African Americans in Tennessee

Last updated
African Americans in Tennessee
Total population
1,175,173 [1] (2020, ADOS, various immigrant groups and their descendants) ADOS, various immigrant groups and their descendants (including those of ancestral descent)
Regions with significant populations
Shelby County (Memphis) [2]
Languages
Southern American English, African-American Vernacular English, Appalachian English, various languages and dialects among immigrants
Religion
Christianity, Black Protestant, other faiths and non-faiths

African Americans are the second largest census "race" category in the state of Tennessee after whites, making up 17% of the state's population in 2010. [3] [4] African Americans arrived in the region prior to statehood. They lived both as slaves and as free citizens with restricted rights up to the Civil War. [5]

Contents

The state, and particularly the major cities of Memphis and Nashville, have been important sites in African-American culture and the Civil Rights Movement. [6] The majority of African Americans in Tennessee reside in the western part of the state, which had a concentration of large cotton plantations in the antebellum period. Many freedmen stayed in the region after emancipation and the abolition of slavery. Historically there have been much smaller Black populations in the Middle Tennessee and East Tennessee (Appalachian) regions, because of the different geography and agricultural patterns. [7]

Demographics

In the 2010 Census, 1,057,315 Tennessee residents were identified as African American (of the total 6,346,105). [8] In 19 of the state's 95 counties, African Americans make up more than 10% of the population: Shelby (52.1%), Haywood (50.4%), Hardeman (41.4%), Madison (36.3%), Lauderdale (34.9%), Fayette (28.1%), Davidson (27.7%), Lake (27.7%), Hamilton (20.2%), Montgomery (19.1%), Gibson (18.8%), Tipton (18.7%), Dyer (14.3%), Crockett (12.6%), Rutherford (12.5%), Obion (10.6%), Giles (10.2%), and Carroll (10.1%). Most of these counties are in West Tennessee, where plantation agriculture was concentrated. African Americans in the seven counties of Shelby (483,381), Davidson (173,730), Hamilton (67,900), Knox (38,045), Madison (35,636), Montgomery (32,982), and Rutherford (32,886) make up more than 81% of the all African Americans in the state. [9]

Now majority-black, the city of Memphis is home to more than four hundred thousand African Americans, making it one of the largest population centers of this ethnic group. [10] At least eight other municipalities have African-American majorities: Bolivar, Brownsville, Gallaway, Gates, Henning,Humboldt, Mason, Stanton, Whiteville.

Historical population

Davidson County, whose principal city is the state capital of Nashville, Tennessee, was home from 1800 to 1850 to the largest share of African Americans in the state, in part because it was settled before the western part and numerous planters held slaves in Middle Tennessee. Since 1860, Shelby County (where Memphis is located) has had the largest population of African Americans. [11]

Black Population in Tennessee, 1790–1860
Census year17901800181018201830184018501860
Total Tennessee residents [12] 35,691105,602261,727422,823681,904829,2101,002,7171,109,80,
Free Black people [13] 3613091,3182,7394,5115,5246,4427300
Blacks living in slavery [13] 3,41713,58444,73480,105141,647183,059239,439275,719

History

Most of Tennessee's African Americans were enslaved from the colonial era until the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865 and abolition of slavery. Although activists in the state played a significant role in early U.S. abolitionism, the state government backed slavery in the 1834 constitution, when it was dominated by elite whites of the planter class. The legislature also passed laws that required newly emancipated Blacks to leave the state, and encouraged European immigration. But a small population of free Blacks remained, resisting violence and other attempts to push them out. Following the 1865 end of slavery and the 1870 Fifteenth Amendment that allowed Black men to hold political office, Black Tennesseans played a prominent role in politics. During Reconstruction, they joined the Republican Party and elected a number to the state legislature, which was biracial during these years. Samuel McElwee held office in the 1880s and was nominated for Speaker of the House. Sekou Franklin and Ray Block Jr. write:

"Blacks ran for state and local offices from the 1870s through the 1890s: in Chattanooga, George Sewall, Robert Marsha, David Medlow, and W. B. Kennedy were elected to local offices; in Knoxville, J. B. Young made a failed attempt at the mayor's office in 1872; William Yardley served on the Knoxville City Council in the 1870s and ran for governor in 1876. From 1871 to 1890, nine blacks were elected to the Knoxville City Council, and several blacks served on the Knox County court, including Yardley, Melvin Gentry, William Brooks Sr., and Sam Maples. In 1875, Randall Brown served on Nashville's city commission, and blacks comprised almost one-third of the municipal government personnel." [14]

