Art Protesting A Particular War Was First Seen? Top Answer Update

In Las Meninas, what does Velazquez reveal about the Infanta Margarita by placing her in the center of the painting, surrounded by dwarfs, chaperones, and ladies-in-waiting?

The 1830 revolution resulted in a constitutional monarchy, but still only a small percentage of the population had the right to vote.

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The depiction of Liberty follows the classical tradition in the profile pose, but also appears more real, less ideal than classical figures.

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It depicts a scene at a street barricade on the cobbled streets of Paris during the French Revolution of 1830.

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Learn why the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahān decided to build the Taj Mahal.

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Kara Walker is an African-American artist who creates life-size, cut-out silhouette figures based on racist imagery of slave-era America.

Alongside millions of idealistic young men blown to pieces by machine guns and obliterated by artillery shells, there was another great casualty of World War I: traditional notions of Western art.

The Great War of 1914-18 tilted culture on its axis, particularly in Europe and the United States. Nearly 100 years later, that legacy is wrestled with in film, fine art, music, television shows like the oh-so-nostalgic PBS soap Downton Abbey, and plays like the Tony Award-winning War Horse, which concludes its run at the Ahmanson Theater .

“It created an epoch in art,” said Leo Braudy, USC Professor of English and author of From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. “The question is, what was on one side and what on the other?”

The simple answer to what lay just before World War I is modernism, that slippery but indispensable term that describes a wide range of new sensibilities and aesthetic responses to the industrial age. Modernity took shape decades before World War I, but its vociferous arrival was greatly accelerated by what was then history’s greatest collective trauma.

From the fiction of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and John Dos Passos to the brutally critical paintings and etchings of George Grosz and Otto Dix, World War I reshaped the notion of what art is, just as it reshaped perceptions of what War is forever changed. Although World War II inflicted further catastrophic losses of blood and treasure, World War I remains the paradigmatic conflict of modernity, not only politically but also culturally.

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“Of all wars, that seems to us to explain best,” said Michael Morpurgo, the English author of the novel War Horse, of the death-defying union of a Devonshire farm boy and his noble steed, Joey, the National Theater of Great Britain’s production is based on.

In his country in particular, he said, World War I resonated louder than the even greater catastrophe that followed 20 years later. “The First World War for the British people is an integral part of who we are,” Morpurgo said during a visit to Los Angeles. “It’s so deep within us; the poetry, the stories, the loss, the suffering can be found in every village cemetery.”

During and after World War I, the flowery Victorian language was blown apart and replaced by more sinewy and R-rated prose styles. In the visual arts, Surrealists and Expressionists imagined shaky, dismembered perspectives and nightmarish visions of broken human bodies and fragmented societies approaching moral chaos.

“The entire landscape of the Western Front became surrealist before the term surrealism was coined by the soldier-poet Guillaume Apollinaire,” wrote Modris Eksteins in Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age.

Across Western art, the grim realities of industrial warfare provoked a backlash against the propaganda and grandiose nationalism that had started the conflagration. Cynicism toward the ruling classes and abhorrence of war planners and profiteers led to calls for honest and direct art forms less rhetoric and euphemism.

“Abstract words such as fame, honor, courage, or sanctuary were obscene next to the concrete names of villages, street numbers, river names, regiment numbers, and dates,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms, his 1929 novel based on his experiences in the Italian campaign.

Other artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. “These fragments have I leaned against my ruins,” T.S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land (1922).

In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell argued that the rise of irony as the dominant mode of modern understanding “rose largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War”.

Irony and dissonant humor permeated the music of classical composers such as Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten, a pacifist who parodied the pomposity of a brass band in his Piano Concerto in D. British director Derek Jarman suggested a parallel between the indifferent carnage of World War I and the neglect of AIDS-infected young men in the 1980s.

Fears that powerful new machines invented to serve mankind might instead destroy them also had roots in World War I and later spread to science fiction and the debates surrounding modern-day aerial drone warfare. “The First World War definitely gives a push forward to the idea of ​​dystopia rather than utopia, the idea that the world is going to get worse rather than better,” Braudy said.

When war broke out in the summer of 1914, artists were among his biggest cheerleaders. Britain and France, the dominant military and cultural powers of 19th-century Europe, saw the war as necessary to consolidate the continental status quo, while Germany saw it as an opportunity to “cleanse” Europe of political stagnation and cultural malaise.

“War! We felt cleansed, liberated, we felt tremendous hope,” wrote Thomas Mann in 1914. It was only years later that the German author, in his novels “The Magic Mountain” and “Dr. Faustus”, who portrayed Europe gripped by a mass psychosis, gave up represented during the war.

Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg first drew analogies “between the German army’s attack on decadent France and his own attack on decadent bourgeois values” and music, as New York music critic Alex Ross notes in “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” writes. ” “Now comes the reckoning!” Schoenberg wrote to Alma Mahler. “Now we shall throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery and teach them to honor the German spirit and worship the German God.”

For Morpurgo, the essence of how World War I shaped modern consciousness is found in the works of a generation of English poets and writers such as Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, all of whom served in uniform.

In the early months of the conflict, Brooke penned the wistfully patriotic The Soldier, in which she expressed the hope that if he were to die in battle, in “some corner of a strange field / That’s England forever” his would find final rest. Three years later, Owen, who like Brooke would not survive the war, wrote in Dulce et Decorum Est with outright anger at the horrors of gas attacks and the obscene futility of combat.

The ruinous slaughter of war to end all wars has come to be seen as emblematic of all misguided military actions and the societies that support them. George Bernard Shaw’s 1920 play Heartbreak House and films such as Jean Renoir’s classic The Grand Illusion (1937) and Peter Weir’s Gallipoli (1981) dramatize the class interests and divisions that propelled the war. Other films like Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, the peace-and-love hippie ethos of 1966’s King of Hearts, and the grotesque Vietnam-era variety show choreography Oh, What a Lovely War! (1969 ) underscore the notion that times of war mean the insane takeover of the asylum.

But perhaps the war’s most enduring legacy, and one of its few positives, was its emphasis not on the strategies of emperors and field marshals, but on the personal stories of the untitled individuals who actually fought and died in it.

The impulse to remember and honor the hardships of the common foot soldier creates a direct link between Charles Sargeant Jagger’s Royal Artillery Memorial on London’s Hyde Park Corner, with its bronze figure of a dead soldier covered by a blanket, and Maya Lin’s abstract, silent work worthy Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Amy Lyford, professor of art history and fine arts at Occidental College, said that surrealism developed in part out of artists’ desire to depict the massive trauma war inflicted on individuals. Meanwhile, she said, the post-WWI ruling classes sought to “cover up” these wounds with plastic surgery, both literally in the case of maimed veterans fitted with newfangled prosthetics, and culturally.

“There was a kind of aestheticization of the trauma,” said Lyford, author of Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France.

Today, Lyford said, some contemporary artists are exploring how “stories of redemption and therapy” are being used to cover up the actual and metaphorical wounds of 21st-century warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The fragmentation is real,” Lyford said. “It’s not just something you sew up with stitches and move on.”

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By Dawn Brancati

Art is used to promote war. Monarchs, dictators, and elected world leaders have all commissioned artists to create propaganda to elicit popular support for wars and urge the public to make material sacrifices needed to keep wars going.

In their work, these artists have portrayed the opposing side as aggressive, powerful, and ferocious in order to incite hostility and fear for the opposing side. To evoke a sense of nationalism and pride among countrymen, they depicted victories on the battlefield, and to emphasize the need for continued support, they depicted the toll of war on soldiers and citizens.

Although propaganda art is not generally technically strong or stylistically innovative, some well-known artists, such as Norman Rockwell, have produced war art propaganda.

Art is used to fight war. Just as governments have commissioned artists to generate support for wars, anti-war organizations have commissioned artists to undermine sympathy for, and undermine material support for, wars. Of course, many artists have also independently produced art to promote peace.

In their work, these artists have emphasized the need to end wars by depicting their brutality, and sought to inspire empathy for their opponents by showing the suffering their opponents endured at the hands of their countries. They have also used satire to poke fun at the impotence and values ​​of their countries’ leaders.

Unlike art propaganda, anti-war art historically has an artistic value. Well-known artists who have created important anti-war artworks include painters Pablo Picasso and Francisco Goya, photographer Marc Riboud, and muralist Banksy.

Art, or rather the destruction of art, is used to demoralize opponents in war. Important works of art and architecture were not only unintentionally destroyed in the course of wars, but they were also intentionally destroyed by combatants as a military strategy to discourage opponents and bolster support among supporters by demonstrating the combatants’ strength and determination. Combatants have also blamed their opponents, sometimes wrongly, for artworks and architecture destroyed in conflicts to demonstrate the affront their opponents take to their history, values ​​and culture.

Important sites recently destroyed as a war strategy include the Great al-Nuri Mosque and the Baalshamin and Bel temples in Palmyra, Syria.

Art is looted in war. Looted art was also used to finance wars. It is impossible to determine exactly how much money ISIS made from looted art, but Russia estimates that ISIS makes between $150 million and $200 million annually from the illicit antiques trade. Looted art was also used to reward military and political leaders, and was also confiscated by those leaders to reward themselves.

To prevent stolen art from being used to fund wars, museums and other cultural institutions have offered to house looted art until it can be safely returned to the countries of origin. At the same time, international organizations including the United Nations and the European Union, as well as individual countries such as Canada and the United States, have banned the import of art and antiques from conflict-torn countries. Unfortunately, however, these bans are easily circumvented and protocols such as those used to certify diamonds as conflict free under the Kimberley Process do not exist for art and antiques.

Art is used to recover from war. After the war ended, art was also used to raise funds for soldiers injured in the course of wars and to support refugees who were driven out of them. Art was also used as part of DDR strategies to provide employment for ex-combatants and to emotionally rehabilitate ex-combatants. Artists have even used the weapons of war to create art. Examples of programs devoted to transforming weapons into art include the Transforming Arms into Plowshares project and the Peace of Art project, run by Neil Wilford and Sasha Constable, the landscape painter’s great-great-great-granddaughter John Constable, was launched.

Friedrich achieves the still calmness of his painting by emphasizing horizontal lines and the wide sky that dominates the open composition. Its breadth is emphasized by the small scale of the solitary figure. Shown with his back to the viewer, Friedrich’s monk encourages the viewer to take their place and stare out to sea.

In contrast, Géricault uses diagonal lines and a turbulent ocean to enliven the narrative presented. The composition is crowded to draw the viewer’s attention to the mass of bodies on the raft, which appear to be crowding outwards into the viewer’s space.

The title “Der Heuwagen” refers to the wooden wagon (wagon) used for transporting cut and dried meadow grass (hay). The empty wagon makes its way through the shallow water to reach the meadow on the other side where the hired hands are at work.

The view is of the Millpond at Flatford on the River Stour. Flatford Mill was a water mill used to grind corn and was operated by the Constable family for almost a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace in East Bergholt, Suffolk. The house on the left is also preserved; In Constable’s time it was occupied by the tenant Willy Lott.

This is the third of the large landscapes around the River Stour that Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1825. The Hay Wagon was shown in 1821, a year after the Stratford Mill. Part of his determination to capture the rural Suffolk countryside of his childhood in these monumental paintings must be a feeling that this way of life was changing because of rapid industrialization – the factories, Steam power and locomotives, which appear in the works of his contemporaries, such as Turner, are absent from Constable’s paintings.

The view is of the Millpond in Flatford. Flatford Mill was a water mill used to grind corn, leased and operated by the Constable family for almost a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace in East Bergholt, Suffolk. The mill is not visible in The Hay Wain – we only see the edge of its red brick wall on the far right. The building on the left is the house that has also been preserved and was occupied by the tenant Willy Lott in Constable’s time. Although Constable’s parents had moved from the mill house to an apartment building in East Bergholt before he was born, he would have known this view of Willy Lott’s house very well.

The painting’s title refers to the wooden wagon (wagon) used to transport cut and dried meadow grass (hay) used as cattle fodder in winter. The empty wagon makes its way through the shallow millpond to a ford across the brook – the ‘flat ford’ that gave Flatford its name. The front wheel of the wagon is already turning to the right towards the ford, which allows it to get to the meadow on the other side. There are haymakers at work: one sharpens his scythe, others in the distance shovel hay into an already loaded wagon. A man can just be seen from above, stacking the load.

Although the painting evokes a Suffolk scene, it was created in the artist’s London studio. Over the years Constable had made many drawings and oil sketches of Willy Lott’s farmhouse; Its red roofs and chimneys, whitewashed walls and brick piers appear in several of Constable’s Stour scenes. His earliest oil study of it was probably painted in 1802. In painting The Hay Wain Constable made particular reference to three small oil sketches of the house he had made in 1811. The jug beside her has been retained in the same pose and position in the last picture. Constable made a small preliminary oil sketch showing the Hay Wagon itself circa 1820 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven). A full-scale oil sketch to develop the composition followed (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), which Constable quickly painted, leaving large areas of the canvas’s brown ground free. The horse and rider in the foreground of the oil sketch were retained in the final painting but later colored in.

The small empty boat on the right is based on an 1809 study by Constable – used as early as 1819 in The White Horse (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and later again in Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh). . from 1831. It demonstrates Constable’s frugality with his source materials, his instinct for local detail and his ability to balance a composition – small as it is, the boat balances the house on the left and the hay wagon in the middle. The thick red fringes that adorn the horses’ leather collars add a bright color accent.

