[Excerpt From: THE ENACTMENT OF CIVIL AND SOCIAL RIGHTS POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1940 – 2000 : AN ANALYSIS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARTICIPATION BY DR. AMBAKISYE-OKANG OLATUNDE DUKUZUMURENYI]

[Excerpt From: THE ENACTMENT OF CIVIL AND SOCIAL RIGHTS POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1940 – 2000 : AN ANALYSIS OF

AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARTICIPATION BY DR. AMBAKISYE-OKANG OLATUNDE DUKUZUMURENYI]

The African-American Sociopolitical Community

In American political philosophy, the social and political orders are differentiated one from the other.  Social contract theorists, such as John Locke and American revolutionary theorist Thomas Paine both accounted for government as a basic requirement for the protection of private property, that is a necessary burden on the governed.  Hence, the contractual agreement between the governed and the government.  Government was view as an institution that could become tyrannical and was naturally not to be trusted.  As such government had to watched, and safeguards instituted to protect the citizenry.  Society on the other hand was a natural response by man to provide and safeguard human needs in a world defined by scarcity.  Man was naturally social and could not provided all of his needs in his natural free and equal state; therefore, society was formed to meet these human necessities.  However, man once he had accumulated power tended towards political corruption and so could not be trusted to rule ethically. The state and society were then considered out of necessity as two distinct entities.

The separation of the social community and the political community in American political philosophy has implications for public policy formation.  The American view that the two are distinct on from another and that government is to be feared and guarded against implies that there are areas where government should have power to legislate and areas where government should not be able to infringe upon individual rights.  In the United States the social philosophy of American individualism and its economic counterpart of laissez-faire liberalism are under girded by the notion of an antagonistic relationship existing between government and society. Policy debates in the United States often hinge upon the question of the true sphere of influence for government; a debate which is as old as the republic itself.

The idea of the relationship of society and the state, however, as apart of American political philosophy, was defined by the particular circumstances of British political history and the nature of the colonial relationship between the American colonies and the British imperial government.  The nature of this relationship was shaped by British colonial foreign policy during the years of 1607 - 1776.  Where African-Americans are concerned, their explanation of the nature of the relationship of the state and society grows out of the West African political tradition, intermixed with later adaptations of French, Spanish and English political ideas formulated during more than three centuries of constant political struggle.  The uniqueness of the African-American experience has therefore, shaped contemporary African-American politics.  At the heart of the African-American political experience is an understanding of the indivisibility of society and government.

West African Political Background

         The sociopolitical institutions of precolonial western Africa played an important part in shaping African-American political philosophy and activism in the Americas during the sixteenth century and continued to influence African-American political participation from the seventeenth century to the present.  African-Americans are an amalgamation of over 100 of the more than 2000 ethnic groups of Africa.[1]  The primary geographical area from which African-American's originate encompasses the land from northwestern to southwestern Africa.  The modern day countries that are located in this area are Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.[2]

        Although the area from northwest to southwest Africa is composed of a multitude of ethnic groups the high degree of regional complementarity stemming from trade relations lead to a significant level of similarity in sociopolitical institutions.[3]  Representative kingdoms and states from which African-Americans hail were the Sultanate of Kanem-Borno, the Hausa city-states, the Tukolor Empire, Kingdom of Dahomey and Oyo, the Asante Kingdom, Kingdoms of Ife and Benin, Kingdom of Kongo, the Lunda Empire and the Kingdom of Imbangala.[4]  The various ethnic groups that composed these states and kingdoms ranged from preliterate to literate societies.[5] Preliterate societies such as the Kru did not have a written language, where as the Vai maintained a written alphabet.  Other ethnic groups throughout the region utilized the Arabic alphabet and have a long written tradition that was utilized by some African-Americans during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

        The social structures of the African-American native societies include hunting and gathering societies, simple and advanced horticultural societies, simple and advanced agrarian societies, simple and advanced herding societies and fishing and maritime societies, or some admixture of the various types.[6]  The basis of this classification rests on the level of technological innovation utilized in satisfying basic social needs.  The degree of intricacy in the social structure increases as the level of technology so that advanced agrarian societies are more advanced than horticultural, fishing and maritime societies.  Each of these societies were maintained with a high degree of citizen participation in the governance of the society.  Egalitarianism and group maintenance were the norm; both are hallmarks of social democracy. The sustainable development of the group assumed priority over self-centered individual economic concerns. These are the types of societies from which African-Americans come and as was stated previously these sociopolitical institutions are the basis and continue to impact African-American political participation by way of the delineation of the nature of the relationship of the state and society.

        In West African society, the state and society were not separate antagonistic entities.  Instead, each was seamlessly interwoven into the fabric of the other.  West African states were composed of  executive, legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic institutions.  The executive institution served as the agency from, which all state power and authority derived and provided the only accepted location of coercive power. However, social institutions played a substantive role in the political process utilizing state resources to meet social needs. In many instances, the executive was the origin of state power and not necessarily the absolute welder of such power.  A check on the executive institution was a representative council of state elders to which the executive turned to for counsel.  The bureaucracy was the department through which authority was delegated to provincial representatives.[7]  Social institutions, which were integrated into the state apparatus were religious institutions, the age-grade and decent systems. Religion was not separated from the state but served as the moral compass of the nation. The King was considered the embodiment of the soul of the nation and the prime symbol of the religion.[8] The age-grade system was determined by the year in which a person was born and was the basis of education, rites of passage and other social requirements such as military service.  The descent system established lineage ties, which created social networks that provided the foundation for social stability.[9]