Prior to statehood

Early African Americans came to Tennessee primarily from the colonies of Virginia and North Carolina. They, or their parents and grandparents, arrived in North America via the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from West Africa. [15] Early African-American arrivals included those purchased as slaves by Cherokee Indians and brought by European traders living in native villages. [16] Wealthy white families from Culpeper, Virginia, brought enslaved African Americans with them to the Powell Valley in southwest Virginia in 1769. [16]

Historian Cynthia Cumfer notes that slavery in early Tennessee was an isolating experience for African Americans, even in comparison with Virginia and North Carolina. According to 1779-80 records, the vast majority of slaveholders held legal title over just one or two persons, "with the largest holding being ten or eleven slaves." Enslaved African Americans sought fellow company through taverns, churches, workplaces, and their owners' kitchens. [17]

The territorial government of Tennessee rapidly passed laws similar to those in slave states to restrict the lives of enslaved persons, denying slaves the right to property, to bear arms (unless designated as the huntsman of their plantation), and to sell goods. [18]

Early statehood

In the 1790 Census, there were 361 free persons of color in Tennessee, and 3,417 people living in slavery. [11] Under Tennessee's first constitution, drafted in 1795 and effective with statehood in 1796, free Blacks were not restricted from voting, although there is no evidence they were permitted to do so in practice. [19]

As in several other states following the American Revolution, in the first three decades of the 1800s, public sentiment supporting the abolition of slavery swelled in Tennessee. The legislature passed an 1826 law that prohibited bringing slaves into the state for purposes of sale, rather than the direct use of their labor. [20] Freedmen were required "without fail [to] have [their] emancipation records with [them] at any time and place in order to prove [their] freedom." [20] In 1831, following Nat Turner's Rebellion in Virginia, however, the state government mandated that emancipated slaves must immediately depart the state, and prohibited the migration of free Blacks to Tennessee. Planters were fearful of the influence of free Blacks on enslaved persons.

By the 1834 State Constitutional Convention in Nashville, delegates defeated a proposal for gradual abolition of slavery, to take place over a twenty-year period. [21] [22] Despite wide-ranging debate, the pro-slavery faction was victorious across the board. The new constitution formally forbade Blacks from voting, whether slave or free. [21] It also stripped the legislature of any "power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of their owner or owners." The right to bear arms was restricted to "the free white men of this State." [23]

"50 Negroes for Sale" from Virginia and Maryland, The Memphis Daily Eagle, February 16, 1849 50 Negroes for Sale 1849 Memphis Byrd Hill.jpg
"50 Negroes for Sale" from Virginia and Maryland, The Memphis Daily Eagle, February 16, 1849

In 1855 the state repealed its 30-year-ban prohibiting interstate slave trading, [24] reflecting that Memphis slave-traders like Bolton, Dickens, & Co., Byrd Hill, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, had openly flouted this law for many years. [25]

Civil War and Reconstruction

Tennessee was the last state to join the Confederacy, on June 24, 1861. Union forces identified Nashville as an immediate target, because it had a strategic location on the Cumberland River and railroad lines. It fell to Union troops in February 1862. Union forces moving down the Mississippi River captured Memphis, Tennessee from the Confederacy in the Battle of Memphis on June 6, 1862. While under Union control, both cities swelled with freed slaves and other refugees. In 1860 around 3,000 African Americans lived in Memphis, but by war's end, some twenty thousand had congregated in the area, many south of the city. [26]

After the United States Colored Troops were established in 1863, African-American troops in the Union Army became a symbol of new social equality. They disrupted longstanding patterns of racial deference, publicly bore arms, and were seen to receive respect of white officers. [27] Many Southern whites in Memphis and Nashville resented these changes.

Freedmen's schoolhouse burned, Memphis riots of 1866, as illustrated in Harper's Weekly. Freedmen's Schoolhouse Burns in 1866 Memphis Riot.jpg
Freedmen's schoolhouse burned, Memphis riots of 1866, as illustrated in Harper's Weekly.