Scenes showing a cart passing through a ford appear in 17th-century Flemish and Dutch landscape paintings. Constable admired these works for their depiction of the natural rather than the classical landscape that was fashionable in his day. The 1838 sale of Constable’s pictures, which took place after his death, included two landscapes by Jan van Goyen, one with travelers in a cart, one with wagons driving down a hill. Constable was probably encouraged that Flemish painters had made such unheroic events the subject of their paintings. He had also studied Rubens’s An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen and admired it greatly. The idiosyncratic Flemish look of the wagon and the vastness of the composition in The Haywagon may owe to Rubens’s influence. The wagon is not of the usual design of Constable-era hay wagons or carts – its sides are too low for carting hay and it seems better suited for carrying wood. It is also very close to Rubens’ chalk study of a hay cart for Return from the Harvest (National Museums, Berlin). However, Constable generally did not directly copy the work of other artists, preferring to pursue a painting “based on original observation of nature”.

Constable himself did not call this picture The Hay Wain – it was a nickname given to him by his friend Archdeacon Fisher. When it was sent to the Royal Academy in 1821, entitled Landscape: Noon, it was well received by reviewers. The examiner stated that it “closer to the actual appearance of rural nature than any modern landscape ever does”. However, it didn’t sell. Constable was probably unaware at the time that two French visitors to England – the artist Géricault and the writer Nodier – had seen his painting at the Royal Academy. According to Delacroix, Géricault returned to France “quite stunned” by Constable’s picture. Nodier suggested that French artists should look to nature in a similar way, rather than relying on trips to Rome for inspiration (by which he meant imitating the neoclassical landscapes painted by artists like Claude).

In 1824 Constable agreed to sell The Hay Wain, View on the Stour near Dedham and a small Yarmouth Jetty to Anglo-French dealer Arrowsmith for £250. Arrowsmith sent them to the Paris Salon in 1824, where they caused a stir. Constable commented: “Think of the peaceful Suffolk farmhouses which form a scene of exhibitions to amuse the gay and frivolous Parisians.” .Awarded a Gold Medal. The medal is now in the National Gallery archives.

Islam is the second largest world religion after Christianity with around 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. Although its roots go further back, scholars typically date the emergence of Islam to the 7th century, making it the youngest of the major world religions. Islam began in Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia, at the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s life. Today, the belief is spreading rapidly around the world.

Facts about Islam

The word “Islam” means “submission to the will of God”.

Followers of Islam are called Muslims.

Muslims are monotheistic and worship one omniscient god known in Arabic as Allah.

Followers of Islam strive to live a life of complete submission to Allah. They believe that nothing can happen without Allah’s permission, but humans have free will.

Islam teaches that the word of Allah was revealed to Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel.

Muslims believe that several prophets were sent to teach Allah’s law. They respect some of the same prophets as Jews and Christians, including Abraham, Moses, Noah and Jesus. Muslims claim that Muhammad was the last prophet.

Mosques are places where Muslims worship.

Some important Islamic holy sites are the Kaaba Shrine in Mecca, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Mosque of Prophet Muhammad in Medina.

The Koran (or Koran) is the most important sacred text of Islam. The hadith is another important book. Muslims also revere some material found in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Devotees worship Allah by praying and reciting the Quran. They believe there will be a judgment day and life after death.

A central idea in Islam is “Jihad”, which means “fight”. While the term has been used negatively in mainstream culture, Muslims believe it refers to internal and external efforts to defend their faith. Although rare, this can include military jihad when a “just war” is required.

Mohammed

The Prophet Muhammad, sometimes spelled Mohammed or Mohammad, was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in AD 570. Muslims believe that he was the last prophet sent by God to reveal their faith to mankind.

According to Islamic texts and lore, an angel named Gabriel visited Muhammad in AD 610 while he was meditating in a cave. The angel commanded Muhammad to recite the words of Allah.

Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to receive revelations from Allah for the rest of his life.

From about 613, Muhammad began preaching the messages he received throughout Mecca. He taught that there is no other god but Allah and that Muslims should devote their lives to this god.

hijrah

In 622, Muhammad traveled from Mecca to Medina with his followers. This journey became known as Hijra (also spelled Hegira or Hijrah) and marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

About seven years later, Muhammad and his many followers returned to Mecca and conquered the region. He continued to preach until his death in 632.

Abu Bakr

After Muhammad’s death, Islam began to spread rapidly. A series of leaders known as caliphs became successors to Muhammad. This system of governance, led by a Muslim ruler, became known as the caliphate.

The first caliph was Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s father-in-law and close friend.

Abu Bakr died about two years after his election and was succeeded in 634 by Caliph Umar, another of Muhammad’s father-in-laws.

caliphate system

When Umar was assassinated six years after becoming caliph, Uthman, Muhammad’s son-in-law, took over the role.

Uthman was also killed and Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was elected the next caliph.

During the rule of the first four caliphs, Arab Muslims conquered large regions in the Middle East, including Syria, Palestine, Iran and Iraq. Islam also spread to areas in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The caliphate system lasted for centuries, eventually evolving into the Ottoman Empire, which controlled large regions in the Middle East from about 1517 to 1917, when World War I ended Ottoman rule.

Sunni and Shia

When Muhammad died, there was a debate about who should replace him as leader. This led to a schism in Islam, and two major sects emerged: the Sunni and the Shia.

Sunnis make up almost 90 percent of Muslims worldwide. They accept that the first four caliphs were the true successors of Muhammad.

Shia Muslims believe that only Caliph Ali and his descendants are the true successors of Muhammad. They dispute the legitimacy of the first three caliphs. Today, Shia Muslims have a sizeable presence in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Other forms of Islam

Other, smaller Muslim denominations exist within the Sunni and Shia groups. Some of them are:

Wahhabis: This Sunni sect, made up of members of the Tameem tribe in Saudi Arabia, was founded in the 18th century. Adherents observe an extremely strict interpretation of Islam taught by Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab.

: This Sunni sect, made up of members of the Tameem tribe in Saudi Arabia, was founded in the 18th century. Adherents observe an extremely strict interpretation of Islam taught by Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab. Alawites: This Shiite form of Islam is widespread in Syria. Followers hold similar beliefs about Caliph Ali, but also observe some Christian and Zoroastrian holidays.

: This Shiite form of Islam is widespread in Syria. Followers hold similar beliefs about Caliph Ali, but also observe some Christian and Zoroastrian holidays. Nation of Islam: This mostly African-American Sunni sect was founded in Detroit, Michigan in the 1930s.

: This mostly African-American Sunni sect was founded in Detroit, Michigan in the 1930s. Kharijites: This sect split from the Shias after a dispute over choosing a new leader. They are known for radical fundamentalism and are now called Ibadis.

Koran

The Koran. Nazaruddin Abdul Hamed/EyeEm/Getty Images

The Koran (sometimes spelled Koran or Koran) is considered the most important holy book among Muslims.

It includes some basic information found in the Hebrew Bible as well as revelations given to Muhammad. The text is considered the holy word of God and supersedes all previous writings.

Most Muslims believe that Muhammad’s scribes wrote down his words, which became the Koran. (Muhammad himself was never taught to read or write.)

The book is written with Allah as the first person to speak to Muhammad through Gabriel. It contains 114 chapters called suras.

Scholars believe that the Qur’an was compiled under the direction of Caliph Abu Bakr shortly after Muhammad’s death.

READ MORE: Why the Qur’an was a bestseller among Christians in 18th Century America

Islamic calendar

The Islamic calendar, also known as the Hijra calendar, is a lunar calendar used in Islamic religious worship. The calendar began in AD 622 and celebrated the journey of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina.

The Islamic calendar shows the correct days of Islamic holidays and celebrations, including the period of fasting and prayer known as Ramadan, which occurs in the ninth month of the calendar.

Islamic symbols

As in many religions, there is no single image or symbol of Islam that is accepted by all Muslims worldwide.

The crescent moon and star were adopted as a symbol of Islam in some predominantly Muslim countries, although the image of the crescent moon and star is believed to predate Islam and was originally a symbol of the Ottoman Empire.

In some other applications, such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent humanitarian relief movement, a red crescent indicates that adherents of Islam are respected and treated accordingly.

The color green is also sometimes associated with Islam, as it was reportedly a favorite color of Muhammad and is often featured prominently in the flags of predominantly Muslim countries.

Five Pillars of Islam

Muslims follow five pillars that are essential to their faith. These include:

Shahada: professing one’s belief in God and one’s belief in Muhammad

: to declare one’s belief in God and one’s belief in Muhammad Salat : to pray five times a day (at dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening)

: Praying five times a day (at sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening) Zakat : Giving to those in need

: to give to the needy Sawm : to fast during Ramadan

: fasting during Ramadan Hajj: making a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a person’s lifetime, if the person is able to do so

Sharia law

The legal system of Islam is known as Sharia. This faith-based code of conduct instructs Muslims on how they should live in almost every aspect of their lives.

Sharia law requires men and women to dress modestly. It also outlines marriage guidelines and other moral principles for Muslims.

When crimes are committed, Sharia is known for its harsh penalties. For example, the penalty for theft is the amputation of a person’s hand. Adultery can carry the death penalty by stoning. However, many Muslims do not support such extreme measures.

Muslim prayer

The Prophet Mohammed is credited with building the first mosque in the courtyard of his house in Medina. Mosques today follow some of the same principles he established in AD 622.

Muslim prayers are often held in the large open space or courtyard of a mosque. A mihrab is a decorative element or niche in the mosque that indicates the direction to Mecca and therefore the direction to face during prayer.

Men and women pray separately, and Muslims are allowed to visit a mosque five times a day for each of the prayer sessions. In addition to prayer, mosques often function as public gathering places and social centers.

Muslim holidays

The two main Muslim holidays are:

Eid al-Adha: celebrates Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for Allah.

Eid al-Fitr: marks the end of Ramadan – the Islamic holy month of fasting.

Muslims also celebrate other holidays, such as the Islamic New Year and the birth of Muhammad.

Islam today

The supposed association of Islam with terrorism and mass murder has sparked a political debate in many countries in recent years. The controversial term “radical Islam” has become a well-known label to describe religion’s association with acts of violence.

Recent polls have found that in countries with large Muslim populations, the majority of Muslims have overwhelmingly negative views of terrorist groups like ISIS.

As Muslims try to clear up misconceptions about their faith, the religion continues to spread rapidly. Today Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Experts predict that Islam will overtake Christianity as the largest religion by the end of the century.

Sources

Islam, BBC.

Islam: The world’s second largest religion… and growing religious tolerance.

Islam Fast Facts, CNN.

Basic Facts About Islam, PBS.

What is Sharia and how is it applied? BBC.

Much disdain for ISIS in countries with significant Muslim populations. Pew Research Center.

Islamic Rituals and Worship: Symbolism, The Religion Library.

The Islamic calendar: TimeandDate.com.

Kaaba, also spelled Kaʿbah, shrine near the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia and considered the holiest place on earth by Muslims everywhere. Muslims orient themselves to this small shrine during the five daily prayers, bury their dead facing its meridian, and harbor ambitions of visiting it on pilgrimage or Hajj, in accordance with the commandment set forth in the Qur’an.

Mecca: Kaaba Kaaba (Kaʿbah), shrine in the Grand Mosque, Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The cube-shaped structure is about 50 feet (15 meters) high and about 35 by 40 feet (10 by 12 meters) at its base. It is made of gray stone and marble and is oriented so that its corners roughly correspond to the cardinal points. The interior contains nothing but the three pillars supporting the roof and a row of hanging silver and gold lamps. For most of the year the Kaaba is covered with a huge cloth of black brocade called the kiswah.

Mecca: Kaaba The Kaaba (Kaʿbah) surrounded by pilgrims during Hajj, Mecca, Saudi Arabia. © ayazad/Fotolia

Britannica Quiz Islam How much do you know about the Prophet Mohammed? How about holy cities? Test your knowledge of Islam with this quiz.

In the eastern corner of the Kaaba is the Black Stone of Mecca, its now broken pieces surrounded by a stone ring and held together by a heavy silver band. According to tradition, this stone was given to Adam when he was expelled from paradise to obtain forgiveness of his sins. According to legend, the stone was originally white but turned black by absorbing the sins of countless pilgrims who kissed and touched it.

Every Muslim making the pilgrimage must walk around the Kaaba seven times, during which he or she kisses and touches the Black Stone. When the month of pilgrimage (Dhū al-Ḥijjah) is over, a ceremonial ablution of the Kaaba takes place; Religious officials as well as pilgrims attend.

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The early history of the Kaaba is not well known, but it is certain that it was a polytheistic sanctuary and place of pilgrimage for people throughout the Arabian Peninsula before the rise of Islam. The Qur’an says of Abraham and Ishmael that they “laid the foundations” of the Kaaba. The exact meaning is ambiguous, but many Muslims have interpreted the phrase as meaning they rebuilt a shrine first erected by Adam, of which only the foundations remain. The Kaaba has since been destroyed, damaged and then rebuilt several times. In 930, the Black Stone itself was carried away by an extreme Shia sect known as the Qarmatians and held for ransom for nearly 20 years. During Muhammad’s early ministry, the Kaaba was the qiblah, or direction of prayer for the Muslim community. After the Muslim migration or Hijrah to Medina, the qibla briefly moved to Jerusalem before returning to the Kaaba. When Muhammad’s forces conquered Mecca in 630, he ordered the destruction of the pagan idols housed in the shrine and ordered it to be purged of all signs of polytheism. Since then, the Kaaba has been the center of Muslim piety.