        The decentralized nature of power, and social checks upon the government as well as social utilization of state power are the foundations of the social democracy that existed in varying degrees in the kingdoms and states of the region.  As can be deduced the citizens were the beginning and ending of state power and thus the state and society were one and not antagonists.  The epistemological concerns of the state place the group above the individual-as defined in the west.  In West Africa, the individual defined oneself in relation to the group.  The decent system allowed for the elder of each extended family to serve as a representative in the legislative institutions of the government.  The state was viewed as a party in the western sense of politics that is composed of different factions, which are allowed to voice and defend their positions.  All members of society were guaranteed enough land to maintain their social welfare, and this land could be passed from generation to generation.  Social, political and economic egalitarianism stemming from social democratic principles were apart of the traditions that were transported across the Atlantic Ocean in the holds of cargo ships.  The West African social democratic political philosophy would shape and impact the egalitarian nature of African-American politics in colonial, antebellum and twentieth century America.[10]

African-American Society and American Government

        Unlike immigrant groups from Europe and Asia, the African-American presence in North America resulted from the forced migration of approximately fifteen million West Africans during the transatlantic international trade of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Though according to Aristotle and Locke man is social by nature and will seek out the comforts of community, African-American society on the North American continent was formed almost exclusively by external pressures of elite entrepreneurs and plantation owners protected by first the British and colonial governments and later by the federal and state governments of the United States. Generally, this state of affairs rendered African-Americans powerless in the sociopolitical arena. The shape and nature of African-American society, which resulted had an impact on the relationship of African-Americans to the larger community as well on African-American political behavior.  That being said, over the course of the past one hundred and fifty years African-American society has undergone  substantive structural changes, which have created superficial alterations in sociopolitical power relationships with the United States government.

        African-American Society 1526-1940. African-American society in North America began in 1526 when the Spanish colonial officer of Hispaniola, Lucas Vasquez de Allyon made an abortive attempt at establishing a colony with five hundred persons mainly west Africans. The colonists landed at St. Elena and moved near what is now James River, Virginia and established the San Miguel colony.   The hundred or more Africans revolted slew many of the Spaniards and took refuge with the Native American nations in the region establishing one of the earliest maroon communities.[11]  Here then is the earliest Common Era instance in North American of African-American politics, in this case by violent means.  The next group of Africans would arrive in 1619 near the same area and would be classified as indentured servants, however by the 1640s perpetual servitude on the part of African-Americans was well on its way towards legal recognition, through judicial decisions and by the 1660s it would be universal law in colonial America.[12] Conservatively speaking, in all from 1492 to 1776 of the 6.5 million persons who migrated to the New World,  5.5 million were West Africans who were forcibly transported across the Atlantic and into enslavement on plantations in the Americas. An estimated 450,000 of them were sent to North America and endured the deprivations of perpetual enslavement.  The situation of African-American legal enslavement would last for nearly two and a half centuries until the 1860s.[13]

The fact of forced West African migration, legal and humanistic reduction to economic property and perpetual enslavement based upon socially defined racial factors all contributed to the early formation of African-American society and shaped the relationship of African-Americans to American government.  In the West African tradition, the age-grade and decent system, which established kinship rules defined citizenship into the nation.  During enslavement, particularly in the North American colonies and later the United States, African-Americans were denied the right to overtly perpetuate West African kinship systems and were excluded from all protection and recognition of social, political or human rights of citizenship in the political communities of North America.  Under the colonial governments and eventually under the U. S. government all political rights were denied as African-Americans were defined as chattel property. This helped to alter the old West African community arrangements to a point. 

Had the African-American community been totally isolated from all external influences then the system of enslavement would have produced and efficient labor force.  However, with the constant influx of newly enslaved West Africans, the creation of an westernized educated African-American free community and the influence of sympathetic paternalistic minded whites, the African-American societies power relationship with the America government remained in a state of constant conflict.  The new arrivals from Western Africa and the West Indies, brought their memories and desire for freedom, and long unbroken tradition of complex social organization and a lack of awe or fear of whites.  The attitudes and actions undoubtedly had an effect on aspects of the African-American community even if they were several generations removed from a tangible knowledge of freedom.  As one plantation owner put it African-Americans of all ages no matter their background maintained a strong desire for freedom and thus posed a constant problem to the system of enslavement.[14] 

The westernized African-Americans who had obtained freedom and education imbibed the rhetoric of American democracy.  Individuals such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet, waged a tireless political communication battle against established enslavement interests, indifferent northern whites and African-Americans that accepted the pseudo-scientific analysis of African inferiority in an effort to create a new consciousness amongst the enslaved population and the semi-free class of African-Americans.  Other African-Americans, for example, Richard Allen and James Forten organized African-American congresses, which began the convention movement among African-Americans. The congresses discussed issues of importance to African-Americans and developed position statements on concerns such as colonization in Africa and the cruelties of enslavement.

Sympathetic whites established antislavery organizations, published papers, arranged for the publication of the biographies of former enslaved African-Americans, funded education initiatives and supported the American Colonization Society in its efforts to repatriate African-Americans to Sierra Leone and Liberia.  The influence of these three groups caused enslaved African-Americans to petition legislative assemblies, bring civil suits in court on their own behalf and with the aid of sympathetic whites, self starvation, self-mutilation, and infanticide, running away, engage in acts of sabotage such as the destruction of crops, work slow downs, feigning ignorance or illness and arson. Other methods employed were armed insurrections and guerilla actions, poisoning of the oppressor class, and the establishment of maroon communities.[15] The reaction of the government was the codification of stringent laws designed to regulate every aspect of African-American life and prevent interracial cooperation.  At the heart of the conflict serving as a motivating force for African-American political participation, in an effort to alter existing power relationships was freedom as defined by African-American religious interpretation.