In the aftermath of the war, Memphis became the scene of tensions between white authorities and African American soldiers. The troops effectively countermanded the proposal by Freedmen's Bureau superintendent Nathan A. M. Dudley to arrest jobless blacks and send them into contract labor on rural plantations. Black military police also resisted efforts by local white police (who were predominately ethnic Irish immigrants and their descendants) to close dance houses patronized by whites and to enforce prewar customs of Black deference.

After the last Black soldiers at Fort Pickering were discharged on April 30, 1866, confrontation arose. Newly in the status of veterans, armed Blacks confronted police who attempted to arrest one of them. Both sides exchanged gunfire, and a police officer was killed. The veterans retreated to Fort Pickering, where they were disarmed by Union officials. An uncontrolled, police-organized posse, which included white laborers, firemen, and small proprietors, began a two-day pillage and massacre of black neighborhoods of Memphis, while white Union soldiers led by Union General Stoneman did not intervene until the second day. The Army had only recently ended martial law in the city, which restored civilian control in Memphis. These Memphis riots of 1866 resulted in the deaths of 46 blacks and 2 whites, over 100 beatings and robberies of blacks, 5 reported rapes, and the destruction by fire of 91 homes, 4 churches and 12 schools (all black). Some white missionaries who were known to be teachers of or sympathetic to blacks were also beaten or threatened, after which some fled Memphis. [28] [29]

Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow

No hospital in Tennessee served African Americans until the Millie E. Hale Hospital was established in Nashville in July 1916 by Dr. John Henry Hale and Millie E. Hale, who were husband and wife. [30] [31]

Civil Rights Movement

In 1956, Clinton High School was the first public school in the state to be desegregated by federal court order. On August 26, 1956, the Clinton 12: Jo Ann Allen, Bobby Cain, Anna Theresser Caswell, Minnie Ann Dickey, Gail Ann Epps, Ronald Hayden, William Latham, Alvah J. McSwain, Maurice Soles, Robert Thacker, Regina Turner, and Alfred Williams, walked from the Green McAdoo School to the high school. On September 1 white supremacists John Kasper and Asa Carter incited cross burnings and violence. The National Guard was deployed to Clinton for two months to suppress the violence. On October 5, 1958, Clinton High School was bombed, but no one was injured. The city bussed students to Oak Ridge until 1960. [32]

Activists in Nashville and Memphis played central roles in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1957, Nashville public schools began to be desegregated using the "stair-step" plan as proposed by Dan May. Some whites protested integration and a bomb was detonated at Hattie Cotton Elementary School. No one was killed, and after that, the desegregation plan proceeded without violence. [33] On February 13, 1960, hundreds of college students involved in the Nashville Student Movement launched a sit-in campaign to desegregate lunch counters throughout the city. Although their efforts were initially met with violence and arrests, the protesters eventually succeeded in pressuring local businesses to end the practice of racial segregation. Many of the activists involved in the Nashville sit-ins—including James Bevel, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis and others—went on to organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This emerged as one of the most influential organizations of the civil rights movement. The first action credited to SNCC was the 1961 Nashville Open Theater Movement, which James Bevel developed the strategy for and directed tactics. It succeeded in desegregating the city's theaters. Nashville also became the site for revival of the Freedom Riders journey by bus in 1961 after the original riders from Washington, D.C., were stopped in Birmingham, Alabama by extreme violence. Numerous college students joined the movement to ride interstate buses into the Deep South, challenging state segregation rules. [34]

In 1968 a sanitation workers' strike in Memphis was linked to both the Civil Rights Movement and the Poor People's Campaign. Prominent minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. went to the city in support of the striking workers. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel, the day after giving his prophetic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at the Mason Temple. The white assassin, James Earl Ray, was a racist escaped convict who had no previous connection to the city. [35]

Political power

When Tennessee was admitted as a state, most of the African Americans there were enslaved and had no political rights. Some free people of color also lived in the state and were allowed to vote but a new law passed in 1834 deprived them of the right to vote. After the American Civil War, the state's ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments resulted in African-American men being granted the right to vote in 1866. By the end of 1867, around 40,000 African Americans had joined the voter rolls, generally joining the Republican Party. [36]

From 1873 to 1888, thirteen African Americans were elected as Republicans to the Tennessee House of Representatives, mostly in the post-Reconstruction era. Among them, David Foote Rivers was elected twice to represent Fayette County as a Republican in 1882 and 1884; however, he was driven out of the county by racial violence and was unable to serve his second term. [37] Jesse M. H. Graham was elected to represent Montgomery County in 1896. By then the sole Black member of the legislature, he was stripped of his seat due to a residency requirement (he had lived in Louisville, Kentucky until October 1895). The Tennessee State Library and Archives notes, "According to several newspaper reports, the General Assembly soon [after] passed a bill blocking the election of black candidates." [38]

Discriminatory ballot restrictions designed to disenfranchise Black voters were enacted via the Dortch Law of 1889. No African American was elected to the Tennessee legislature from 1888 through 1962. Archie Walter Willis Jr. became the first Black legislator in Tennessee in over seven decades in 1964, after passage of the federal Civil Rights Act that year.