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Ethnic group in the United States

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group composed of Americans of partial or full ancestry from Sub-Saharan Africa.[3][4] The term “African Americans” generally refers to descendants of enslaved Africans originating in the United States.[5][6][7] While some Black immigrants or their children may also identify as African American, the majority of first-generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin.[8][9]

African Americans are the second largest ethnic group in the United States after White Americans and the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Hispanic Americans.[10] Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the borders of what is now the United States.[11][12] On average, African Americans are West/Central African with some European ancestry; some also have Native American and other ancestry.[13]

According to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants instead identify with their own respective ethnicity (~95%).[9] Immigrants from some Caribbean and Latin American countries and their descendants may or may not also identify with the term.[7]

African American history began in the 16th century when Africans from West Africa were sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Thirteen Colonies. After arriving in America, they were sold as slaves to European colonists and used on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were freed by release or flight and formed independent communities before and during the American Revolution. After the founding of the United States in 1783, most blacks continued to be enslaved, most concentrated in the American South, with four million enslaved freed only during and at the end of the Civil War in 1865.[14] During Reconstruction they were granted citizenship and the right to vote; Due to widespread white supremacy policies and ideology, they were largely treated as second-class citizens and soon found themselves disenfranchised in the South. These circumstances changed with participation in the United States’ military conflicts, significant migration from the South, desegregation, and the civil rights movement that sought political and social liberty. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States.[15]

African-American culture has had a significant impact on world culture, making numerous contributions to the fine arts, literature, English language, philosophy, politics, cuisine, sports, and music. So profound is the African American contribution to popular music that virtually all American music, including jazz, gospel, blues, hip hop, R&B, soul, and rock, has at least some or all of its origins from African Americans.[16] [17]

story

colonial era

The vast majority of those enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa who had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids[18] or sold by other West Africans or by semi-Africans. European “trade princes”[19] to European slave traders who brought them to America.[20]

The first African slaves came to the colony of San Miguel de Gualdape (probably in the Winyah Bay area of ​​present-day South Carolina) via Santo Domingo, founded in 1526 by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón.[21] The hapless colony was almost immediately disrupted by a struggle for leadership, with the slaves rebelling and fleeing the colony to seek refuge with the local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards from an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and slaves who did not escape returned to Haiti from whence they had come.[21]

The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free black domestic servant from Seville, and Miguel Rodríguez, a white conquistador from Segovia, in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere on what is now the continent of the United States States.[22]

The first recorded Africans in English America (including most of what would become the United States) were “20 and odd Negroes” who came to Jamestown, Virginia, via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants. As many Virginia settlers began to die under the harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers.[24]

Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia, 1670 illustration

An indentured servant (who could be white or black) worked for several years (usually four to seven) without pay. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased, and physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed or bought out at the end of their term of service, their children did not inherit their status, and on release from the contract they received “corn for a year, double clothing, necessary implements” and a small cash payment known as “liberty dues “.[25]

Africans could legally raise crops and livestock to buy their freedom.[26] They raised families, married other Africans, and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or European settlers.[27]

In the 1640s and 1650s several African families owned farms around Jamestown, and some became wealthy by colonial standards and bought their own indentured servants. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifelong slavery when they sentenced John Punch, a Negro, to escape to lifelong servitude to his master Hugh Gwyn.

In Spanish Florida, some Spaniards intermarried or had unions with Pensacola, Creek, or African women, both slave and free, and their descendants created a mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattoes. The Spanish encouraged slaves from the Georgia colony to come to Florida for refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism. King Charles II issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism. Most went to the St. Augustine area, but escaped slaves also reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had raised an all-black militia unit defending Spanish Florida as early as 1683.

One of the Dutch-African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, later owned one of the first black “slaves”, John Casor, as a result of court judgment in a civil case.[32][33]

The popular notion of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves to New Amsterdam (now New York City). However, all of the colony’s slaves were freed after they were handed over to the English.[34]

Reproduction of a pamphlet advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769

Massachusetts was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed legislation giving children of enslaved women the status of mother rather than father, as common law provides. This legal principle was called partus sequitur ventrum.[35][36]

Through a 1699 law, the colony ordered the deportation of all free blacks and defined virtually all people of African descent who remained in the colony as slaves. In 1670, the Colonial Assembly passed a law forbidding free and baptized blacks (and Native Americans) from buying Christians (white Europeans in that law), but allowing them to buy people “of their own nation.”[38]

Although there was no movement in Spanish Louisiana to abolish the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called the Coartación that allowed slaves to buy their freedom and that of others. Although some did not have the money to buy their freedom, government policies on slavery made possible many free blacks. This caused problems for the Spaniards with the French Creoles, who also populated Spanish Louisiana. The French Creoles described this measure as one of the worst elements of the system.[40]

First established in South Carolina in 1704, groups of armed white men—slave patrols—were formed to police enslaved blacks.[41] Their function was to police slaves, especially refugees. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or slave uprisings, so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within slave patrols so they could be used to track down, counter and crush organized slave meetings that might lead to to revolts or rebellions.[41]

The earliest African American congregations and churches were established in both northern and southern cities after the Great Awakening, before 1800. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, making them the second largest ethnic group after English Americans.[42]

From the American Revolution to the Civil War

In the 1770s, both enslaved and free Africans helped rebellious American colonists secure their independence by defeating the British in the American Revolutionary War.[43] Blacks played a role on both sides in the American Revolution. Patriot activists included James Armistead, Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell.[44][45] About 15,000 Black Loyalists left Britain after the war, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies.[46]

In Spanish Louisiana, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez organized Spanish free black men into two militia companies to defend New Orleans during the American Revolution. They fought in the 1779 battle in which Spain captured Baton Rouge from the British. Gálvez also commanded them in campaigns against British outposts in Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. He recruited slaves for the militia, promising to free anyone seriously wounded and promising to secure a low price of coartación (buy their freedom and that of others) for those who suffered lesser wounds. In the 1790s, governor Francisco Luis Héctor, Baron of Carondelet, reinforced local fortifications and recruited even more free blacks into the militia. Carondelet doubled the number of free black men who served and established two more militia companies—one made up of black members and the other of pardo (mixed races). Service in the militia brought free black men a step closer to equality with whites, such as giving them the right to bear arms and increasing their earning power. In fact, however, these privileges distanced free black men from enslaved blacks and encouraged them to identify with whites.[40]

Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the US Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the 3/5 Compromise. Because of Section 9, Clause 1, Congress could not pass legislation prohibiting the importation of slaves until 1807.[47] Fugitive Slave Laws (derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution) were passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 and guaranteed a slave owner the right to reclaim an escaped slave within the United States.[48] Slavery, which at the time meant almost exclusively blacks, was the most important political issue in antebellum America and led to crisis after crisis. Among them were the Missouri Compromise, the 1850 Compromise, the Dred-Scott Decision, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.

Before the Civil War, eight incumbent presidents owned slaves, a practice protected by the US Constitution.[49] By 1860, there were 3.5 to 4.4 million black slaves in the United States due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 488,000 to 500,000 blacks were living freely (within legal restrictions)[50] across the country.[51] With legal restrictions imposed on them in addition to “insurmountable prejudices” imposed by whites, according to Henry Clay,[52] some blacks who were not enslaved left the US for Liberia in West Africa.[50] Liberia began as an American Colonization Society (ACS) settlement in 1821, with the abolitionist members of the ACS believing that blacks would have better opportunities for freedom and equality in Africa.[50]

Not only did slaves represent a major investment, they produced America’s most valuable commodity and export: cotton. Not only did they help build the US Capitol, they also built the White House and other buildings in the District of Columbia. (See Slavery in the District of Columbia.[53]) Similar building projects existed in the slave states.

Slaves waiting for sale: Richmond, Virginia, 1853. Note the new clothes. The , 1853. Note the new clothes. The local slave trade broke up many families, and some lost touch with families and clans.

By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a major economic activity in the United States; it lasted until the 1860s.[54] Historians estimate that almost a million in all were involved in the forced migration through this new “Middle Passage”. Historian Ira Berlin called this forced migration of slaves the “central event” in a slave’s life between the American Revolution and the Civil War, writing whether slaves were uprooted outright or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily resettled, “the massive deportation has traumatized black people.”[55] Individuals lost their connection to families and clans, and many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of diverse tribal origins in Africa.[54]

The 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn, a branded slave from Louisiana, and that of Gordon, with his scarred back, served as two early examples of how the newborn medium of photography was able to capture the cruelty of slavery.[56]

The emigration of free blacks to their continent of origin had been proposed since the Revolutionary War. After Haiti gained independence, it attempted to recruit African Americans to immigrate there after reestablishing trade ties with the United States. The Haitian Union was a group created to promote relations between countries.[57] After anti-black riots in Cincinnati, the black community sponsored the founding of the Wilberforce Colony, an initially successful settlement of African-American immigrants in Canada. The colony was one of the first independent political entities of its kind. It lasted for several decades and provided a destination for approximately 200 black families who emigrated from a number of places in the United States.

In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation, with Texas being the last state to be emancipated in 1865.

Slavery in Union-held Confederate territory continued, at least on paper, until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.[60] While the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted U.S. citizenship to whites only,[61][62] the 14th Amendment (1868) gave blacks citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave black men the right to vote (which is still denied would to all women by 1920).[63]

Rebuild Time and Jim Crow

African Americans quickly formed communities for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from white control or oversight. While the postwar Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. In the late 1890s, the Southern states enacted Jim Crow legislation to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement.[64] The segregation that began with slavery continued with Jim Crow’s laws, using signs to show black people where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For the places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were done.[65] Most African Americans followed Jim Crow laws to avoid racially motivated violence. To maintain their self-esteem and dignity, African Americans like Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, clubs, and other businesses.[66]

In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence against African Americans began to mushroom in the United States, a period often referred to as the “low point in American race relations.” These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—reaffirmed by the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson—mandated by Southern and national local government statutes, the suppression or disenfranchisement of voters in the Southern states , the denial of national economic opportunities or resources, and acts of private violence and mass racist violence against African Americans that are unchecked or encouraged by government agencies.[67]

Major migration and civil rights movement

The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South triggered the Great Migration of the first half of the 20th century, which resulted in a growing African American community in the northern and western United States.[69] The rapid influx of blacks upset the racial balance in northern and western cities and increased animosity between blacks and whites in the two regions. The Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and more casualties in the United States as a result of race riots that took place in more than three dozen cities, such as the 1919 Chicago race riot and the 1919 Omaha race riot. Blacks in northern and western Cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of walks of life. Within employment, black economic opportunities were diverted to the lowest status and potential mobility was restricted. At the Hampton Negro Conference in 1900, the Reverend Matthew Anderson said, “…the boundaries along most wage-earning routes are more severe in the North than in the South.”[71] More discriminatory measures in the housing market were used in correlation with influx , resulting in a mixture of “targeted violence, restrictive agreements, redlining and racist governance”.[72] While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics against African Americans, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or suburban regions, a process known as White Flight.[73]

Rosa Parks is being fingerprinted after she was arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus for a white person

Despite discrimination, the growth of African-American institutions and communities in northern cities has been a driving force to emerge from the hopelessness of the south. Institutions included Black-oriented organizations (e.g. Urban League, NAACP), churches, corporations, and newspapers, as well as achievements in the development of African American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture (e.g. Harlem Renaissance, Chicago Black Renaissance). . The Cotton Club in Harlem was a whites-only establishment where blacks (like Duke Ellington) were allowed to perform, but to white audiences. Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in northern cities, without the enforced constraints of Jim Crow.[75][76]

In the 1950s, the civil rights movement gained momentum. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage at injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Till was spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi, and was killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Till was badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out and he was shot in the head. The emotional response to his mother’s decision to have an open coffin burial mobilized the black community across the United States.[77] Vann R. Newkirk| wrote: “The trial of his killers became a pageant highlighting the tyranny of white supremacy”. The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were quickly acquitted by an all-white jury.[78] One hundred days after Emmett Till’s murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Alabama bus — in fact, Parks told Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till, that “the photo of Emmett’s disfigured face in the coffin came to mind as she refused her seat.” check in on the Montgomery bus.”[79]

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the terms under which it came about are credited with putting pressure on Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson supported the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public housing, employment, and unions, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to increase black political participation by protecting the ensure voter registration and elections.[80] By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, broadened the goals of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency and freedom from white authority.[81]

In the postwar period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged compared to other Americans. The average income of black workers was 54 percent in 1947 and 55 percent of that of white workers in 1962. In 1959, the median family income for whites was $5,600 compared to $2,900 for non-white families. In 1965, 43 percent of all black families fell into the poverty class, earning less than $3,000 a year. During the 1960s, the social and economic conditions of many black Americans improved.[82]

From 1965 to 1969, black family income increased from 54 to 60 percent of white family income. In 1968, 23 percent of black families earned less than $3,000 a year, compared with 41 percent in 1960. In 1965, 19 percent of black Americans had an income equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960 the median level of education for blacks was 10.8 years, and by the late 1960s the figure had risen to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for whites.[82]

Post-bourgeois era

Politically and economically, African Americans made significant advances in the post-civil rights era. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman to be elected to the US Congress. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American governor in US history. Clarence Thomas succeeded Marshall as the second African-American Supreme Court Justice in 1991. In 1992, Illinois’ Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African American woman to be elected to the US Senate. In 2000 there were 8,936 black public officials in the United States, a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 black mayors.[83]

In 2005, the number of Africans immigrating to the United States in a single year surpassed the peak number of those involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic slave trade.[84] On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected President. At least 95 percent of African American voters voted for Obama.[85][86] He also received overwhelming support from young and educated whites, a majority of Asians[87] and Hispanics[87] and brought a number of new states into the Democratic electoral column.[85][86] Obama lost the overall white vote, despite winning a larger percentage of the white vote than any previous non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. Obama was re-elected to a second and final term on November 6, 2012 with a similar majority.[89] In 2021, Kamala Harris became the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American to serve as Vice President of the United States.[90]

demographics

Proportion of African Americans in each U.S. state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico according to the 2020 U.S. Census

US census map showing US counties with fewer than 25 Black or African American residents

When the first US census was taken in 1790, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000 – about 19.3% of the population. By 1860, by the time the Civil War began, the African American population had grown to 4.4 million, but the percentage had fallen to 14% of the country’s total population. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as “free”. By 1900, the black population had doubled, reaching 8.8 million.[91]

In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South. Large numbers began migrating north in search of better employment and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration, as it was called, spanned from the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million blacks migrated north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, this trend reversed as more African Americans moved south to the Sun Belt than left it.[92]

The following table of the African American population in the United States over time shows that the proportion of African Americans in the total population decreased until 1930 and has been increasing since then.

