Florida briefly in 1784 before departing in 1821.

After the Civil War, there was a brief Reconstruction era from 1867 to 1877. This included enforcement of rights for African Americans. This era vanished suddenly, the result of the Compromise of 1877. [6]

Post-reconstruction policies allowed civil rights for blacks to lapse. Black voters and black politicians vanished under threats from reactionary whites. [7]

Per capita lynching was highest in Florida than any other state from 1900 to 1930. Offenders were often known but no legal proceedings ensued. A tipping point was reached in 1951, with the Murder of Harry and Harriette Moore. FBI help was sought. The KKK was suspected, but there was insufficient evidence for trial. [8] A violent era was followed by continued segregation.

Governor LeRoy Collins took the position that segregation was morally unfair and wrong. [9] This was succeeded by Federal Civil Rights Act in 1964. Schools were integrated, but not without difficulty.

There was a Afro-Cuban community in Tampa and Ybor City in the 1880s. [10] Afro-Cubans were segregated from white Cubans and separated from African Americans by language, culture, and religion. Afro-Cubans were discriminated in Florida due to their skin color. [11] [12] [13]

African slaves who escaped from English plantations were given sanctuary by the Spanish in Florida. [14]

Racial segregation forced black people and white people to attend different schools in Florida. The quality of education was poor for African American children. In the year 1956, two African American black women were arrested in the city Tallahassee for sitting in the front seats of a bus when they were told to sit in the back of the bus. [15]

Population

As of 2010, those of African ancestry accounted for 16.0% of Florida's population, which includes African Americans. Out of the 16.0%, 4.0% (741,879) were Afro-Caribbean American. During the early 1900s, Black people made up nearly half of the state's population. In response to segregation, disfranchisement and agricultural depression, many African Americans migrated from Florida to northern cities in the Great Migration, in waves from 1910 to 1940, and again starting in the later 1940s. They moved for jobs, better education for their children and the chance to vote and participate in society. By 1960, the proportion of African Americans in the state had declined to 18%. Conversely, large numbers of northern whites moved to the state. Today, large concentrations of black residents can be found in northern and central Florida. Aside from blacks descended from African slaves brought to the southern U.S., there are also large numbers of Black people of Caribbean, recent African, and Afro-Latino immigrant origins, especially in the Miami/South Florida area. [16] [ better source needed ]

Notable people

See also

Related Research Articles

The history of Florida can be traced to when the first Native Americans began to inhabit the peninsula as early as 14,000 years ago. They left behind artifacts and archeological evidence. Florida's written history begins with the arrival of Europeans; the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in 1513 made the first textual records. The state received its name from that conquistador, who called the peninsula La Pascua Florida in recognition of the verdant landscape and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in the colonial history of the United States</span> Slavery in colonies that became the United States

Slavery in the colonial history of the United States refers to the institution of slavery as it existed in the European colonies which eventually became part of the United States. In these colonies, slavery developed due to a combination of factors, primarily the labour demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies, which had resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were victims of enslavement by European colonizers during the era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African-American history</span>

African American history started with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The European colonization of the Americas, and the resulting Atlantic slave trade, led to a large-scale transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic; of the roughly 10–12 million Africans who were sold by the Barbary slave trade, either to European slavery or to servitude in the Americas, approximately 388,000 landed in North America. After arriving in various European colonies in North America, the enslaved Africans were sold to white colonists, primarily to work on cash crop plantations. A group of enslaved Africans arrived in the English Virginia Colony in 1619, marking the beginning of slavery in the colonial history of the United States; by 1776, roughly 20% of the British North American population was of African descent, both free and enslaved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Negro</span> Emancipated people of color

In the British colonies in North America and in the United States before the abolition of slavery in 1865, free Negro or free Black described the legal status of African Americans who were not enslaved. The term was applied both to formerly enslaved people (freedmen) and to those who had been born free, whether of African or mixed descent.

Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern Afro-Caribbean people descend from the Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in colonial Spanish America</span> Economic and social institution central to the operation of the Spanish Empire

Slavery in the Spanish American colonies was an economic and social institution which existed throughout the Spanish Empire including Spain itself. Indigenous peoples were enslaved and their populations decimated. Subsequently enslaved Africans were brought over. Native people were also subjected to forced conversions and conscription.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Seminoles</span> Ethnic group

The Black Seminoles, or Afro-Seminoles, are an ethnic group of mixed Native American and African origin associated with the Seminole people in Florida and Oklahoma. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free Africans, and escaped former slaves, who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. Many have Seminole lineage, but due to the stigma of having mixed origin, they have all been categorized as slaves or freedmen in the past.