In the West African background of African-Americans, religion permeated all aspects of life.  As evidence, the most prominent structures throughout West Africa, indeed beginning with classical Egypt and Ethiopia, were religious monuments and cities were religious centers for ritual and ceremonial observances.  Although separated from the West African environment, segregated from the mainstream American society, and distributed into communities of diverse West African ethnic groups, while being  prohibited from all overt expressions ethnic traditions, the centrality of religion was sustained by African-Americans under the most oppressive and mitigating circumstances.  While some plantation owners prohibited all religious expressions by African-Americans, some allowed the spreading of a variation of the Christian religion.[16] Even so, African-American religion was not a mere imitation of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant religious practices, nor was the expression of African-American religion devoid of West African dogma or ritual.[17] African-American religion rested upon an emphasis on the concepts of reciprocity, truth, justice, righteousness, order, harmony, and balance.  Reciprocity in all human endeavors, truth of word and right action in the light of a God ordained social order provided balanced state that reached the height of perfection in the harmonious ordering of the Kingdom of God encapsulate the African-American religious experience.

In human and social interaction, these concepts outlined the African-American value system.  As African-Americans were prevented from all participation in the sociopolitical and economic apparatus of society and were forcibly segregated in living conditions and circumscribed by legal sanctions, their interpretation and understanding of American legal jurisprudence and national government foundational documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were shaped by their religious perceptions.  The secular nature of American society was not a general or predominating characteristic of African-American society.  The biblical Old Testament emphasis on Divine retribution and preparation for a divinely guided future were the subjective basis for the sociopolitical and economic actions of a significant portion of the African-American populace and mass chosen leadership. 

Even the African-American idea of freedom has highlighted the idea of the removal of all hindrances, which may interfere with the African-American communion with God.[18] The idea of liberation as expressed in the New Testament recording of the mission of the Christ informed African-American perspectives on sociopolitical and economic liberation of the African-American group.[19]  Where mainstream American society placed the individual over the group, the African-American society by virtue of the West African tradition of individualism as expressed in conjunction with the collective good of the group, the American setting of group segregation based on racial characteristics and the religious determination of the individual as a mirror of group members-the Christian ethic of each member being responsible for the well being of all of the members-the primary focus of African-American sociopolitical and economic activity has centered on group socioeconomic advancement.  Furthermore, the African-American church was the only institution in which African-Americans were able to carve out an existence for themselves and develop group centered leadership, as such its tenets predominated in all social activities.  The church was and to a great extent remains the primary institution in the development and preservation of African-American socioeconomic and political welfare.

Socially defined as a separate inferior race African-Americans faced an atmosphere where racial inferiority was used to justify the existing socioeconomic hierarchy, political power relationships, privileges accorded to whites ethnic groups and rights denied to African-Americans.  Furthermore, during the period of enslavement from roughly the 1640s to the 1860s, the foundations of racism were established.  The methodical degradation of African-Americans was justified through the influence of sociopolitical philosophy on the value premises of European biological scientists and by way of the prevailing ideologies.  The sociopolitical and economic institution of slavery with legal protection ensured elite profiteering from African-American labor and capital accumulation.  However, African-American reaction informed by West African and African-American religious tenets encompassed a wide variety of methods of resistance.

One method was to escape to havens of safety by running away.  For a time when the foreign interests of the Imperial powers-France, Spain and England-clashed and led to protracted war, African-Americans found refuge in places such as Spanish Florida from 1687-1819.  As the United States began to expand and Great Britain outlawed African enslavement, African-Americans found refuge in Canada.  In an effort to aid, their successful escape from enslavement the institution known as the Underground Railroad developed under the auspices of nominally free African-Americans and white abolitionists.[20]  Government responses included the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and 1850, the enactment of state and local codes which regulated all aspects of African-American social life-the establishment of curfews for free African-Americans and the requirement of passes when not in the company of ones owner for enslaved African-Americans.  Important Supreme Court cases which provided constitutional legitimization of the 1793 and 1850 acts were rendered in the cases of Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Jones v. Van Zandt.[21] The utilization of vigilante groups to patrol the communities, including all wooded areas and roads and the public recognition of the profession of the bounty hunters, who sought fugitive African-Americans were other government policies formulated to curtail the situation. 

African-Americans also employed the more violent measures of suicide, individual confrontations with overseers and plantation owners and mass based insurrections. From 1526 to 1861 hundreds of insurrections were organized and carried out by African-Americans with varying degrees of success.  African-American religions influence on the insurrections is best expressed by a song of the period that maintained that freedom in the grave was preferable to living with enslavement[22] and an African-American proverb of the time stated that " yuh mought as well die wid de chills ez wid de fever,"[23] meaning that one would do just as well being murdered trying to escape to freedom as dying enslaved. 

A second popular proverb held that "De quikah death, de quickah heaven,"[24] expressing a disregard for death in the light of the day to day happenings in enslavement. The tactics of armed insurrection and flight from slavery were related to the establishment of maroon communities by African-Americans.  African-American maroon communities were established in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama in remote unsettled areas and in inaccessible locations such as swamps.  Communities such as Fort Mose in Spanish Florida and African-American maroon communities who were assimilated into the Native American based Seminole nation waged unrestricted warfare with surrounding plantations and attracted fugitive African-Americans.  The maroon communities were a constant source of problems for plantations in varying degrees until the Civil War.[25] 

With the successful conclusion of the Civil War, the Federal government enacted laws, which outlawed slavery, however, this period was defined by the maintenance of the socially established practice of African-American segregation.  In urban centers, African-American social segregation led to the development and perpetuation of ghettos with separate cultural values and ideological outlooks on American society.  Social control of African-Americans was maintained by skewed legal pronouncements, biased court decisions, socioeconomic coercive pressures, political disenfranchisement and the violent act of lynching.