African Americans in the United States[93] Year Number % of total

Population % Change

(10 Jahre) Slaves% in Slavery 1790 757,208 19,3% (höchste) – 697.681 92% 1800 1,002,037 18,9% 32,3% 893,602 89% 1810 1,377.808 19,0% 18,5% 1,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,191,19191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191,1911. 31.4% 2,009,043 86% 1840 2,873,648 16.8% 23.4% 2,487,355 87% 1850 3,638,808 15.7% 26.6% 3,204,287 88% 1860 4,441,830 14.1% 22.1% 3,953,731 89% 1870 4,880,009 12.7% 9.9% – – 1880 6,580,793 13.1% 34.9% – – 1890 7,488,788 11.9% 13.8% – – 1900 8,833,994 11.6% 18.0% – – 1910 9,827,763 10.7% 11.2% – – 1920 10.5 million 9.9% 6, 8% – – 1930 11.9m 9.4% (lowest) 13% – – 29 4 0 – – 1950 15.0m 10.0% 16% – – 1960 18.9m 10.5% 26% – – 1970 22.6m 11.1% 20% – – 1980 26.5m 11.7% 17% – – 1990 30.0m 12.1% 13% – – 2000 34.6 million 12.3% 15% – – 2010 38.9 million 12.6% 12% – – 2020 41.1 million 12.4% 5.6% – –

By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the US population, about the same proportion as in 1900.[94]

At the time of the 2000 census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. That year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. However, the West has a sizable black population in certain areas. Kalifornien, der bevölkerungsreichste Staat der Nation, hat die fünftgrößte afroamerikanische Bevölkerung, nur hinter New York, Texas, Georgia und Florida. Laut der Volkszählung von 2000 wurden etwa 2,05 % der Afroamerikaner als hispanischer oder lateinamerikanischer Herkunft identifiziert,[10] von denen viele brasilianischer, puertoricanischer, dominikanischer, kubanischer, haitianischer oder anderer lateinamerikanischer Abstammung sein können. Die einzigen selbstberichteten Ahnengruppen, die größer als die Afroamerikaner sind, sind die Iren und Deutschen.[95]

Laut der US-Volkszählung von 2010 hatten fast 3 % der Menschen, die sich selbst als Schwarze identifizierten, jüngere Vorfahren, die aus einem anderen Land eingewandert waren. Nach eigenen Angaben nicht-hispanische schwarze Einwanderer aus der Karibik, hauptsächlich aus Jamaika und Haiti, machten mit 2,6 Millionen 0,9 % der US-Bevölkerung aus.[96] Selbst gemeldete schwarze Einwanderer aus Subsahara-Afrika machten mit etwa 2,8 Millionen ebenfalls 0,9 % aus.[96] Darüber hinaus stellten selbst identifizierte schwarze Hispanics 0,4% der Bevölkerung der Vereinigten Staaten dar, bei etwa 1,2 Millionen Menschen, die größtenteils in den puertoricanischen und dominikanischen Gemeinden zu finden sind. Nach eigenen Angaben schwarze Einwanderer aus anderen Ländern Amerikas wie Brasilien und Kanada sowie mehreren europäischen Ländern machten weniger als 0,1 % der Bevölkerung aus. Hispanische und nicht-hispanische Amerikaner gemischter Rassen, die sich als teilweise Schwarze identifizierten, machten 0,9% der Bevölkerung aus. Von den 12,6 % der Einwohner der Vereinigten Staaten, die sich als Schwarze identifizierten, waren etwa 10,3 % „eingeborene schwarze Amerikaner“ oder ethnische Afroamerikaner, die direkte Nachkommen von West-/Zentralafrikanern sind, die als Sklaven in die USA gebracht wurden. Diese Personen machen weit über 80 % aller Schwarzen im Land aus. Unter Einbeziehung von Menschen gemischter Abstammung identifizierten sich etwa 13,5 % der US-Bevölkerung selbst als schwarz oder „mit Schwarzen gemischt“.[98] Laut dem US-Volkszählungsamt deuten jedoch Beweise aus der Volkszählung von 2000 darauf hin, dass sich viele ethnische Gruppen afrikanischer und karibischer Einwanderer nicht als “Schwarze, afrikanische Am. oder Neger” identifizieren. Stattdessen schrieben sie ihre eigenen jeweiligen ethnischen Gruppen in den Eintrag „Some Other Race“. Infolgedessen hat das Census Bureau 2010 für ethnische Afroamerikaner eine neue, separate ethnische Gruppenkategorie “Afroamerikaner” entwickelt.[99]

US-Städte

Nachdem Afroamerikaner 100 Jahre lang in großer Zahl den Süden verlassen haben, um bessere Möglichkeiten und Behandlung im Westen und Norden zu suchen, eine Bewegung, die als Große Migration bekannt ist, gibt es jetzt einen umgekehrten Trend, der als Neue Große Migration bezeichnet wird. Wie bei der früheren Großen Migration richtet sich die Neue Große Migration hauptsächlich auf Städte und große städtische Gebiete wie Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas, Raleigh, Tampa, San Antonio, Memphis, Nashville, Jacksonville und so weiter.[100 ] Ein wachsender Prozentsatz von Afroamerikanern aus dem Westen und Norden wandert aus wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Gründen in die südliche Region der USA ab. New York City, Chicago und Los Angeles haben den höchsten Rückgang an Afroamerikanern, während Atlanta, Dallas und Houston jeweils den höchsten Anstieg aufweisen.[100]

Unter den Städten mit 100.000 oder mehr Einwohnern hatte Detroit, Michigan, 2010 mit 82 % den höchsten Anteil schwarzer Einwohner aller US-Städte. Andere große Städte mit afroamerikanischer Mehrheit sind Jackson, Mississippi (79,4 %), Miami Gardens, Florida (76,3 %), Baltimore, Maryland (63 %), Birmingham, Alabama (62,5 %), Memphis, Tennessee (61 %), New Orleans, Louisiana (60 %), Montgomery, Alabama (56,6 %), Flint, Michigan (56,6 %), Savannah, Georgia (55,0 %), Augusta, Georgia (54,7 %), Atlanta, Georgia (54 %, siehe African Amerikaner in Atlanta), Cleveland, Ohio (53,3 %), Newark, New Jersey (52,35 %), Washington, D.C. (50,7 %), Richmond, Virginia (50,6 %), Mobile, Alabama (50,6 %), Baton Rouge, Louisiana (50,4 %) und Shreveport, Louisiana (50,4 %).

The nation’s most affluent community with an African-American majority resides in View Park–Windsor Hills, California with an annual median household income of $159,618.[101] Other largely affluent and African-American communities include Prince George’s County in Maryland (namely Mitchellville, Woodmore, and Upper Marlboro), Dekalb County and South Fulton in Georgia, Charles City County in Virginia, Baldwin Hills in California, Hillcrest and Uniondale in New York, and Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Missouri City in Texas. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than White Americans.[102]

Seatack, Virginia is currently the oldest African-American community in the United States.[103] It survives today with a vibrant and active civic community.[104]

education

Former slave reading, 1870

During slavery, anti-literacy laws were enacted in the U.S. that prohibited education for Black people. Slave owners saw literacy as a threat to the institution of slavery. As a North Carolina statute stated, “Teaching slaves to read and write, tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion.”[105]

In 1863, enslaved Americans became free citizens during a time when public educational systems were expanding across the country. By 1870, around seventy-four institutions in the south provided a form of advanced education for African American students, and by 1900, over a hundred programs at these schools provided training for Black professionals, including teachers. Many of the students at Fisk University, including W. E. B. Du Bois when he was a student there, taught school during the summers to support their studies.[106]

African Americans were very concerned to provide quality education for their children, but White supremacy limited their ability to participate in educational policymaking on the political level. State governments soon moved to undermine their citizenship by restricting their right to vote. By the late 1870s, Blacks were disenfranchised and segregated across the American South.[107] White politicians in Mississippi and other states withheld financial resources and supplies from Black schools. Nevertheless, the presence of Black teachers, and their engagement with their communities both inside and outside the classroom, ensured that Black students had access to education despite these external constraints.[108][109]

During World War II, demands for unity and racial tolerance on the home front provided an opening for the first Black history curriculum in the country.[110] For example, during the early 1940s, Madeline Morgan, a Black teacher in the Chicago public schools, created a curriculum for students in grades one through eight highlighting the contributions of Black people to the history of the United States. At the close of the war, Chicago’s Board of Education downgraded the curriculum’s status from mandatory to optional.[111]

Predominantly Black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U.S. before the 1970s. By 1972, however, desegregation efforts meant that only 25% of Black students were in schools with more than 90% non-White students. However, since then, a trend towards re-segregation affected communities across the country: by 2011, 2.9 million African-American students were in such overwhelmingly minority schools, including 53% of Black students in school districts that were formerly under desegregation orders.[112][113]

As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.[114]

US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed a high-school education, less than Whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged behind Whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism.[115]

Between 1995 and 2009, freshmen college enrollment for African Americans increased by 73 percent and only 15 percent for Whites.[116] Black women are enrolled in college more than any other race and gender group, leading all with 9.7% enrolled according to the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau.[117][118] The average high school graduation rate of Blacks in the United States has steadily increased to 71% in 2013.[119] Separating this statistic into component parts shows it varies greatly depending upon the state and the school district examined. 38% of Black males graduated in the state of New York but in Maine 97% graduated and exceeded the White male graduation rate by 11 percentage points.[120] In much of the southeastern United States and some parts of the southwestern United States the graduation rate of White males was in fact below 70% such as in Florida where 62% of White males graduated from high school. Examining specific school districts paints an even more complex picture. In the Detroit school district the graduation rate of Black males was 20% but 7% for White males. In the New York City school district 28% of Black males graduate from high school compared to 57% of White males. In Newark County[where?] 76% of Black males graduated compared to 67% for White males. Further academic improvement has occurred in 2015. Roughly 23% of all Blacks have bachelor’s degrees. In 1988, 21% of Whites had obtained a bachelor’s degree versus 11% of Blacks. In 2015, 23% of Blacks had obtained a bachelor’s degree versus 36% of Whites.[121] Foreign born Blacks, 9% of the Black population, made even greater strides. They exceed native born Blacks by 10 percentage points.[121]

College Board, which runs the official college-level advanced placement (AP) programs in American high schools, have has received criticism in recent years that its curricula have focused too much on Euro-centric history.[122] In 2020, College Board reshaped some curricula among history-based courses to further reflect the African diaspora.[123] In 2021, College Board announced it would be piloting an AP African American Studies course between 2022 and 2024. The course is expected to launch in 2024.[124]

Historically Black colleges and universities

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which were founded when segregated institutions of higher learning did not admit African Americans, continue to thrive and educate students of all races today. There are 101 HBCUs representing three percent of the nation’s colleges and universities with the majority established in the Southeast.[125][126] HBCUs have been largely responsible for establishing and expanding the African-American middle-class.[127][128]

Economic status

Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the civil rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalisation when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The Black middle class has grown substantially. In the first quarter of 2021, 45.1% of African Americans owned their homes, compared to 65.3% of all Americans.[130] The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 24.7% in 2004 to 18.8% in 2020, compared to 10.5% for all Americans.[131][132]

African Americans have a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012.[134][135] In 2002, African American-owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US’s 23 million businesses.[136] As of 2011 African American-owned businesses account for approximately 2 million US businesses.[137] Black-owned businesses experienced the largest growth in number of businesses among minorities from 2002 to 2011.[137]

Twenty-five percent of Blacks had white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields) in 2000, compared with 33.6% of Americans overall.[138][139] In 2001, over half of African-American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more.[139] Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation’s poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African-American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.[139]

In 2006, the median earnings of African-American men was more than Black and non-Black American women overall, and in all educational levels.[140][141][142][143][144] At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African-American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.[140][145]

Overall, the median earnings of African-American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men.[140][143][146] On the other hand, by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African-American women have made significant advances; the median income of African-American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.[141][142][147]

The U.S. public sector is the single most important source of employment for African Americans.[148] During 2008–2010, 21.2% of all Black workers were public employees, compared with 16.3% of non-Black workers.[148] Both before and after the onset of the Great Recession, African Americans were 30% more likely than other workers to be employed in the public sector.[148]

The public sector is also a critical source of decent-paying jobs for Black Americans. For both men and women, the median wage earned by Black employees is significantly higher in the public sector than in other industries.[148]

In 1999, the median income of African-American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the Black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase “last hired and first fired” is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%,[149] while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.[150]

The income gap between Black and White families is also significant. In 2005, employed Blacks earned 65% of the wages of Whites, down from 82% in 1975.[131] The New York Times reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African-American families exceeded that of White families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent Black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true.[102] In 2011, it was reported that 72% of Black babies were born to unwed mothers.[151] The poverty rate among single-parent Black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Walter E. Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple Black families. Among White families, the respective rates were 26.4% and 6% in poverty.[152]

Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004.[153] African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any minority group in the U.S.[154]

politics

Since the mid 20th century, a large majority of African Americans support the Democratic Party. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African-American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W. Bush.[155] Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African-American organizations have had in domestic policy.[156]

Many African Americans were excluded from electoral politics in the decades following the end of Reconstruction. For those that could participate, until the New Deal, African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both conservative and liberal were represented equally in both parties.

