African American History

This paper will discuss certain aspects of African American history. The first part of the paper will provide some background with regard to the history of Africa and its culture. The second part of the paper will briefly discuss the chronological history of African Americans, focusing especially upon the transition from slavery to freedom in the Nineteenth Century. The third part of the paper will discuss African American literature, including that produced during the Harlem Renaissance. The fourth part of the paper will discuss the African roots of jazz and the early development of jazz in African American culture.

Most scientists now trace the geographical origins of humans to Africa; thus, the African continent has been populated by humans for a few million years (Bohannan & Curtin, 1988, pp. 214-18). Relatively little is known about the evolutionary stages between the stone age and the Roman period in Africa. What is known is that the process of technological evolution in Africa was slower than that in Europe and Asia, so that by the middle of the second millennium A.D. African cultures were not as technologically advanced as their European and Asian neighbors. As a result, the African cultures came to be dominated by the European ones as world trade increased in the Fifteenth Century (Curtin, 1974, pp. 24-31).

African states began to develop with the introduction of techniques for producing iron, which aided in

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issue of Black slavery. Although White Americans argued that they were fighting for either the preservation of the Union or states' rights, the real emotional center of the war was slavery. As the war escalated, the issue of slavery became the symbol around which both sides rallied. Northern leaders publicly moved towards emancipation, while Southern leaders fanned fears of Black revenge to maintain the war effort (McPherson, 1988, pp. 490-510, 689-717). With the North's victory, emancipation of African Americans was secured. The only thing left for the Northern leaders to do was to ensure that the old South was destroyed forever. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 were part of the official process by which the Southern states were reformed prior to their reintegration into the Union. Although officially abolished in the South by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slavery continued to influence the relationships between Blacks and Southern Whites after the war ended. Emancipation could not mean instant equality between the two races, given the 200-year tradition of the master-subject relationship. Consequently, Northern Republicans re-ordered the racial relationship in the South, enacting legislation which gave the ex-

Category: History - A