 The end of African-American enslavement in the United States after the Civil War caused the southern states to attempt the re-implementation of a system of subordination among African-Americans. The Black codes or slave codes, as they had been formerly known, provided a legal basis for returning African-Americans to as near as possible a state of enslavement.  The Black Codes were most prevalent in the deep south states of the former Confederate States of America.  In the Northern United States, these laws existed on a de facto basis, custom had dictated African-American segregation in northern cities such as Philadelphia and New York and periodic race riots and the social atmosphere they engendered gave segregation social stability. The sole purpose of this action was to continue to maintain socioeconomic control of African-Americans by providing only the most basic requirements of life.  Unreformed southern confederates having regained control of southern state governments set about enacting laws that would legalize the separation of white southerners and African-Americans in all aspects of social life. The laws enacted were known as the Black Codes and were generally the old Slave Codes. These laws would in time be the foundation for the disenfranchisement of African-Americans during the sociopolitical era called Jim Crow.[26]

After the Civil War, former confederates were re-admitted into the Union in accordance with the very lenient reconstruction plan of President Lincoln.  Lincoln's reconstruction policy was continued by Vice-President Johnson after Lincoln's assassination. The Joint Committee on Reconstruction headed by Radical Republicans would eventually engage in a struggle with President Johnson over the direction that Reconstruction in the former Confederacy should take. In an effort to rest control of reconstruction from the executive branch, the Joint Committee set out to assess the prevailing situation in the former Confederate States. The Radical Republican Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner moved to the forefront of the political climate by taking control of the reconstruction of the Union following the blistering report and testimonies presented to the Joint Committee.  They spearheaded the enactment of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875.  These policies enfranchised millions of African American men and altered the political landscape of the south.

To provide aid to African-American freedmen and white war refugees in 1865 Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands or the Freedman's Bureau in the War Department of the federal government.  The Freedman's Bureau was the earliest and largest social welfare agency to that time and worked in conjunction with private philanthropic organizations to address the problems created by the Civil War throughout the former Confederacy.[27]  One author remarks that the agency was a "…Urban League, WPA, CIO and War on Poverty all wrapped up into a prototypical NAACP."[28]Originally the Bureau was founded with the intent of redistributing the abandoned lands among the freedmen creating yeoman farmers at least this was the policy preference of both the freedmen, African-American leadership and Radical Republicans.  However, the lenient reconstruction plan of Lincoln and Johnson and the speed at which former Confederates acceded to the plan along with the failure of any congressional appropriations to carry out the redistribution prevented the implementation of the policy.  The Freedmen's Bureau, during its period of operation from 1865 to 1872, did aid poor African-Americans in helping them in the establishment of African-American colleges and work with African-American legislators in southern state houses in the establishment of the first free school system of the south, provide legal help to freedmen before courts and advised freedmen in the establishing of legal contracts with former plantation owners.  Administrative corruption, hostile southern and northern interests and congressional partisan conflict and eventual disaffection by the general public with the idea of stewardship of African-Americans through the Freedmen's Bureau led to its eventual demise.[29]

African-American Suffrage and political power was short-lived, however, for by 1876 the former Confederates were reaping the fruits of their war of attrition against African-Americans and northern political interests to take back control of the Southern states.  Through the use of terrorist tactics and organizations they assassinated African American leaders and prevented African Americans from exercising the political advantages bestowed on them during Reconstruction.[30]  This situation was further facilitated by the Compromise of 1877 regarding the unresolved presidential election of 1876. 

During the presidential election of 1876, the closest disputed election in American history until the 2000 presidential election, the states of Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina had two contending groups-radical republicans and democratic redeemers- claiming the state house in disputed gubernatorial elections in the states and the right to send electoral college delegates to Washington, D. C. to vote in the 1876 presidential election.  If the Democratic contingent was accepted, than Samuel J. Tilden, the democratic candidate, would be elected President of the United States. On the other hand, should the Republican contingent be recognized and its votes accepted, then Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes would become President.  To complicate the matter certain Democrats in the House filibustered to prevent the counting of the electoral votes, when the Republican delegations were sure to be chosen, Hayes elected and presumably a continuance of the federal presence maintained.  The acceptance of the Republican delegations over the Democratic stemmed from the level of overt, blatant violence and chicanery associated with the Democratic redeemers in the disputed states.  The filibuster engendered thoughts on the part of prominent men  and the lay public of chaos and the possibility of armed conflict.[31] 

So chaotic a scenario led to the compromise in which Democrats agreed to call of the filibuster if the Republican candidate Hayes acquiesced to the withdrawal of Federal troops from the south and the adoption of a hands off federal policy with regards to the southern atrocities and legal enactment's concerning African-Americans.  In short, in exchange for the removal of federal troops from the South southern politicians agreed to support Rutherford B. Hayes in his Presidential bid for the White House.  The granting to Hayes of the disputed electoral votes handed him the presidency and ensured southern victory in their campaign of southern redemption.  It further guaranteed African-American disfranchisement, which would last for nearly a century.  By 1877, all of the former confederated states were back under the control of the former confederates and by 1900, African American disenfranchisement was ensconced in law and their representation on the local, state and federal levels of government was nearly nonexistent.[32]

The political climate of the late 1800s defined by confederate redemption of the southern state governments, was solidified when the Supreme Court ruled in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, that the federal government was not bound by any moral or legal agreement to protect citizens of a state from the actions of that state's government.   In effect, this ruling stated that the Fourteenth Amendment did not bar state government from discriminating against blacks, nor did it leave any binding rationale for federal government intervention on their behalf.  By this ruling, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to the federal government.   Later, in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Supreme Court ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional.  This act made the practice of discriminating against African Americans in public accommodations and private businesses illegal. 