The African-American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African-American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s. In 1960, nearly a third of African Americans voted for Republican Richard Nixon.[157]

Black national anthem

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is often referred to as the Black national anthem in the United States.[158] In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had dubbed it the “Negro national anthem” for its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African American people.[159]

Sexuality

According to a Gallup survey, 4.6% of Black or African-Americans self-identified as LGBT in 2016,[160] while the total portion of American adults in all ethnic groups identifying as LGBT was 4.1% in 2016.[160]

Health

General

The life expectancy for Black men in 2008 was 70.8 years.[161] Life expectancy for Black women was 77.5 years in 2008.[161] In 1900, when information on Black life expectancy started being collated, a Black man could expect to live to 32.5 years and a Black woman 33.5 years.[161] In 1900, White men lived an average of 46.3 years and White women lived an average of 48.3 years.[161] African-American life expectancy at birth is persistently five to seven years lower than European Americans.[162] Black men have shorter lifespans than any other group in the US besides Native American men.[163]

Black people have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension than the U.S. average.[161] For adult Black men, the rate of obesity was 31.6% in 2010.[164] For adult Black women, the rate of obesity was 41.2% in 2010.[164] African Americans have higher rates of mortality than any other racial or ethnic group for 8 of the top 10 causes of death.[165] In 2013, among men, Black men had the highest rate of getting cancer, followed by White, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander (A/PI), and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) men. Among women, White women had the highest rate of getting cancer, followed by Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native women.[166]

Violence has an impact upon African-American life expectancy. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice states “In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites”.[167] The report also found that “94% of black victims were killed by blacks.”[167] Black boys and men age 15–44 are the only race/sex category for which homicide is a top-five cause of death.[163]

In December 2020, African Americans were less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 due to mistrust in the U.S. medical system related to decades of abuses and anti-black treatment. From 2021 to 2022, there was an increase in African Americans who became vaccinated.[168][169][170] Still, in 2022, COVID-19 complications became the third leading cause of death for African Americans.[171]

Sexual health

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African Americans have higher rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) compared to Whites, with 5 times the rates of syphilis and chlamydia, and 7.5 times the rate of gonorrhea.[172]

The disproportionately high incidence of HIV/AIDS among African-Americans has been attributed to homophobic influences and lack of access to proper healthcare.[173] The prevalence of HIV/AIDS among Black men is seven times higher than the prevalence for White men, and Black men are more than nine times as likely to die from HIV/AIDS-related illness than White men.[163]

Mental health

African Americans have several barriers for accessing mental health services. Counseling has been frowned upon and distant in utility and proximity to many people in the African American community. In 2004, a qualitative research study explored the disconnect with African Americans and mental health. The study was conducted as a semi-structured discussion which allowed the focus group to express their opinions and life experiences. The results revealed a couple key variables that create barriers for many African American communities to seek mental health services such as the stigma, lack of four important necessities; trust, affordability, cultural understanding and impersonal services.[174]

Historically, many African American communities did not seek counseling because religion was a part of the family values.[175] African American who have a faith background are more likely to seek prayer as a coping mechanism for mental issues rather than seeking professional mental health services.[174] In 2015 a study concluded, African Americans with high value in religion are less likely to utilize mental health services compared to those who have low value in religion.[176]

Most counseling approaches are westernized and do not fit within the African American culture. African American families tend to resolve concerns within the family, and it is viewed by the family as a strength. On the other hand, when African Americans seek counseling, they face a social backlash and are criticized. They may be labeled “crazy”, viewed as weak, and their pride is diminished.[174] Because of this, many African Americans instead seek mentorship within communities they trust.

Terminology is another barrier in relation to African Americans and mental health. There is more stigma on the term psychotherapy versus counseling. In one study, psychotherapy is associated with mental illness whereas counseling approaches problem-solving, guidance and help.[174] More African Americans seek assistance when it is called counseling and not psychotherapy because it is more welcoming within the cultural and community.[177] Counselors are encouraged to be aware of such barriers for the well-being of African American clients. Without cultural competency training in health care, many African Americans go unheard and misunderstood.[174]

Although suicide is a top-10 cause of death for men overall in the US, it is not a top-10 cause of death for Black men.[163]

genetics

Genome-wide studies

[178] Genetic clustering of 128 African Americans, by Zakharaia et al. (2009). Each vertical bar represents an individual. The color scheme of the bar plot matches that in the PCA plot.

Recent surveys of African Americans using a genetic testing service have found varied ancestries which show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors. These studies found that on average, African Americans have 73.2–82.1% West African, 16.7%–24% European, and 0.8–1.2% Native American genetic ancestry, with large variation between individuals.[179][180][181] Genetics websites themselves have reported similar ranges, with some finding 1 or 2 percent Native American ancestry and Ancestry.com reporting an outlying percentage of European ancestry among African Americans, 29%.[182]

According to a genome-wide study by Bryc et al. (2009), the mixed ancestry of African Americans in varying ratios came about as the result of sexual contact between West/Central Africans (more frequently females) and Europeans (more frequently males). Consequently, the 365 African Americans in their sample have a genome-wide average of 78.1% West African ancestry and 18.5% European ancestry, with large variation among individuals (ranging from 99% to 1% West African ancestry). The West African ancestral component in African Americans is most similar to that in present-day speakers from the non-Bantu branches of the Niger-Congo (Niger-Kordofanian) family.[179][note 2]

Correspondingly, Montinaro et al. (2014) observed that around 50% of the overall ancestry of African Americans traces back to the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin, reflecting the centrality of this West African region in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The next most frequent ancestral component found among African Americans was derived from Great Britain, in keeping with historical records. It constitutes a little over 10% of their overall ancestry, and is most similar to the Northwest European ancestral component also carried by Barbadians.[184] Zakharaia et al. (2009) found a similar proportion of Yoruba associated ancestry in their African-American samples, with a minority also drawn from Mandenka and Bantu populations. Additionally, the researchers observed an average European ancestry of 21.9%, again with significant variation between individuals.[178] Bryc et al. (2009) note that populations from other parts of the continent may also constitute adequate proxies for the ancestors of some African-American individuals; namely, ancestral populations from Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone in West Africa and Angola in Southern Africa.[179]

Altogether, genetic studies suggest that African Americans are a genetically diverse people. According to DNA analysis led in 2006 by Penn State geneticist Mark D. Shriver, around 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry (equivalent to one European great-grandparent and his/her forebears), 19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25% European ancestry (equivalent to one European grandparent and his/her forebears), and 1 percent of African Americans have at least 50% European ancestry (equivalent to one European parent and his/her forebears).[13][185] According to Shriver, around 5 percent of African Americans also have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry (equivalent to one Native American great-grandparent and his/her forebears).[186][187] Research suggests that Native American ancestry among people who identify as African American is a result of relationships that occurred soon after slave ships arrived in the American colonies, and European ancestry is of more recent origin, often from the decades before the Civil War.[188]

Y-DNA

Africans bearing the E-V38 (E1b1a) likely traversed across the Sahara, from east to west, approximately 19,000 years ago.[189] E-M2 (E1b1a1) likely originated in West Africa or Central Africa.[190] According to a Y-DNA study by Sims et al. (2007), the majority (≈60%) of African Americans belong to various subclades of the E-M2 (E1b1a1, formerly E3a) paternal haplogroup. This is the most common genetic paternal lineage found today among West/Central African males, and is also a signature of the historical Bantu migrations. The next most frequent Y-DNA haplogroup observed among African Americans is the R1b clade, which around 15% of African Americans carry. This lineage is most common today among Northwestern European males. The remaining African Americans mainly belong to the paternal haplogroup I (≈7%), which is also frequent in Northwestern Europe.[191]