Today in the early 21st century, African Americans make up 13% of the legislature; they are all registered Democrats, having aligned with the party that supported the civil rights movement. [39] No African American has been elected governor or lieutenant governor of Tennessee.

In the early 20th century, many cities adopted a city commissioner form of government. At the time, it was considered progressive, in an effort to supersede what was known as machine politics in cities. It called for all city commissioner positions to be elected at-large. In practice, that meant that only candidates who could each attract a majority of voters could be elected. In majority-white cities, this form of government generally resulted in even substantial minority groups of voters being unable to elect candidates of their choice. Such was the case in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was majority white and affiliated with the Republican Party. Twelve Black residents filed a federal civil rights suit against the city, Brown v. Board of Commissioners of the City of Chattanooga (1987). The court ruled in favor of the African-American plaintiffs. In 1989 the city's governing body was changed to a 9-member council with members elected from 9 single-member districts, defined by census tract and racial demographics. Three districts had a majority of African-American residents, and they comprised the majority of the city's 36% African-American population, most of whose voters were members of the Democratic Party. In 2017 four African Americans (1 incumbent, 3 new candidates) were elected to the Chattanooga City Council.

Willie Wilbert Herenton was the first African American elected as Mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. (J. O. Patterson Jr. was appointed to that office during 1982.) [40] He served five terms from 1991 to 2009. His two successors, Myron Lowery (pro tem, 2009) and A C Wharton (2009-2015). Wharton had previously served as Shelby County's first African-American mayor.

Education

As of 2012, African Americans make up a larger share of the public school system than of the population as a whole. In that year, 230,556 African American students attended pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade public schools, 23.6% of the 935,317 students enrolled overall. [41]

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education , schooling in Tennessee continues to be substantially segregated by race, while influenced strongly by suburbanization and changes to housing patterns, as well as changes to demographics in many areas. During the 2011–12 school year, 44.8% of African-American students in Tennessee public schools attended schools that had more than 90% minority students (this is the 9th highest percentage in the nation). Some 25.3% attended majority-white schools. [42]

Racial integration in higher education was prohibited by the 1870 state constitution, passed during the Reconstruction era and a compromise in order to gain support for public education in the lower grades. In 1937 and 1939 the University of Tennessee denied admission to seven African Americans. It admitted its first African-American student, Gene Gray, in 1952 under a court ruling the prior year that ended the integration ban for graduate and professional students. [43] Following Brown v. Board of Education and the 1960 Nashville sit-in movement, the UT Board of Trustees announced an end to racial discrimination in admissions on November 18, 1960. [43]

In 2014–15, 1,802 of the university's 27,410 students were African American. [44] Memphis State University was integrated in 1959 with the admission of the Memphis State Eight, eight African-American students. These students were initially required to remain on campus only for the duration of their classes. Today, Black students make up more than one-third of the campus student body, and they participate fully in all campus activities.

Tennessee is the site of seven historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The racially integrated and abolitionist American Missionary Association established eleven universities in the aftermath of the Civil War, including two in Tennessee, LeMoyne Normal and Commercial School at Camp Shiloh in 1862, and Fisk Free Colored School in Nashville in 1866. LeMoyne moved to Memphis in 1863 and is now incorporated in LeMoyne-Owen College; Fisk developed as the prestigious Fisk University. The Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School, the only publicly funded HBCU in the state, began serving students in 1912. Renamed several times, having developed its curriculum and merged with the predominantly white University of Tennessee at Nashville in 1979, it is now known as Tennessee State University. The remaining HBCUs are: Knoxville College (1875), Meharry Medical College (1876), Lane College (1882), and American Baptist College (1924).