The series of cases which challenged the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were the United States v. Stanley from the U. S. Circuit Court Kansas District, United States v. Ryan from California, United States v. Nichols from the Western District of  Missouri, United States v. Singleton from the Southern U. S. Circuit Court District of New York and Robinson and Wife v. Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company from the U. S. Circuit Court Western District of Tennessee. Each of the cases show the extent of discrimination against African-Americans nationwide and rested upon suits brought as a result of the denial of African-Americans services because of race.  The Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied prohibited state governments and agencies from discriminating and not private individuals and that the punishment of discrimination under the Amendment applied only to state agencies.[33]  Finally, in 1896 in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that the separation of the races in public accommodations was not prevented by the Fourteenth Amendment, and thereby established the doctrine of separate but equal accommodations and facilities in all aspects of socioeconomic and political life and nullified that last obstacle to the complete legal segregation of the races.[34]  This decision was followed by the enactment of residential codes advocating residential segregation in the North and South, segregation in all professional and recreational activities, public transportation, health services and in educational facilities.  African-American political rights were severely curtailed and public expressions of protest met with violent repercussions.

The economic life of African-Americans during this period was marked by the sharecropping and tenant lease system, which relegated the majority of African-Americans to a state of quasi-serfdom.  Near perpetual debt peonage prevented African-American socioeconomic advancement on any appreciable scale measuring group advancement.  For African-American women the socioeconomic situation forced large numbers into the work force as domestics; however, the lose of the franchise only applied to African -American men as women were disenfranchised to begin with.  The lack of the franchise on the part of African-American women was little helped by the women's movement of the period as it was ridden with racism which would show up as the political atmosphere began to change and go against African-American socioeconomic and political concerns.[35] 

In time women's rights advocates would turn their backs on African-Americans and come to define women's rights solely on the basis of white women and their interests.  Though African-American churches would take a major and central role in the development and maintenance of the African-American community during this period, African-American women were pushed into a subordinate role within and without the church.  Many of the African-American colleges of the period were supported by the Church and white philanthropic foundations and adhered to a philosophy of African-American inability to succeed at certain technical professions and excluded African-American women from most professions outside of secondary education.  African-American women found this period to be a continuation of the denial of their human, and sociopolitical rights that had begun with the reprehensible denigration of their bodies by white and on occasion African-American men alike during the period of enslavement.  Their economic dilemma mirrored the sexual employment equality that existed during slavery and existed in conjunction with rising Victorian social standards being imbibed by African-Americans and the concomitant requirement of women remaining homebound.[36]

The restrictions placed upon African-American socioeconomic and political rights that began in 1877 occurred simultaneously with and increase in the number and barbarity of the lynching of African-Americans across the country.  Between 1880 and 1930 the lynching of African-Americans would become a community spectacle throughout the country but primarily in the south and Midwest. 

Ida B. Wells-Barnett recorded that in 1892 alone 241 lynchings were reported, 160 of these being African-American.  African-American women and children were not excluded from these heinous acts.[37]  Wells-Barnett in an effort to combat the terrorist actions of lawless whites wrote fervently on the issue and helped to organize the British Anti-lynching Committee.  In 1901 Congressman George Henry White, the last African-American representative, for nearly half a century and formerly enslaved, presented an anti-lynching bill that was soundly defeated. By 1919 lynching was once again in the headlines of major newspapers-it was always well reported by African-American media outlets.  The impetus was the lynching of returning African-American soldiers from the battle fields of World War I and an overall upsurge in lynching incidents nation wide.  The NAACP published data documenting the problem and continued its lead role in the fight against lynching and efforts to get anti-lynching legislation enacted.[38] 

The next significant attempt at the passage of an anti-lynching bill would come in 1935 when  Robert F. Wagner and Edward Costigan drafted the Costigan-Wagner Anti-lynching Act with the support of First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.  President Roosevelt refused to speak out in favor of the bill for fear of the damage that taking an anti-lynching position would do to his re-election campaign efforts in the south.  The bill was defeated in congress through the efforts of Southern congressmen. Though these and other efforts would be made to enact legislation to prohibit lynching none would ever be enacted and the use of this terror method would continue unabated into the 1950s with sporadic incidents occurring into the twenty-first century. 

To combat lynching and other social problems afflicting African-Americans organizations such as the National Afro-American League of 1890-1898, the National Afro-American Council of 1898-1902, the National Association of Colored Women formed in 1896, the Niagara Movement of 1905-1909 begun by W. E. B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and William Monroe Trotter, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, organized in 1910 by Mary White Ovington, Joel Spingarn with participation by W. E. B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and William Monroe Trotter and others and the National Urban League formed in 1911 whose forerunners were the National League for the Protection of Colored Women and the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, agitated on behalf of African-American sociopolitical interests.[39]  The NAACP, in particular, would go on to spearhead a concerted effort on the part of African-Americans and reform minded whites to challenge the legal foundations of southern and northern overt segregation and racism in the judicial system of the country and with the use of political communication in the NAACP magazine, the Crisis, edited by Dr. Dubois for nearly thirty years.