mtDNA

According to an mtDNA study by Salas et al. (2005), the maternal lineages of African Americans are most similar to haplogroups that are today especially common in West Africa (>55%), followed closely by West-Central Africa and Southwestern Africa (<41%). The characteristic West African haplogroups L1b, L2b,c,d, and L3b,d and West-Central African haplogroups L1c and L3e in particular occur at high frequencies among African Americans. As with the paternal DNA of African Americans, contributions from other parts of the continent to their maternal gene pool are insignificant.[192] Social status Formal political, economic and social discrimination against minorities has been present throughout American history. Leland T. Saito, Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, writes, "Political rights have been circumscribed by race, class and gender since the founding of the United States, when the right to vote was restricted to White men of property. Throughout the history of the United States race has been used by Whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."[62] Although they have gained a greater degree of social equality since the civil rights movement, African Americans have remained stagnant economically, which has hindered their ability to break into the middle class and beyond. As of 2020, the racial wealth gap between whites and blacks remains as large as it was in 1968, with the typical net worth of a white household equivalent to that of 11.5 black households.[193] Despite this, African Americans have increased employment rates and gained representation in the highest levels of American government in the post–civil rights era.[194] However, widespread racism remains an issue that continues to undermine the development of social status.[194][195] Economic issues One of the most serious and long-standing issues within African-American communities is poverty. Poverty is associated with higher rates of marital stress and dissolution, physical and mental health problems, disability, cognitive deficits, low educational attainment, and crime.[196] In 2004, almost 25% of African-American families lived below the poverty level.[131] In 2007, the average income for African Americans was approximately $34,000, compared to $55,000 for Whites.[197] African Americans experience a higher rate of unemployment than the general population.[198] African Americans have a long and diverse history of business ownership. Although the first African-American business is unknown, slaves captured from West Africa are believed to have established commercial enterprises as peddlers and skilled craftspeople as far back as the 17th century. Around 1900, Booker T. Washington became the most famous proponent of African-American businesses. His critic and rival W. E. B. DuBois also commended business as a vehicle for African-American advancement.[199] Policing and criminal justice Forty percent of prison inmates are African American.[200] African American males are more likely to be killed by police when compared to other races.[201] This is one of the factors that led to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013.[202] A historical issue in the U.S. where women have weaponized their White privilege in the country by reporting on Black people, often instigating racial violence,[203][204] White women calling the police on Black people became widely publicized in 2020.[205][206] In African-American culture there is a long history of calling a meddlesome White woman by a certain name, while The Guardian called 2020 "the year of Karen".[207] Although in the last decade Black youth have had lower rates of cannabis (marijuana) consumption than Whites of the same age, they have disproportionately higher arrest rates than Whites: in 2010, for example, Blacks were 3.73 times as likely to get arrested for using cannabis than Whites, despite not significantly more frequently being users.[208][209] Social issues After over 50 years, marriage rates for all Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed.[210] These changes have been greatest among African Americans. After more than 70 years of racial parity Black marriage rates began to fall behind Whites.[210] Single-parent households have become common, and according to U.S. census figures released in January 2010, only 38 percent of Black children live with both their parents.[211] The first ever anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage.[212] In a speech in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people".[213] By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes.[212] By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.[212] While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his involvement with White actress Kim Novak.[214] Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures (with whom Novak was under contract) gave in to his concerns that a racist backlash against the relationship could hurt the studio.[214] Davis briefly married Black dancer Loray White in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.[214] Inebriated at the wedding ceremony, Davis despairingly said to his best friend, Arthur Silber Jr., "Why won't they let me live my life?" The couple never lived together, and commenced divorce proceedings in September 1958.[214] In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Mildred and Richard 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.[212] The law was ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.[212] In 2008, Democrats overwhelmingly voted 70% against California Proposition 8, African Americans voted 58% in favor of it while 42% voted against Proposition 8.[215] On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama, the first Black president, became the first U.S. president to support same-sex marriage. Since Obama's endorsement there has been a rapid growth in support for same-sex marriage among African Americans. As of 2012, 59% of African Americans support same-sex marriage, which is higher than support among the national average (53%) and White Americans (50%).[216] Polls in North Carolina,[217] Pennsylvania,[218] Missouri,[219] Maryland,[220] Ohio,[221] Florida,[222] and Nevada[223] have also shown an increase in support for same sex marriage among African Americans. On November 6, 2012, Maryland, Maine, and Washington all voted for approve of same-sex marriage, along with Minnesota rejecting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Exit polls in Maryland show about 50% of African Americans voted for same-sex marriage, showing a vast evolution among African Americans on the issue and was crucial in helping pass same-sex marriage in Maryland.[224] Black Americans hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole.[225] On financial issues, however, African Americans are in line with Democrats, generally supporting a more progressive tax structure to provide more government spending on social services.[226] Political legacy dr Martin Luther King Jr. remains the most prominent political leader in the American civil rights movement and perhaps the most influential African-American political figure in general. African Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.[227] The gains made by African Americans in the civil rights movement and in the Black Power movement not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow laws. They were often the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post World War II era, African Americans became increasingly discontented with their long-standing inequality. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal ..."[228] The civil rights movement marked an enormous change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent demonstrations and marches, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; and disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties. Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which Blacks and Whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, de jure racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, the women's movement, and migrant workers. It also inspired the Native American rights movement, and in King's 1964 book Why We Can't Wait he wrote the U.S. "was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race."[229][230] Media and coverage Some activists and academics contend that American news media coverage of African-American news, concerns, or dilemmas is inadequate,[231][232][233] or that the news media present distorted images of African Americans.[234] To combat this, Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States. Over the years, the network has aired such programming as rap and R&B music videos, urban-oriented movies and television series, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET would broadcast Christian programming; the network would also broadcast non-affiliated Christian programs during the early morning hours daily. According to Viacom, BET is now a global network that reaches households in the United States, Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom.[235] The network has gone on to spawn several spin-off channels, including BET Her (originally launched as BET on Jazz), which originally showcased jazz music-related programming, and later expanded to include general-interest urban programs as well as some R&B, soul, and world music.[236] Another network targeting African-Americans is TV One. TV One's original programming was formally focused on lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion, and music programming. The network also reruns classic series from as far back as the 1970s to current series such as Empire and Sister Circle. TV One is owned by Urban One, founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes. Urban One is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African-American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States.[237] In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio[238] in partnership with the production team that created the Black documentary film Meeting David Wilson. It is the first African-American video news site that focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History.[239] Other Black-owned and oriented media outlets include: Culture From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have significantly contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, cuisine, clothing styles, music, language, and social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States, such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to West African and African-American influences. Notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 products from pecans; and George Crum, a local legend incorrectly associates him with the creation of the potato chip in 1853.[241][242] Soul food is a variety of cuisine popular among African Americans. It is closely related to the cuisine of the Southern United States. The descriptive terminology may have originated in the mid-1960s, when soul was a common definer used to describe African-American culture (for example, soul music). African Americans were the first peoples in the United States to make fried chicken, along with Scottish immigrants to the South. Although the Scottish had been frying chicken before they emigrated, they lacked the spices and flavor that African Americans had used when preparing the meal. The Scottish American settlers therefore adopted the African-American method of seasoning chicken.[243] However, fried chicken was generally a rare meal in the African-American community, and was usually reserved for special events or celebrations.[244] language African-American English is a variety (dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect) of American English, commonly spoken by urban working-class and largely bi-dialectal middle-class African Americans.[245] African-American English evolved during the antebellum period through interaction between speakers of 16th- and 17th-century English of Great Britain and Ireland and various West African languages. As a result, the variety shares parts of its grammar and phonology with the Southern American English dialect. African-American English differs from Standard American English (SAE) in certain pronunciation characteristics, tense usage, and grammatical structures, which were derived from West African languages (particularly those belonging to the Niger-Congo family).[246] Virtually all habitual speakers of African-American English can understand and communicate in Standard American English. As with all linguistic forms, AAVE's usage is influenced by various factors, including geographical, educational and socioeconomic background, as well as formality of setting.[246] Additionally, there are many literary uses of this variety of English, particularly in African-American literature.[247] Traditional names African-American names are part of the cultural traditions of African Americans. Prior to the 1950s, and 1960s, most African-American names closely resembled those used within European American culture.[248] Babies of that era were generally given a few common names, with children using nicknames to distinguish the various people with the same name. With the rise of 1960s civil rights movement, there was a dramatic increase in names of various origins.[249] By the 1970s, and 1980s, it had become common among African Americans to invent new names for themselves, although many of these invented names took elements from popular existing names. Prefixes such as La/Le, Da/De, Ra/Re and Ja/Je, and suffixes like -ique/iqua, -isha and -aun/-awn are common, as are inventive spellings for common names. The book Baby Names Now: From Classic to Cool—The Very Last Word on First Names places the origins of "La" names in African-American culture in New Orleans.[250] Even with the rise of inventive names, it is still common for African Americans to use biblical, historical, or traditional European names. Daniel, Christopher, Michael, David, James, Joseph, and Matthew were thus among the most frequent names for African-American boys in 2013.[248][251][252] The name LaKeisha is typically considered American in origin, but has elements that were drawn from both French and West/Central African roots. Names such as LaTanisha, JaMarcus, DeAndre, and Shaniqua were created in the same way. Punctuation marks are seen more often within African-American names than other American names, such as the names Mo'nique and D'Andre.[248] religion The majority of African Americans are Protestant, many of whom follow the historically Black churches.[254] The term Black church refers to churches which minister to predominantly African-American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished more African Americans were allowed to create a unique form of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African spiritual traditions.[255] According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African-American population are part of the historically Black churches.[256] The largest Protestant denomination among African Americans are the Baptists,[257] distributed mainly in four denominations, the largest being the National Baptist Convention, USA and the National Baptist Convention of America.[258] The second largest are the Methodists,[259] the largest denominations are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.[258][260] Pentecostals are distributed among several different religious bodies, with the Church of God in Christ as the largest among them by far.[258] About 16% of African-American Christians are members of White Protestant communions,[259] these denominations (which include the United Church of Christ) mostly have a 2 to 3% African-American membership.[261] There are also large numbers of Catholics, constituting 5% of the African-American population.[256] Of the total number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are Black.[254] Some African Americans follow Islam. Historically, between 15 and 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during the era of American slavery.[262] During the twentieth century, some African Americans converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of Black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; including the Moorish Science Temple of America, and the largest organization, the Nation of Islam, founded in the 1930s, which attracted at least 20,000 people by 1963.[263][264] Prominent members included activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali.[265] Malcolm X is considered the first person to start the movement among African Americans towards mainstream Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca.[266] In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad took control of the Nation after his father's death and guided the majority of its members to orthodox Islam.[267] African-American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population,[268] the majority are Sunni or orthodox Muslims, some of these identify under the community of W. Deen Mohammed.[269][270] The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan has a membership ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 members.[271] There is also a small group of African-American Jews, making up less than 0.5% of African Americans or about 2% of the Jewish population in the United States.[272][273] Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include the claim that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites.[274] Confirmed atheists are less than one half of one-percent, similar to numbers for Hispanics.[275][276][277] music African-American music is one of the most pervasive African-American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in Black communities and evolved from other Black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music. African-American-derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular music genre in the world, including country and techno. African-American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.[278] Dance African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Bill T. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African-American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African-American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally Black fraternities and sororities at universities.[279] Literature and academics Many African-American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. African-American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone.[280] Most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the Confederate navy.[281] By 1913, over 1,000 inventions were patented by Black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes,[282] and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines.[283] Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems, including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate.[284] Garrett A. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask.[285] Lewis Howard Latimer invented an improvement for the incandescent light bulb.[286] More recent inventors include Frederick McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains.[287] Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other Black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb (code named the Manhattan Project.)[288] Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.[289] A few other notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams,[290] and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones.[287] dr Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based.[291][292][293] More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers,[294] and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first Black astronaut pilot but the person who redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system.[295] Terminologie General This parade float displayed the word "Afro-Americans" in 1911. The term African American, coined by Jesse Jackson in the 1980s,[296] carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to describe Americans of African ancestry referred more to skin color than to ancestry, and were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry; people with dark skins were considered inferior in fact and in law. Other terms (such as colored, person of color, or negro) were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of White supremacy and oppression.[297] A 16-page pamphlet entitled "A Sermon on the Capture of Lord Cornwallis" is notable for the attribution of its authorship to "An African American". Published in 1782, the book's use of this phrase predates any other yet identified by more than 50 years.[298] In the 1980s, the term African American was advanced on the model of, for example, German American or Irish American, to give descendants of American slaves, and other American Blacks who lived through the slavery era, a heritage and a cultural base.[297] The term was popularized in Black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience in 1988. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use.[297] Surveys show that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for African American versus Black American,[299] although they have a slight preference for the latter in personal settings and the former in more formal settings.[300] Many African Americans have expressed a preference for the term African American because it was formed in the same way as the terms for the many other ethnic groups currently living in the United States. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement, and systematic attempts to de-Africanize Blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to any specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.[citation needed] The term African American embraces pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Padmore. The term Afro-Usonian, and variations of such, are more rarely used.[301][302] Official identity Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government has officially classified Black people (revised to Black or African American in 1997) as "having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa."[303] Other federal offices, such as the U.S. Census Bureau, adhere to the Office of Management and Budget standards on race in their data collection and tabulation efforts.[304] In preparation for the 2010 U.S. Census, a marketing and outreach plan called 2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as Black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of Black people in the United States.[305] The ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity.[306] The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire Black population of the U.S. as though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. The Federal Bureau of Investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice categorizes Black or African American people as "[a] person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 Office of Management and Budget classification.[307] Admixture Historically, "race mixing" between Black and White people was taboo in the United States. So-called anti-miscegenation laws, barring Blacks and Whites from marrying or having sex, were established in colonial America as early as 1691,[308] and endured in many Southern states until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia (1967). The taboo among American Whites surrounding White-Black relations is a historical consequence of the oppression and racial segregation of African Americans.[309] Historian David Brion Davis notes the racial mixing that occurred during slavery was frequently attributed by the planter class to the "lower-class White males" but Davis concludes that "there is abundant evidence that many slaveowners, sons of slaveowners, and overseers took black mistresses or in effect raped the wives and daughters of slave families."[310] A famous example was Thomas Jefferson's mistress, Sally Hemings.[311] Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in 2009 that "African Americans…are a racially mixed or mulatto people—deeply and overwhelmingly so" (see genetics). After the Emancipation Proclamation, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States.[312] African slaves and their descendants have also had a history of cultural exchange and intermarriage with Native Americans,[313] although they did not necessarily retain social, cultural or linguistic ties to Native peoples.[314] There are also increasing intermarriages and offspring between non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics of any race, especially between Puerto Ricans and African Americans (American-born Blacks).[315] According to author M.M. Drymon, many African Americans identify as having Scots-Irish ancestry.[316] Racially mixed marriages have become increasingly accepted in the United States since the civil rights movement and up to the present day.[317] Approval in national opinion polls has risen from 36% in 1978, to 48% in 1991, 65% in 2002, 77% in 2007.[318] A Gallup poll conducted in 2013 found that 84% of Whites and 96% of Blacks approved of interracial marriage, and 87% overall.[319] At the end of World War II, some African American military men who had been stationed in Japan married Japanese women, who then immigrated to the United States.[320] Terminology dispute In her book The End of Blackness, as well as in an essay for Salon,[321] author Debra Dickerson has argued that the term Black should refer strictly to the descendants of Africans who were brought to America as slaves, and not to the sons and daughters of Black immigrants who lack that ancestry. Thus, under her definition, President Barack Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan, is not Black.[321][322] She makes the argument that grouping all people of African descent together regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances would inevitably deny the lingering effects of slavery within the American community of slave descendants, in addition to denying Black immigrants recognition of their own unique ancestral backgrounds. "Lumping us all together," Dickerson wrote, "erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress."[321] Similar viewpoints have been expressed by author Stanley Crouch in a New York Daily News piece, Charles Steele Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference[323] and African-American columnist David Ehrenstein of the Los Angeles Times, who accused White liberals of flocking to Blacks who were Magic Negros, a term that refers to a Black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream White (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda.[324] Ehrenstein went on to say "He's there to assuage white 'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history."[324] The American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement coalesces around this view, arguing that Black descendants of American slavery deserve a separate ethnic category that distinguishes them from other Black groups in the United States.[325] Their terminology has gained popularity in some circles, but others have criticized the movement for a perceived bias against (especially poor and Black) immigrants, and for its often inflammatory rhetoric.[326][327][328] Politicians such as Obama and Harris have received especially pointed criticism from the movement, as neither are ADOS and have spoken out at times against policies specific to them.[329][330] Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was famously mistaken for a "recent American immigrant" by French President Nicolas Sarkozy),[331] said "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African Americans and instead prefers the term Black or White to denote the African and European U.S. founding populations.[332] Many Pan-African movements and organizations that are ideologically Black nationalist, anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, and Scientific socialist like The All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), have argued that African (relating to the diaspora) and/or New Afrikan should be used instead of African-American.[333] Most notably, Malcolm X and Kwame Ture expressed similar views that African-Americans are Africans who "happen to be in America," and should not claim or identify as being American if they are fighting for Black (New Afrikan) liberation. Historically, this is due to the enslavement of Africans during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, ongoing anti-black violence, and structural racism in countries like the United States.[334][335] Terms no longer in common use Before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies until the abolition of slavery in 1865, an African-American slave was commonly known as a negro. Free negro was the legal status in the territory of an African-American person who was not enslaved.[336] In response to the project of the American Colonization Society to transport free Blacks to the future Liberia, a project most Blacks strongly rejected, the Blacks at the time said they were no more African than white Americans were European, and referred to themselves with what they considered a more acceptable term, "colored Americans". The term was used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when it was considered outmoded and generally gave way again to the exclusive use of negro. By the 1940s, the term was commonly capitalized (Negro); but by the mid-1960s, it was considered disparaging. By the end of the 20th century, negro had come to be considered inappropriate and was rarely used and perceived as a pejorative.[337][338] The term is rarely used by younger Black people, but remained in use by many older African Americans who had grown up with the term, particularly in the southern U.S.[339] The term remains in use in some contexts, such as the United Negro College Fund, an American philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for 39 private historically Black colleges and universities. There are many other deliberately insulting terms, many of which were in common use (e.g., nigger), but had become unacceptable in normal discourse before the end of the 20th century. One exception is the use, among the Black community, of the slur nigger rendered as nigga, representing the pronunciation of the word in African-American English. This usage has been popularized by American rap and hip-hop music cultures and is used as part of an in-group lexicon and speech. It is not necessarily derogatory and, when used among Black people, the word is often used to mean "homie" or "friend."[340] Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated, although it has established a foothold among younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger.[341] Mixed-race usage of nigga is still considered taboo, particularly if the speaker is White. However, trends indicate that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even among White youth due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture.[342] See also Diaspora Lists Remarks references

Henry Ossawa Tanner was the United States’ first prominent African-American artist. His training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (under the direction of Thomas Eakins) and at the Académie Julian in Paris (with Jean-Léon Gérôme) put him in the unique position of having encountered two very different approaches to painting – the American one Realism and French Academic Painting. He was also one of the few artists to have such an education at a time when there were many educational barriers for African Americans. Although Tanner spent most of his life in France and became known for his lush biblical paintings, The Banjo Lesson is his most famous work and the painting that has become iconic to his oeuvre.

Henry Tanner painted The Banjo Lesson in 1893 from a series of sketches he had made four years earlier while visiting North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Tanner had studied and worked in Paris until contracting typhoid and being advised to return to the United States to regain his health and dwindling finances. While he was taking a teaching position at Clark University in Atlanta, Tanner’s doctor advised him to get some high-altitude air. His trip to North Carolina opened his eyes to the poverty of African Americans living in the Appalachian Mountains.