A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission, emancipation, or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Afro-Costa Ricans</span> Costa Ricans of African ancestry

Afro-Costa Ricans are Costa Ricans of African ancestry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gwendolyn Midlo Hall</span> American historian (1929–2022)

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall was an American historian who focused on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, Louisiana, Africa, and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Discovering extensive French and Spanish colonial documents related to the slave trade in Louisiana, she wrote Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992), studied the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana, as well as the process of creolization, which created new cultures. She changed the way in which several related disciplines are researched and taught, adding to scholarly understanding of the diverse origins of cultures throughout the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Afro-Mexicans</span> Mexicans of predominantly African descent

Afro-Mexicans, also known as Black Mexicans, are Mexicans who have heritage from sub-Saharan Africa and identify as such. As a single population, Afro-Mexicans include individuals descended from both free and enslaved Africans who arrived to Mexico during the colonial era, as well as post-independence migrants. This population includes Afro-descended people from neighboring English, French, and Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean and Central America, descendants of enslaved Africans in Mexico and those from the Deep South during Slavery in the United States, and to a lesser extent recent migrants directly from Africa. Today, there are localized communities in Mexico with significant although not predominant African ancestry. These are mostly concentrated in specific communities, including the populations of the Oaxaca, Huetamo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Guerrero, and Veracruz states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of African Americans in Texas</span> Aspect of history

African American Texans or Black Texans are residents of the state of Texas who are of African ancestry and people that have origins as African-American slaves. African Americans formed a unique ethnic identity in Texas while facing the problems of societal and institutional discrimination as well as colorism for many years. The first person of African heritage to arrive in Texas was Estevanico, who came to Texas in 1528.

For a history of Afro-Caribbean people in the UK, see British African Caribbean community.

The history of African Americans in Maryland is long and complex. Southern Maryland is the home of the first person of African descent to be elected to and serve in a legislature in America. His name was Mathias de Sousa and he was one of the original colonists to arrive in 1634. Southern Maryland is also the place where Josiah Henson was enslaved, and the place of brutality he wrote about in his later autobiography, which became the basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in Cuba</span> Portion of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Slavery in Cuba was a portion of the larger Atlantic Slave Trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practised on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Americans in Georgia</span> Largest minority in Georgia and second largest ethnic group in Georgia after White Americans

African-American Georgians are residents of the U.S. state of Georgia who are of African American ancestry. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans were 31.2% of the state's population. Georgia has the second largest African American population in the United States following Texas. Georgia also has a gullah community. African slaves were brought to Georgia during the slave trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Americans in Louisiana</span> Ethnic group in Louisiana

African Americans in Louisiana or Black Louisianians are residents of the U.S. state of Louisiana who are of African ancestry; those native to the state since colonial times descend from the many African slaves working on indigo and sugarcane plantations under French colonial rule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Florida</span>

Slavery in Florida is more central to Florida's history than it is to almost any other state. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida.

Paulina Pedroso was the most prominent female leader in the Cuban War of Independence. She worked directly with José Martí.

Civil rights in the United States include noted legislation and organized efforts to abolish public and private acts of racial discrimination against Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, women, the homeless, minority religions, and other groups since the independence of the country.

References

  1. ↑ "Florida". blackdemographics.com.
  2. ↑ Hero, Rodney E.; Schmidt, Ronald; Aoki, Andrew L.; Alex-Assensoh, Yvette M. (2009). Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early Twenty-first Century. ISBN   978-0472022199.
  3. ↑ "Religious Landscape Study".
  4. ↑ "Florida QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". Quickfacts.census.gov. 2011. Archived from the original on May 8, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 Landers, Jane (1999). Black society in Spanish Florida. University of Illinois Press. ISBN   0-252-02446-X. OCLC   434395286.
  6. ↑ C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and reaction: the compromise of 1877 and the end of reconstruction (1956), pp. 3–15
  7. ↑ The long, racist history of Florida's now-repealed ban on felons voting
  8. ↑ Crist, Charlie; Attorney General (August 16, 2006). "The Christmas 1951 Murders of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore; Results of the Attorney General's Investigation: Executive Summary" (PDF). Retrieved February 27, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ↑ Dyckman, Martin. "LeRoy Collins, Trent Lott: a study in contrasts" . Retrieved 10 September 2013.
  10. ↑ Mirabal, Nancy Raquel (1993). "The Afro-Cuban Community in Ybor City and Tampa, 1886-1910". OAH Magazine of History. 7 (4): 19–22. doi:10.1093/maghis/7.4.19. JSTOR   25162907.
  11. ↑ "Ybor6.HTM".
  12. ↑ "Afro-Cubans in Ybor City, 1880s-Present - Part One · "We Wanted Some Basic Human Rights": The Civil Rights Struggle in Tampa · USF Libraries Exhibits".
  13. ↑ Greenbaum, Susan D. (2002). More Than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa. ISBN   9780813024660.
  14. ↑ "The English Menace & African Resistance".
  15. ↑ "Civil Rights Movement in Florida". Florida Center for Instructional Technology.
  16. ↑ Miller, William J.; Walling, Jeremy D. (7 June 2013). The Political Battle over Congressional Redistricting. p. 116. ISBN   9780739169841.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.