The year 1900 also witnessed the continuation of the internationalization of the African-American struggle[40] with the establishment of the Pan-African Congress under the aegis of Henry Sylvester Williams of Trinidad with the support of the Tuskegee Machine and input from Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Dubois. The conference would be held in 1919, 1923 and 1927. In 1919 peace delegations would attempt to enter the peace conferences meeting in Paris at the end of the first world war and represent the position of oppressed African and Asian peoples worldwide.  Each of the subsequent conferences would increase its demands on European colonial powers for African independence and humane treatment of Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora.  The final Congress of 1945 would be attended by several African representatives, such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Jomo Kenyatta and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who would later go on to lead their respective countries to independence and Nkrumah would spearhead the movement for a United States of Africa and strong Pan-Africanism.

To fight for African-American economic interests the period saw the formation of the Colored National Labor Convention in 1869 and the Colored Farmers Alliance and Cooperative Union of 1886.  The Colored Farmers Alliance and Cooperative Union would represent African-American interests along with smaller more regionally focused organizations during the populist movement of this period.  From 1890 to 1914 the country would be permeated with reformist legislation and gradual extension of democracy to the masses of society.  Legislation that resulted from the populist movement addressed problems of child labor, compulsory school attendance, workers compensation, and measures to improve public health and the workplace.  African-American participation in the extension of social welfare rights however, was minimal due to the prevailing political climate at both the state and national levels.  A climate rife with overt nativist racism directed against all immigrants, Native Americans and African-Americans and fed by the philosophy of Social Darwinism, which explained social life as following the natural guidelines of survival of the fittest.[41] 

African-American national interests were represented by the accommodationist oriented Tuskegee Machine headed by Booker T. Washington, who also supported African-American legal attacks on segregation and lynching.  Beginning with his Atlanta Compromise Address in 1895, Booker T. Washington assumed a nearly unchallenged position of national spokesman and power broker for African-Americans until 1915.[42] From 1900 to 1913 the accommdationist philosophy was being vigorously opposed by W. E. B. Dubois.  First, because Booker T. Washington espoused a doctrine of African-American denial of political rights and secondly because the accommodationist doctrine left African-Americans defenseless to physical and psychological terrorism exhibited by whites during lynchings and race riots.

After 1877 the terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan had receded into the background of northern perceptions of southern political life, but with the migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the North from 1900 to the 1920s, and increase in immigration and an upsurge in racist American nativist sentiments, along with the release of D. W. Griffin's revisionist movie Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon's book, The Ku Klux Klan, which glorified the Klan terror of the 1870s, there was a resurgence in interest in the Klan organization not only in the south but nationwide.  The Klu Klux Klan would become a powerful national organization numbering into the millions with sociopolitical influence extending far beyond its numbers.  The resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan and the spread of its ideology through sympathetic media sources would lay the foundation for the political rhetoric and program of right wing political organizations and prepare the ground work for President Nixon's silent white majority.  Until the late 1920s the Klan would play an important role in state and national politics, electing state executives and congressmen at the state and national levels, with former members attaining judgeships at all levels. 

The period between 1916 and 1923 would also see the establishment and demise of the largest African based socioeconomic and political organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association of the Jamaican born Marcus Mosiah Garvey.  Garvey's organization emphasized African-American self-reliance and world wide African Diaspora and Continental cooperation in the development and elevation of Africa.  Though the organization would collapse in the mid-1920s amid Federal government investigations of mail fraud, controversy with the NAACP, and organizational bureaucratic ineptitude, at its height the UNIA would publish The Negro World to provide connective political communication for the African Diaspora and the Continent, the Black Star Line shipping company, the Negro Factories Corporation and a cadre of Nurses.  In the United States alone the organization would found over 700 chapters. 

The influence of the Marcus Garvey and the UNIA would be felt years afterward in the Black Nationalist philosophy of Malcolm X, the Economic philosophy of the Nation of Islam and the Pan-African philosophy and foreign policy of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, President of the Republic of Ghana from 1957 to 1966.[43] In the 1920s and 1930s the prevalent doctrine of Black Nationalism and racial pride and solidarity presented by the UNIA would serve as a hindrance to communist attempts to organize the African-American community.  Communists party ideology rejected religion and religion was the foundation of the African-American urban and rural community.  Class interests were held to be the overriding element for the development of social consciousness and the focus of all social problems.  This position denied the relevance race and racial solidarity as exhibited in the African-American community by virtue of social segregation on the basis of race.  Finally, the communist party was a white controlled organization that constantly relegated African-American issues to the margins of party ideology and policy.  Each of these reasons hindered Communist organizing in the African-American community limiting Communist party affiliation to a select few intellectuals, and it was the Garvey movement and its international program that solidified the race conscious political philosophy for the young generations of the 1920s and 1930.[44] 

The influence of the Garvey movement and the commitment of its adherents in the 1930s would be felt in the support rendered by African-Americans to Ethiopia during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the mid 1930s.  African-Americans provided financial resources for the Ethiopian military, attempted to organize and Ethiopian Expeditionary force to go and fight alongside the Ethiopian military.  A move that was effectively blocked by the United States government, a reversal of policy considering U.S. allowance for Americans to go and fight in the Spanish Civil War during the same period and even earlier in allowing citizens to go and fight in Europe during World War I prior to United States entry.[45]

The Great Depression of the 1930s hit the African-American community especially hard due to their status of holding low paying unskilled jobs.  As national unemployment rose to epidemic levels, African-Americans were displaced from low paying jobs, which were assumed by whites.  The Depression, however, do not lead to a whole sale migration of African-Americans into the communist party circles.  Instead, African-Americans, especially in the urban areas, held to the Garvey and NAACP tradition and engaged in direct action campaigns to force businesses operating in African-American neighborhoods such as Harlem in New York City and the south side of Chicago to hire African-Americans.  This period saw a resurgence in African-American direct action politics and militant political rhetoric.  Leaders during this period in the direct action activities of African-Americans were future congressman Reverend Adam Clayton Powell and a militant A. Philip Randolph.[46]  Increased African-American militancy eventually exploded into racial riots such as the Harlem riot of 1935, where African-American militancy, clashed with police brutality and white countervailing forces.