The Legacy of Slavery

The United States had abolished slavery only twenty-four years earlier, in 1865, and the physical and psychological wounds of that brutal institution would continue to be a palpable presence in African-American communities—particularly in the South. Although Tanner was born in Pittsburgh into the tight-knit world of the highly educated members of America’s burgeoning African-American intelligentsia, Tanner’s mother, Sarah, had been born a slave and fled north to Pennsylvania via the Underground Railroad. His middle name, Ossawa, was chosen by his father, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a Methodist minister and abolitionist, after Osawatomie, Kansas — the site of abolitionist John Brown’s bloody confrontation with pro-slavery partisans on August 30, 1856.

Throughout his education and rise in the art world in both the United States and Europe, the legacy of slavery haunted Tanner as he attempted to carve out a niche as a painter that could be viewed on his own terms. The Banjo Lesson grew out of a series of photographs and illustrations (above) that Tanner made in 1893 for Harper’s Young People magazine. The illustration shows an elderly man teaching a young boy to play the banjo, accompanied by a short story by Ruth McEnery Stuart called ‘Uncle Tim’s Compromise for Christmas’ in which the title character presents his grandson with his most treasured possession, a banjo, on Christmas morning.

American realism + the European tradition

Tanner had spent years refining a style of his own that combined elements of American realism and the European tradition of the old masters. The banjo lesson has its roots in the genre paintings of African Americans by William Sidney Mount and Thomas Eakins (above) and in Renaissance and Flemish paintings, notably Domenico Ghirlandaio’s An Old Man and His Grandson and Johannes Vermeer’s Woman with a Lute (below).

While studying in Paris, Tanner was also inspired by the works of the French Realists, notably Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet, in their depictions of the rural poor. Millet’s The Angelus is a noticeable influence on Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson, with its tranquil, intensely spiritual depiction of a farmer and his wife praying amidst the fields at dusk.

A radically different picture

This theme of spiritual comfort that Tanner encountered in the paintings of French realists like Millet was reflected in his own upbringing as the son of a Methodist minister. He hoped to find a way to highlight the dignity and grace of poor African Americans in the way he had seen in France – an approach radically different from stereotypical images of the overly subservient “Uncle Tom” character (named after the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s iconic 1852 novel) known to Americans in countless advertisements (like this one for Ayers Cathartic Pills [The Country Doctor], ca. 1883) and popular magazines.

In The Banjo Lesson, Tanner’s desire to show us his vision of the resilience, spiritual grace, and creative and intellectual promise of post-Civil War African Americans is fully realized. The scene is staged in the narrow confines of a log cabin, with the cool glow of a fireplace throwing the scene’s sole light source out the right corner, enveloping the man and boy in a rectangular cone of light across the floor. The boy holds the banjo in both hands, his downward gaze reflecting his concentrated concentration on his grandfather’s instructions. The older man gently holds the banjo up with his left hand so that the boy is not weighed down by his weight, but the staging tells us that the man wants the boy to come to the realization of the music and its reward through his own intuition hard Work.

The contrast between the man’s age and the boy’s increases the narrative tension inside the painting as in the Ghirlandaio, a counterpoint between age and experience and youth and the promise of achievement. The boy is bathed in the glow of the fire’s warmth, with a glimmer of white light shining across his forehead, the center of knowledge and understanding. The older man is immersed in the cool shadows of the room. This carefully orchestrated play of warmth and cold, of shadow and light, conveys that the success of future generations builds on the legacy of previous generations. Bathed in muted, cool grays and blues, the grandfather is the past, the old America of slavery and civil war, oppression, racism and poverty, while the boy, caught in the warm glow of fire, is the past, new America , of new opportunities, advancement, education and new beginnings.

Banjos, minstrel shows and stereotypes of African Americans

Certainly Tanner would have seen a lot of his own life in this tender scene. The educated son of a former slave father and a minister and abolitionist, Tanner always sought to fulfill his potential as an artist in post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction America. It is also important that the instrument that leads the boy to enlightenment is the banjo, an instrument that is important to African American slave culture and the music of the American South. The banjo evolved from the gourd instruments of Africa and the West Indies and became a staple of slave music in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In Tanner’s day, it was a mainstay of minstrel shows, popular variety entertainment in which black-faced white actors performed songs and skits. It was common on minstrel shows to portray African Americans as boisterous, light-hearted, goofy, and dimwitted. This portrayal fed the preconceived notions of white supremacy—that, even if African Americans were no longer slaves, they would still be infantile and incapable of self-determined action or notable achievement. All of the visual and popular culture of Uncle Tom’s pictures and minstrel shows was part of the noxious psychological chains of slavery that existed in America for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. The shows also featured African Americans with an innate musicianship that recognized their talent but undermined their intelligence.

For Tanner, painting this picture of generational change was a way to debunk the ingrained derogatory stereotypes of African Americans propagated by minstrel shows. In Tanner’s painting we see the grandfather and the boy as intelligent, noble, graceful people engaged in an intimate act of sharing creative knowledge. Her lesson becomes symbolic of the greatest African American journey of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of emancipation, reconstruction, the horrors and injustices of the Jim Crow laws, the exodus of the Great Migration, and the turmoil and dynamism of the Harlem Renaissance.

An American artist

After painting The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor (above), Tanner moved back to Paris, where he would spend most of his life. Tanner felt that France was less tainted with racial prejudice against people of color than the United States. “In America I am Henry Tanner, Negro artist, but in France I am ‘Monsieur Tanner, l’artiste américaine’. ,”[1]

His desire to be recognized for the quality of his talent inspired him to paint prolifically throughout his life, traveling throughout the Middle East and North Africa in search of authentic images for biblical paintings that would become a hallmark of his later career . When World War I was declared in Europe, Tanner enlisted in the Red Cross, served as a medical volunteer, and made numerous sketches and various paintings of the soldiers in France and Belgium. In 1923 he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government for his services during the war.

But it’s the banjo lesson that has become the iconic painting of his entire career. Its scale, emotional delicacy, nuanced orchestration of light and shadow, and symbolism place it in a resonance chamber in American art history. Both The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor were notable achievements for Tanner—works which, according to art historian Judith Wilson, “brought their ordinary, underprivileged black subjects to a level of dignity and self-possession that seems extraordinary for the time they were painted.” [ 2] It is a testament to Tanner’s vision as an artist and his personal beliefs as an African American amidst the opportunities offered by the 20th century that these two paintings speak so deeply to us today.

[1] Marcia M. Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist (University of Chicago Press, 1995) p. 90

[2] Judith Wilson, “Lifting” The Veil”: Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor”, Contributions in Black Studies: vol. 9, Article 4 (1992)

go deeper

Henry O. Tanner, Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit subpage

Anna O. Marley, ed. Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit (University of California Press: 2012).

Marcia M. Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist (University of Chicago Press: 1995).

Kristin Schwain, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (Cornell University Press: 2007).

Will South, “A Missing Question Mark: The Unknown Henry Ossawa Tanner,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, vol. 8. Issue 2 (Autumn 2009) .

Judith Wilson, “Lifting ‘The Veil’: Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor,” Contributions in Black Studies: A Journal of African and Afro-American Studies, vol. 9, article 4.

African American painter and installation artist

Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouette artist, printmaker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor whose work explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity. She is best known for her room-sized tableaus of black silhouettes cut out of paper. Walker received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997 at the age of 28, becoming one of the youngest recipients of all time.[2] Since 2015 she has been the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.[3]

Walker is recognized as one of the most prominent and celebrated Black American artists working today.[4][5][6][7]

Early life and education[edit]

Walker was born in Stockton, California in 1969.[8] Her father, Larry Walker, was a painter and professor.[8][9][10] Her mother, Gwendolyn, was an administrative assistant.[11][12] A 2007 New York Times review described her early life as quiet, noting that “nothing about [Walker’s] very early life seems to have predestined her for this task, a generation for whom the upsurge and fervor of the civil rights movement.” and the want-now rage of Black Power were yesterday’s news.”[13]

When Walker was 13, her father accepted a position at Georgia State University. They settled in the town of Stone Mountain.[14][11] The move was a culture shock for the young artist. In sharp contrast to the multicultural environment of the California coast, Stone Mountain still hosted Ku Klux Klan rallies. At her new high school, Walker recalls, “I was called a ‘nigger,’ told I looked like a monkey, accused (I didn’t know it was an accusation) of being a ‘Yankee.'” [15]

Walker received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994.[16] Walker was uncomfortable in her early college years and afraid of addressing race in her art, fearing that it would be taken as “typical” or “obvious”. However, she began to introduce race into her art while attending Rhode Island School of Design for her Masters.

Walker recalls her father’s influence: “One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my father’s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw, I pretty much got back then and there around the age of 2½ or 3 decided years ago that I was an artist, just like Dad.”[17]

Work and career[edit]

Walker is best known for her panoramic friezes of cut paper silhouettes, usually black figures against a white wall, that explore the history of American slavery and racism through violent and disturbing imagery.[18] She has also produced gouache, watercolor, video animation, shadow puppets, “magic lanterns” projections, as well as large-scale sculptural installations such as her ambitious public exhibition with Creative Time called A Subtlety or The Marvelous Sugar Baby, which pays homage to the unpaid and overworked artisans , who refined our sweet tastes from the sugar cane fields to the kitchens of the New World to mark the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refinery (2014). The black and white silhouettes confront the realities of history while using the stereotypes of the slavery era to refer to the enduring concerns of the present.[19] Her exploration of American racism translates to other countries and cultures in relation to race and gender relations, reminding us of the power of art to defy convention.[20]

A nice touch. The white sculpture depicting a woman in the form of a visitor at Walker. In the background is the white sculpture depicting a woman in the form of a sphinx.

She first caught the attention of the art world in 1994 with her mural Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart. This paper-cut silhouette mural, depicting an antebellum South steeped in sex and slavery, was an instant hit.[21] At age 28, she became the second youngest recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “Genie” grant,[22] after renowned Mayanist David Stuart. In 2007, the Walker Art Center exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love was the artist’s first comprehensive US museum survey.

Her influences include Andy Warhol, whose art Walker says she admired as a child,[12] Adrian Piper[23][24] and Robert Colescott[21].

Bridging the unfinished folklore of the antebellum South, Walker’s silhouette paintings raise identity and gender issues for African American women in particular. Walker uses images from history textbooks to show how enslaved African Americans were portrayed during the Antebellum South.[12] The silhouette was typically a distinguished tradition in American art history; It was often used for family portraits and book illustrations. Walker continued this portrait tradition, but used it to create characters in a nightmarish world, a world that reveals the brutality of American racism and inequality.

Walker integrates menacing, sharp fragments of the southern landscape; like Spanish moss trees and a huge moon obscured by dramatic clouds. These images surround the viewer and create a circular, claustrophobic space. This circular format paid homage to another art form, the 360-degree history painting known as cyclorama.[19]

Some of her images are grotesque, for example in The Battle of Atlanta,[25] a white man, presumably a Confederate soldier, rapes a black girl while her brother looks on in shock; a white child is about to insert his sword into the vagina of a nearly lynched black woman; and a black male slave rains tears on an adolescent white boy. The use of physical stereotypes such as flatter profiles, larger lips, straighter nose, and longer hair helps the viewer instantly distinguish the black subjects from the white subjects. Walker shows the inequalities and mistreatment of African Americans by their white peers. Viewers at the Studio Museum in Harlem looked sickly, shocked and some horrified as they saw their exhibit. Thelma Golden, the museum’s chief curator, said that “Throughout her career, Walker has challenged and changed the way we look at and understand American history. She has said that her work addresses the ways Americans address racism.” with a “soft focus” and “avoiding the confluence of disgust, desire and lust, all wrapped up in […] racism”.[19]

In an interview with New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Walker said, “I guess there was a bit of a slight rebellion, maybe a bit of a renegade desire, that at some point in my youth made me realize that I really liked pictures and the stories of.” Narrated things – genre paintings, historical paintings – the kind of derivatives we get in contemporary society.”[10]

Notable works[ edit ]

In her 2000 play Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), the silhouetted characters stand against a background of colored light projections. This gives the piece a transparent quality reminiscent of the production cels from 1930s animated films. It also references the plantation story Gone with the Wind and the Technicolor film based on it. In addition, the light projectors were placed in such a way that the viewers’ shadows were also cast on the wall, making them characters and encouraging them to grapple with the difficult themes of the work.[19] In 2005 she created the exhibition 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture, which introduced moving image and sound. This helped to further immerse viewers in their dark worlds. In this exhibition, the silhouettes are used as shadow figures. Additionally, she uses the voices of herself and her daughter to suggest how the legacy of early American slavery influenced her own image as an artist and woman of color.[19]

In response to Hurricane Katrina, Walker created “After the Deluge” as the hurricane had devastated many poor and black areas of New Orleans. Walker was bombarded with news images of “black physicality.” She likened these sacrifices to African slaves being piled onto ships for the Middle Passage, the Atlantic crossing to America.[12]

I saw images that were all too familiar to me. They were black people in a state of mortal desperation and everything physical came to the surface: water, excrement, sewage. It was a rewriting of all black body stereotypes.[27]

Walker participated in the 2009 inaugural exhibition at the Scaramouche Gallery in New York City with a group show entitled “The Practice of Joy Before Death; It Just Wouldn’t Be a Party Without You”.[28] Recent work by Kara Walker includes Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale (April-June 2011) at Lehmann Maupin, in collaboration with Sikkema Jenkins & Co. A concurrent exhibition, Dust Jackets for the Niggerati- and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings penitent submitted by Dr Kara E. Walker, opened in Sikkema Jenkins on the same day.[29]

Walker created Katastwóf Karavan for the 2018 New Orleans arts festival Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp. This sculpture was an old-fashioned wagon with Walker’s signature silhouettes depicting slave owners and slaves on the sides and a custom-built steam-powered calliope playing songs of “black protest and celebration.”[30]

Although Walker is known for her serious exhibitions with an overall deep meaning behind her work, she admits that she relies on “humor and viewer interaction.” Walker has said, “I didn’t want a totally passive viewer” and “I wanted to do work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; they’d either giggle nervously, be drawn into the story, into the fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful.”[31]

Commissions[ edit ]

In 2002, Walker created a site-specific installation, An Abbreviated Emancipation (from a larger work: The Emancipation Approximation), commissioned by the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor.[32] The work represented motifs and themes of race relations and their roots in the pre-Civil War system of slavery.