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civil rights movement</span> 1954–1968 U.S. social movement

The civil rights movement was a social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century and had its modern roots in the 1940s, although the movement made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desegregation busing</span> Failed attempt to racially diversify American public schools

Race-integration busing was a failed attempt to diversify the racial make-up of schools in the United States by sending students to school districts other than their own. While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely uni-racial. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deep South</span> Cultural region of the United States

The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on plantations and slavery. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the region suffered economic hardship and was a major site of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era. Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South. The Deep South is part of the highly-religious, socially conservative Bible Belt and is currently a Republican Party stronghold.

An African American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the black populations of Africa. African American-related topics include:

<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.

The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans. In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights." Although Black Codes existed before the Civil War and although many Northern states had them, the Southern U.S. states codified such laws in everyday practice. The best known of these laws were passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and in order to compel them to work for either low or no wages.

This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nashville sit-ins</span> Nonviolent protests against racial segregation in Tennessee (1960)

The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success and its emphasis on disciplined nonviolence. It was part of a broader sit-in movement that spread across the southern United States in the wake of the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Z. Alexander Looby</span> American politician (1899–1972)

Zephaniah Alexander Looby was a lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee, who was active in the civil rights movement. Born in the British West Indies, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 15; he earned degrees at Howard University, Columbia University Law School and New York University.

This article pertains to the history of Nashville, the state capital of Tennessee. Native Americans had not lived in the area in the century before a frontier post of Fort Nashborough was built here in 1779 by pioneers from North Carolina. In 1784 it was incorporated as a town by the North Carolina legislature; it became a city in 1806. In 1843 it became the state capital. In the Civil War Nashville was seized by Federal troops in 1862 and became a major Union military base. Confederate General J. B. Hood was decisively defeated in the Battle of Nashville in 1864. The city became the political, transportation, business and cultural center of the Middle Tennessee region. Besides the state government, it is best known for its educational, musical and religious establishments. In 1963 Nashville and Davidson County were consolidated under a single charter and are administered by a mayor and a council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Memphis, Tennessee</span>

The history of Memphis, Tennessee and its area began many thousands of years ago with succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples. In the first millennium, it was settled by the Mississippian culture. The Chickasaw Indian tribe emerged about the 17th century, or migrated into the area. The earliest European exploration may have encountered remnants of the Mississippian culture by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Later French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle likely encountered the Chickasaw. The city of Memphis was not founded until 1819. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River in North Africa.

The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School segregation in the United States</span> Racial separation in schools

School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity. While not prohibited from having schools, various minorities were barred from most schools, schools for whites. Segregation laws were dismantled in 1954 by the U.S. Supreme Court because of the successes being attained during the Civil Rights Movement. Segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the Southern United States after the Civil War. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated school laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990. Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Americans in South Carolina</span> Largest racial and ethnic minority in South Carolina, United States

Black South Carolinians are residents of the state of South Carolina who are of African American ancestry. This article examines South Carolina's history with an emphasis on the lives, status, and contributions of African Americans. Enslaved Africans first arrived in the region in 1526, and the institution of slavery remained until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Until slavery's abolition, the free black population of South Carolina never exceeded 2%. Beginning during the Reconstruction Era, African Americans were elected to political offices in large numbers, leading to South Carolina's first majority-black government. Toward the end of the 1870s however, the Democratic Party regained power and passed laws aimed at disenfranchising African Americans, including the denial of the right to vote. Between the 1870s and 1960s, African Americans and whites lived segregated lives; people of color and whites were not allowed to attend the same schools or share public facilities. African Americans were treated as second-class citizens leading to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. In modern America, African Americans constitute 22% of the state's legislature, and in 2014, the state's first African American U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, Tim Scott, was elected. In 2015, the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina Statehouse after the Charleston church shooting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Carroll Napier</span>

James Carroll Napier was an American businessman, lawyer, politician, and civil rights leader from Nashville, Tennessee, who served as Register of the Treasury from 1911 to 1913. He is one of only five African Americans with their signatures on American currency. He was one of four African-American politicians appointed to a government positions under President William Howard Taft, sometimes referred to as Taft's "Black Cabinet." He was instrumental in founding civic institutions in Nashville to benefit the African-American business community and residents including educational opportunities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Southerners</span> African Americans living in the Southern United States

Black Southerners are African Americans living in the Southern United States, the United States region with the largest black population.