The various Great Depression agencies such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), had a mixed impact on alleviating African-American social problems, which were only heightened during the Depression and not caused by it.  Racism was still rampant and in the south the AAA as often as possible took advantage of poor, illiterate sharecroppers and misappropriated funds intended for their relief.  These actions on the part of farm landlords were not however limited to underhanded dealings with African-Americans only.  Poor whites were targeted by unscrupulous landlords as well.  One important piece of legislation during the Great Depression, which had an opportunity to do the most good for the majority of African-Americans was the Social Security Act of 1935, which provided skilled industrial laborers with old age insurance and unemployment income.[47]  However, since the act only covered industrial workers and the majority of African-Americans worked as unskilled farm labor and domestics they were left without old age and unemployment insurance. 

African-Americans were instead covered by local programs which provided social assistance to the needy.  This placed African-Americans under the jurisdiction of the same racist public organizations and individuals that had perpetuated their situation and left their economic wellbeing in precarious way. Where the benefits for the Social Security Act of 1935 were guaranteed to constituents that met the eligibility criteria for social security insurance, unemployment compensation and for Aid to Dependent Children, the local agencies were in many cases lacking in the resources to serve African-Americans even if they wanted to and eligibility requirements were without the strong federal guarantee.[48] Other agencies and programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Administration, the Federal Land Bank, the Farm Security Administration, and the Home Owners Loan Corporation all to limited degrees provided aid to African-Americans, but each still was still saturated with institutional racism and the relief provided by the agencies and programs was not in substantive proportions to African-American needs.[49]

African-American Worldview. The preceding synopsis of African-American political history shows the context of African-American political participation to be dominated by internal dissension and external conflict.  This was a struggle that began in the West African background and has continued unabated over the past three centuries. The conflict with its intention of gaining African-American freedom has resulted in the development of a dualistic African-American worldview in an atmosphere suffused with ideal of American pluralist constitutional democracy and the African-American reality of enslavement, racism, and segregation of varying forms.  W. E. B. Dubois has explained the African-American worldview as being the result of a "double consciousness"[50] within the individuals of the African-American community.  The African-American dualistic worldview results from an internal struggle between the West African and the American ideal of man, society and government.  A clash between the ideal of being an African-American defined in the context of the collective group and as defined by American individualism.  The West African ideal encompasses community oriented, group-centered, egalitarian concerns, whereas the American ideal envisions an individualistic, competitive and self-oriented society.[51]As was explained previously the West African background informs and shapes the African component of the duality of African-American consciousness.  On the other hand, the American component was shaped by African-American socialization into American society.  The primary agents of socialization being educational and religious institutions.[52]

The dualistic worldview of the African-American community has led to the generation of two broad policy perspectives with regards to African-American political participation that are not mutually exclusive.  The first policy perspective articulated by such persons as Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holds that through the use of protest and politically oriented social disturbances African-Americans should induce white America to develop just policies in the interests of African-Americans.[53]  This perspective is conservative in nature and reform minded with an eye to sociopolitical integration on dominant group terms.  The second policy perspective, which counts among its adherents David Walker, Henry Highland Garnett, W. E. B. Dubois, Paul Robeson and Malcolm X maintains that African-Americans must "…as men and equals…demand every political right, privilege, and position to which the whites are eligible in the United States,"[54] and that as a group African-Americans can accept nothing less than being an "…acknowledged…necessary constituent in the ruling element of the country."[55] Here the emphasis is on radical self-development and non-gradual social acceptance according to African-American community principles.

The two policy perspectives, which are outgrowths of the dualistic African-American worldview have related social constructions of political reality.  For the conservative policy approach power is unevenly distributed but susceptible to African-American pressure politics applied within socially acceptable limits.  The second or radical perspective also views the sociopolitical distribution of power as being unevenly distributed, however rather than engaging in tactics designed to move white power holders, this perspective seeks to mobilize African-American social organizations to actively direct both intracommunity development and white relations with the African-American community.

Both perspectives maintain that government exists to meet the needs of the African-American community, however, the radical perspective leans more to the West African egalitarian ideal, where as the conservative approach centers on the American individualistic ideal.  Each also agree that social movements are mass motivated actions, which stimulate social change, the difference is in the nature and extent of the social change.  For the conservative policy approach social change occurs in accordance with the principles of American pluralist democracy, while the radical policy approach maintains that American pluralist democracy allows only for social reform and a maintenance of the status quo, when true social change would lead to the restructuring of society along egalitarian lines.  By stressing egalitarian principles the radical policy approach presents a cooperative group centered economic philosophy in contrast to the liberal economic philosophy adhered to by the conservative policy approach.