In 2005, The New School unveiled Walker’s first public art installation, a site-specific mural titled Event Horizon, placed along a grand staircase leading from the main lobby to a large public program space.

In May 2014, Walker unveiled her first sculpture, a monumental work and public work of art titled A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, a tribute to the unpaid and overworked artisans who shaped our sweet tastes from the sugarcane fields to the kitchens of the new have refined world on the occasion of the demolition of the Domino sugar refinery. Installed in Brooklyn’s run-down Domino Sugar Refinery, the massive work was commissioned by Creative Time. The installation consisted of a female sphinx-like figure, approximately 75 feet long and 35 feet high, preceded by an array of fifteen life-size young male figures, referred to as attendants. Bearing the head and facial features of the Mammy archetype, the Sphinx was made by covering a core of machine-cut Styrofoam blocks with 80 tons of white sugar donated by Domino Foods.[34] The fifteen male companions were modeled after racist characters that Walker bought online. Five were made of solid sugar and the other ten were resin sculptures covered in molasses. The fifteen companions were 60 inches tall and weighed 300-500 pounds each.[35][36] The factory and artwork were demolished as previously planned after the exhibition closed in July 2014.[14][37][38][39]

Walker has suggested that the sugar’s whiteness indicates its “aesthetic, clean, and pure quality.” The slave trade is also highlighted in the sculpture. Art critic Jamilah King commented on the exhibition’s predominantly white audience coupled with the installation’s political and historical content, arguing that “the exhibition itself is an impressive and incredibly well-executed commentary on the historical relationship between race and capital, namely the money that was earned off the backs of black slaves on sugar plantations throughout the western hemisphere, so the presence of so many white people – and my own presence as a black woman descended from slaves – seemed part of the show as well. “[40] The work attracted over 130,000 visitors over its eight weekends. Commenting on the sculpture, art historian Richard J. Powell wrote: “No matter how noble or solemn Walker’s title for this work was, in this postmodern moment of moral skepticism and collective distrust, a work of art shone in a public arena – particularly a visually bewildering act – would be subject not only to serious criticism but also to internet trolling and ridicule.”[41]

In 2016, Walker unveiled Slaughter of the Innocents (They Might be Guilty of Something). In the painting, Walker depicts an African American woman cutting a baby with a small scythe. The influence for this detail was that of Margaret Garner, a slave who killed her own daughter to prevent her child from being returned to slavery.

In 2019, Walker established Fons Americanus, the fifth annual Hyundai Commission, in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.[42] The fountain, which is up to 4.0 m high, contains allegorical motifs relating to the history of Africa, America and Europe, particularly in relation to the Atlantic slave trade. In her review of Walker’s Fons Americanus for Artnet News, Naomi Rea noted that “the play is so rich in art historical and cultural references that you could teach an entire college history class without leaving Turbine Hall.”[42] She has also observed – thanks to the flowing water of the fountain – the great work of art in the Turbine Hall could both be seen and heard.[42] The artwork doubles as a form of public monument, inspired in part by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. In 2019, acclaimed writer Zadie Smith observed something about public monuments that Walker questions in Fons Americanus: “Monuments are smug; they seal the past, they free us from fear. For Walker, fear is an engine: it causes us to remember and rightly fear the ruins we do not want to return to and recreate – if we are wise.”[43]

Other projects[edit]

For the 1998/1999 season at the Vienna State Opera, Walker designed a large-format picture (176 m2) as part of the “Safety Curtain” exhibition series conceived by museum in progress.[44] In 2009, Walker curated Volume 11 of Merge Records’, Score!. Invited by fellow artist Mark Bradford to develop a series of free lesson plans for K-12 teachers at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2010, Walker offered a lesson in which students collaborate on a story by exchanging text messages.[ 45]

In March 2012, artist Clifford Owens performed a Walker score at MoMA PS1.[46]

In 2013, Walker produced 16 lithographs for a limited edition, fine art printing of the libretto Porgy & Bess by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, published by Arion Press.

controversy[edit]

The Detroit Institute of Art removed her The Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts (1995) from a 1999 exhibition Where the Girls Are: Prints by Women from the DIA’s Collection, as African-American artists and collectors objected to its presence protested . The five-part silhouette of a pre-war plantation scene was in the permanent collection and, according to a DIA spokesman, would eventually be exhibited again.[47]

A Walker play entitled The Moral Arc of History ideally veers toward justice, but once it fails to veer back toward barbarism, sadism, and unbridled chaos, it sparked controversy among staff at the Newark Public Library, who questioned its appropriateness for questioned the reading room where it was hung. The artwork included depictions of the Ku Klux Klan accompanied by a flaming cross, a naked black woman beating a white man, and Barack Obama.[48] The piece was covered but not removed in December 2012.[49] After discussions between employees and trustees, the work was uncovered again.[50] In March 2013, Walker visited the New Jersey Newark Public Library to discuss the work and the controversy. Walker discussed the content of the work, including racism, identity and its use of “heroic” figures like Obama. Walker asked, “Do these archetypes collapse the story? They’re meant to expand the conversation, but they often collapse it.”[48] Walker described the overwhelming subject matter of her works as “too much”. ]

In the 1999 PBS documentary I’ll Make Me a World, African-American artist Betye Saar Walker’s work was criticized for its “vile and negative” depiction of black stereotypes and slaves. Saar accused art of getting used to enjoying the “white art establishment”. In 1997, Saar 200 emailed fellow artists and politicians to express concern about Walker’s use of racist and sexist imagery and its positive reception in the art world.[51] This attention to Walker’s practice led to a 1998 Harvard University symposium, Change a Joke and Slip the Yoke: A Harvard University Conference on Racist Imagery, where her work was discussed.[52]

Exhibitions[ edit ]

Walker’s first museum survey[53] in 2007 was organized by Philippe Vergne for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and traveled to the Whitney Museum in New York, the Hammer Museum[54] in Los Angeles and the ARC/Musee d’ Art Moderne de la City of Paris.[55][14]

Solo exhibitions[ edit ]

2013: We at Camden Arts Center are extremely proud to present an exhibition of capable artworks by famous American artist Kara Elizabeth Walker, Negress, Camden Art Centre, London [56] (touring 2014 to MAC, Belfast). [57] )

, Camden Art Centre, London (2014 Tour at the MAC, Belfast) 2014: A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, a tribute to the unpaid and overworked artisans who have refined our sweet tastes from the sugar cane fields to the kitchens of the New World celebrating the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refinery, Creative Time, Brooklyn, NY. [37]

, Creative Time, Brooklyn, NY. 2016: The Ecstasy of St. Kara, Cleveland Museum of Art. [58] [59]

, Cleveland Museum of Art. 2017: Sikkema Jenkins and Co. is compelled to present the most amazing and important painting exhibition of the fall art exhibition season! , Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY. [60]

, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY. 2019: Untitled – Hyundai Commission, Tate Modern. [61]

2021: A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland[62]

Collections[ edit ]

Public collections of Walker’s work include the Minneapolis Institute of Art[63] and the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, Minnesota);[64] the Tate Collection, London;[65] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,[ 66] the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (Madison, WI), the Menil Collection,[67] Houston;[68] and the Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, Virginia.[69] Early large-scale cut-paper works were collected by Jeffrey Deitch and Dakis Joannou, among others.[70]

Recognition [ edit ]

In 1997, the then 28-year-old Walker became one of the youngest people to receive a MacArthur scholarship.[11] There was much criticism [weepy words] for her fame at such a young age and the fact that her art was most popular in the white community.[71] In 2007, Walker was listed among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Artists, and Entertainers in the World, in a citation penned by fellow artist Barbara Kruger. In 2012 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[73] She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.[74]

Walker received the Deutsche Bank Prize[75] and the Larry Aldrich Prize.[76] She was the United States representative for the 25th International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2002).[77] She is the laureate of the 2005 Larry Aldrich Prize.[78] 2016 residency at the American Academy in Rome.[79]

Walker was featured on PBS. Her work appears on the cover of musician Arto Lindsay’s recording Salt (2004). She co-wrote the song “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker” on the Destroyer album Kaputt.

Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song “Hot Topic”.[80]

In 2017, a large-scale mural by artist Chuck Close by Kara Walker was installed in a New York City subway station (Q Line, 86th Street) as part of an MTA public art program.[81]

Personal life[edit]

Early in her career, Walker lived in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, German-born jewelry professor Klaus Bürgel, [82] [83] whom she married in 1996. In 1997 she gave birth to a daughter. 79] The couple separated and their divorce was finalized in 2010.[85][79] Walker has been in a relationship with photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos since 2017.[79]

Walker moved to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in 2003 and has been a professor of fine arts in the MFA program at Columbia University. From 2010 to 2017 she maintained a studio in the Garment District, Manhattan.[79] In May 2017, she moved her artistic practice to a studio in Industry City.[79] She also owns a country home in rural Massachusetts.[82]

In addition to her own practice, Walker served on the board of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) between 2011[86] and 2016.[87]

Further reading[edit]

Edit article ]

D’Arcy, David. “Kara Walker raises a storm”, Modern Painters (April 2006).

(April 2006). Garrett, Shawn Marie. “Return of the Oppressed”, Theater 32, No. 2 (Summer 2002).

32, No. 2 (Summer 2002). Kazanjian, Dodie. “Cut it Out”, Vogue (May 2005).

(May 2005). Szabo, Julia. “Kara Walker’s Shock Art,” New York Times Magazine 146, No. 50740 (March 1997).

146, No. 50740 (March 1997). Walker, Hamza. Kara Walker: Cut it Out, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art No. 11/12 (fall/winter 2000).

no. 11/12 (fall/winter 2000). As, Hilton. “The Shadow Act,” The New Yorker, October 8, 2007

, October 8, 2007 As, Hilton. “The Sugar Sphinx,” The New Yorker, May 8, 2014

, May 8, 2014 Scott, Andrea K. “Kara Walker’s Ghosts of Future Evil,” The New Yorker, September 9, 2017

, September 9, 2017 Mauer, David. “Transgression, Excess, and the Violence of the Spectacle in the Art of Kara Walker”, Oxford Art Journal vol. 33, No. 3 (2010). https://www.jstor.org/stable/40983288?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Non-fiction books and catalogs[ edit ]

Beret, Terry. Interpreting Art: Reflections, Questions and Answers, New York: McGraw Hill (2002).

, New York: McGraw Hill (2002). Berry, Ian, Darby English, Vivian Patterson, Mark Reinhardt, eds. Tales of a Negress, Boston: M.I.T. Press (2003).

, Boston: M.I.T. Press (2003). Zimmerman, Elizabeth and Joan Rothfuss. Bits & Pieces Assembled to Present Appearance of a Whole: Collections of the Walker Art Center. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005.

. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005. Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Woman (1858).

(1858). Shaw, Gwendolyn Dubois. Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker, Durham and London: Duke University Press (2004). http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55008318

, Durham and London: Duke University Press (2004). http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55008318 Vergne, Philippe, et al. Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2007. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/602217956

. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2007. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/602217956 Walker, Kara E. Kara Walker: After the Flood. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/144225309

. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/144225309 Walker, Kara E., Olga Gambari and Richard Flood. Kara Walker: A Negress of remarkable talent. Turin: Fondazione Merz, 2011. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/768397358

Web sources[edit]

The History of Art: Kara Walker, Modern Art Insight. 2016

Notes [edit]

References[edit]

When Wassily Kandinsky wrote to his New York gallery owner Jerome Neumann in December 1935, he was visibly anxious to reassure him that he had painted his first abstract picture in 1911: “In fact, it is the first abstract picture in the world, because at that time not a single painter painted in an abstract style. A “historical painting” in other words.” Unfortunately, this historical painting was considered lost. The artist failed to take it with him when he left Russia for Germany in 1921 before later relocating to France. He knew the art world was involved in a competition. Being recognized as the author of the first abstract painting had become a coveted prize. It was still a matter of debate as to which modern artist could claim this award. The other top candidates were František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich. What Kandinsky didn’t know was that a Swedish painter named Hilma af Klint had created her first abstract painting in her Stockholm studio in 1906, five years before him. Also, she had embarked on the same path toward abstraction. Unbeknownst to each other, the two artists seem to have traveled a long distance, like two trains on the same tracks. Klint arrived before Kandinsky.

Who was Hilma af Klint? And how did she become an artist? Two aspects of her biography would give her an advantage. First, the admiral’s daughter was born in Sweden in 1862, a country that allowed women to study art long before France, Germany or Italy. As a result, she was able to enroll at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1882. After graduating five years later, she rented a studio in the city’s bohemian quarter and gradually gained recognition as a landscape and portrait painter. She was also passionate about the study of plants and animals and worked as a technical draftsman for the Veterinary Institute in 1900/1901.

Second, Klint was born into a Protestant family and was exposed to Theosophy at an early age. One does not have to be a fan of the esoteric to see what advantages theosophy could offer a young artist. In the 19th century, no one doubted that great works depended on equally great inspiration. However, hardly anyone believed that higher powers came into play when painting women. Theosophy, founded by a woman (the Russian Helena Petrovna Blavatsky), saw things differently. Women were welcome as members and held senior positions. In short, it was the first religious organization in Europe that did not discriminate against women. Klint was seventeen when she attended her first spiritual seance.

Mainly because of Jasper Johns when the artist was considered

important like Picasso?