Black Kentuckians are residents of the state of Kentucky who are of African ancestry. The history of Blacks in the US state of Kentucky starts at the same time as the history of White Americans; Black Americans settled Kentucky alongside white explorers such as Daniel Boone. As of 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans make up 8.5% of Kentucky's population. Compared to the rest of the population, the African American census racial category is the 2nd largest.

African Americans have made considerable contributions to the history and development of Jacksonville, Florida. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population make up of African American in Jacksonville Florida is 30.7%.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racism against African Americans</span>

In the context of racism in the United States, racism against African Americans dates back to the colonial era, and it continues to be a persistent issue in American society in the 21st century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Americans in Arkansas</span> Racial group in the US state

African Americans have played an essential role in the history of Arkansas, but their role has often been marginalized as they confronted a society and polity controlled by white supremacists. During the slavery era to 1865, they were considered property and were subjected to the harsh conditions of forced labor. After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstuction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, African Americans gained their freedom and the right to vote. However, the rise of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s and early 1900s led to a period of segregation and discrimination that lasted into the 1960s. Most were farmers, working their own property or poor sharecroppers on white-owned land, or very poor day laborers. By World War I, there was steady emigration from farms to nearby cities such as Little Rock and Memphis, as well as to St. Louis and Chicago.

References

  1. ↑ "Tennessee's Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity among 2020 Headlines". Tennessee State Data Center: Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research. 23 September 2021.
  2. ↑ "Tennessee's Black Population".
  3. ↑ 17.0% refers to those who selected Black or African American, and no other race in the 2010 Census. U.S. Census Bureau. "Tennessee QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". USA QuickFacts. Archived from the original on 2015-02-07. Retrieved 2015-02-07.
  4. ↑ "U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Tennessee". www.census.gov. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
  5. ↑ "Slavery".
  6. ↑ "Civil Rights Movement".
  7. ↑ J. Blaine Hudson (2015). Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad. McFarland. p. 216. ISBN   9781476602301.
  8. ↑ This figure refers to those who report African-American and no other race.
  9. ↑ Tennessee: 2010 Summary Population and Housing Characteristics, US Census Bureau, CPH-1-44
  10. ↑ U.S. Census Bureau. "Memphis (city) QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". USA QuickFacts. Archived from the original on 2015-02-07. Retrieved 2015-02-07.
  11. 1 2 Imes, William Lloyd (1919-07-01). "The Legal Status of Free Negroes and Slaves in Tennessee". The Journal of Negro History. 4 (3): 254–272. doi:10.2307/2713777. ISSN   0022-2992. JSTOR   2713777. S2CID   149550039.
  12. ↑ Forstall, Richard L.; United States Bureau of the Census Population Division (1996). Population of states and counties of the United States: 1790 to 1990 from the twenty-one decennial censuses. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Population Division. ISBN   9780934213486.
  13. 1 2 Patterson, Caleb Perry (1922). The Negro in Tennessee, 1790-1865: A Study in Southern Politics. University of Texas Bulletin. University of Texas. p. 212. Retrieved 2015-02-22.
  14. ↑ Franklin, Sekou; Block Jr., Ray (2020). "Chapter 2: Black Politics in Tennessee From the Antebellum Period to the Twenty-First Century". Losing Power: African Americans and Racial Polarization in Tennessee Politics. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
  15. ↑ "most slaves in both states came from approximately half a dozen countries in West Africa" Cumfer, Cynthia (2007). Separate peoples, one land: The minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee frontier. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. 127. ISBN   9780807831519.
  16. 1 2 Cumfer, Cynthia (2007). Separate peoples, one land: The minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee frontier. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. 129. ISBN   9780807831519.
  17. ↑ Cumfer, Cynthia (2007). Separate peoples, one land: The minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee frontier. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 129–31. ISBN   9780807831519.
  18. ↑ Imes, William Lloyd (1919-07-01). "The Legal Status of Free Negroes and Slaves in Tennessee". The Journal of Negro History. 4 (3): 257. doi:10.2307/2713777. ISSN   0022-2992. JSTOR   2713777. S2CID   149550039.
  19. ↑ Imes, William Lloyd (1919-07-01). "The Legal Status of Free Negroes and Slaves in Tennessee". The Journal of Negro History. 4 (3): 261. doi:10.2307/2713777. ISSN   0022-2992. JSTOR   2713777. S2CID   149550039.
  20. 1 2 Imes, William Lloyd (1919-07-01). "The Legal Status of Free Negroes and Slaves in Tennessee". The Journal of Negro History. 4 (3): 260. doi:10.2307/2713777. ISSN   0022-2992. JSTOR   2713777. S2CID   149550039.
  21. 1 2 Imes, William Lloyd (1919-07-01). "The Legal Status of Free Negroes and Slaves in Tennessee". The Journal of Negro History. 4 (3): 261. doi:10.2307/2713777. ISSN   0022-2992. JSTOR   2713777. S2CID   149550039.
  22. ↑ Morrison, Michael A.; Stewart, James Brewer (2002). Race and the early republic : racial consciousness and nation-building in the early republic. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 147. ISBN   0742521303.
  23. ↑ Laska, Lewis L (1990). The Tennessee State Constitution: a reference guide. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN   9780313266539.
  24. ↑ "Slavery and the Making of America Timeline". PBS (thirteen.org). Retrieved 2023-07-18.
  25. ↑ Bancroft, Frederic (2023) [1931]. Slave Trading in the Old South . Southern Classics Series. Introduction by Michael Tadman. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 271–272. ISBN   978-1-64336-427-8.
  26. ↑ Shaffer, Donald Robert (2004). After the glory: The struggles of Black Civil War veterans . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. p.  33. ISBN   9780700613281.
  27. ↑ Shaffer, Donald Robert (2004). After the glory: The struggles of Black Civil War veterans . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. p.  34. ISBN   9780700613281.
  28. ↑ United States Congress, House Select Committee on the Memphis Riots, Memphis Riots and Massacres, 25 July 1866, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office (reprinted by Arno Press, Inc., 1969)
  29. ↑ Ash, Stephen V. (2013). A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year after the Civil War. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. ISBN   978-0-8090-6830-2.
  30. ↑ Rice, Mitchell F.; Rice, Mitchell F.; Jones, Woodrow (1994). Public Policy and the Black Hospital: From Slavery to Segregation to Integration. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 65. ISBN   978-0-313-26309-5.
  31. ↑ Hart-Brothers, Elaine (1994). "Contributions of Women of Color to the Health Care of America". In Friedman, Emily (ed.). An Unfinished Revolution: Women and Health Care in America. Friedman, Emily. New York: United Hospital Fund of New York. p. 208. ISBN   1-881277-17-8. OCLC   29877915.
  32. ↑ About the Center
  33. ↑ John Egerton, "Walking into History: The Beginning of School Desegregation in Nashville Archived 2010-03-28 at the Wayback Machine ," Southern Spaces, May 4, 2009.
  34. ↑ Arsenault, Raymond, 2006. Freedom Riders. Oxford University Press.
  35. ↑ Hampton, Sides. Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, Doubleday Books, 2010, 480 pp.
  36. ↑ Wright, Sharon D. (2000-09-01). "The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators". Journal of Black Studies. 31 (1): 3–19. doi:10.1177/002193470003100101. ISSN   0021-9347. JSTOR   2645929. S2CID   144185212.
  37. ↑ Tennessee State Library and Archives (2011). "David Foote Rivers". Archived from the original ("This Honorable Body": African American Legislators in 19th Century Tennessee) on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-02-09.
  38. ↑ Tennessee State Library and Archives (2011). "Jesse M. H. Graham". Archived from the original ("This Honorable Body": African American Legislators in 19th Century Tennessee) on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-02-09.
  39. ↑ Siner, Emily (2015-01-21). "Tennessee's Legislature Is Mostly Male, Even More White And Virtually All Christian". WPLN Nashville Public Radio. Retrieved 2015-02-09.
  40. ↑ "Little Known Black History Fact: Willie Herenton". blackamericaweb.com. 23 April 2018.
  41. ↑ Tennessee Department of Education (2012). "State Profile". Report Card. Archived from the original on 2015-02-09. Retrieved 2015-02-09.
  42. ↑ Orfield, Gary; Erica Frankenberg (2014-05-15). Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future. The Civil Rights Project, University of California at Los Angeles. p. 20.
  43. 1 2 UT Knoxville. "UT Desegregation Timeline". Celebrating 50 years of African American Achievement. Retrieved 2015-02-09.
  44. ↑ UTK Office of Institutional Research & Assessment (2014). "Enrollment Data: 2014-2015". Factbook. Archived from the original on 2015-02-09. Retrieved 2015-02-09.

Further reading

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.