African-American Population Growth. African-American population growth has gone through significant changes that have altered African-American urban and rural distribution and which have impacted African-American political participation.  Between the years of 1619 and 1860 approximately 450,000 Africans of primarily West African origin were imported into the continental United States as enslaved labor.[56]  The largest increase in the importation of enslaved Africans occurred between the years of the mid-1600s to 1808 when the importation of enslaved Africans was outlawed by the United States Constitution.  Still the importation of enslaved West Africans continued right up until the United States Civil War.  By 1865 the African-American population had increased through natural population growth to an estimated 4.5 million.  The majority of the African-American population was located in the deep south states and lived in rural settings.

The southern states were the central location of African-Americans until the late 1800s when gradually the population began to extend out across the country.  By 1860 the southern states that had a substantial African-American total population and African-American registered voter population in comparison to whites were South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia.[57] Already, however, by December of 1863 with the inevitable conclusion of the Civil War beginning to take shape President Lincoln and the Congress had begun to take measures that would dramatically increase the white population of the country and the South and provide the manpower for American expansion across the Continent. One measure that would alter the balance of African-American and white population in the southern United States was the Immigration Act of  1864 and amended in 1866, which established immigration agencies in Great Britain, Germany, Sweden and Norway to recruit immigrants to the United States.  The results of this Act was a 27% increase in the population of the country between 1860 and 1870.

The hostility of southern society towards African-Americans was a major impetus in African-American migration from the deep south to Liberia-in insignificant numbers-and the western territories immediately following the Civil War and to the North from 1915 to 1960.  These migrations, which were further motivated by the perception of increased economic opportunity led to a shift in the African-American population from being primarily rural to a substantially urbanized ethnic minority.[58]  The African-American population shift between 1915 and 1960 led to an increase in the opportunity to utilize group political resources and a marked augmentation in political participation by African-Americans. 

African-American Socioeconomic Organization.  The social conditions of African-American society and the resulting deprivations, a synopsis of which has been given, set the parameters for African-American political participation.  The cultural constraints on African-American political participation have been addressed in the discussion on African-American worldview.  The other restrictive force on African -American political participation is the structure of American society.  For much of American history and to a significant extent today the organization of African-American society is defined by the disproportionately one-sided nature of African-American and white society social interaction and the unequal socioeconomic relationships which result.[59]

From the herrenvolk democratic practices of colonial, antebellum and Jim Crow America to the present heavily economically determinist democratic America the social interaction between African-Americans and white America has shaped and perpetuated certain forms of political participation over others and thus profoundly guided African-American society into a de-africanized, individual centered frame of reference.  The patterns which develop from the socioeconomic interaction of African-American society and white America hold a pluralist philosophical line, whereby it is maintained that America is a multicultural salad bowl where all of the ethnic groups exist while maintaining their separate identity.  In practice however, the interaction between African-Americans and white society has resulted in such outcomes as white domination as during the period of enslavement, genocide,[60] particularly at the local level as exemplified in the extermination of the African-American communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 and Rosewood, Florida in 1922.[61] 

A further outcome is the expulsion of African-Americans from localities either by force or as a result of African-American reaction to socioeconomic and psychological pressures brought about by terrorist organizations such as the Klu Klux Klan working inclusion with local government and social interests.  The social interaction by the dominant white society and African-American society also leads to the relegation of African-Americans to the level of an exploited caste within society[62] or to the social assimilation, i.e., integration of certain strata of the African-American society into white America as well as to the establishment of a paternalistic relationship exhibited in the current relationship of impoverished African-Americans with social welfare agencies.[63]

The social conditions and consequences of social interaction are met by some in the African-American community through resignation to developments stemming from the social interaction.  Here the outcome is accepted as inevitable and on occasion as being deserved.[64]  The accommodationist philosophy of African-American conservatives from Booker T. Washington to the present is founded on an acceptance of the status quo and the results of the unequal social interaction.  This mind set provides fertile ground for the idea of African-American society being pathological, disorganized and deviant. Nonparticipation in the socioeconomic order to the degree allowable so as to lessen the effects of the interaction is another defensive measure employed in response to the nature of African-American and white society social interaction. The advocating of separation from all contact with white society is a response that groups such as the Nation of Islam and Marcus Garvey's UNIA have followed. The most prevalent response however has been the implementation of the tactics of political resistance in all of its forms, i.e., violent and nonviolent techniques of political participation.[65]  African-American socioeconomic organization further colors and is colored by African-American political culture.

African-American Political Culture.  African-American disposition towards, philosophy on and opinion centered predilections regarding the nature of the American political process as given in theory and carried out by human agents in sociopolitical institutions provides the African-American community with a political culture that at points converges with the dominant group understanding of American political culture and in places sharply diverges.  The reasons for the points of convergence and divergence are the impact of the West African background on African-American community development, the nature of the relationship between enslaved African-Americans and American political power, as well as the different political histories of the dominant group and the African-American community.

American political culture is centered on the democratic values that are expressed in the countries Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  American political culture theoretically encompasses goals such as majority governance, through mass selection of representatives in substantively competitive elections.  A related concern is a high degree of participation by a politically literate citizenry.  Another goal is the expectation of government integrity, which legitimizes mass acceptance of the authority, embedded in political institutions as well as government protection of individual liberties and civil and social rights.  Furthermore, government is expected to maintain law and order with a rational utilization of force and in dealing with other nations and multinational entities government is expected to abide by the tenets of democracy.

The dominant group perspective on American political culture accepts the democratic values and prescriptive elements and maintains that overtime as the national consciousness expanded previous historical institutions and incidents-African enslavement, segregation, women disfranchisement, restrictive immigration policies for Asians and Africans-which are now viewed as incompatible with the prevailing understanding of democracy were rectified with the enactment of legislation and the amending of the Constitution.  African-American political culture also accepts the democratic tenets as expressed in the writings of the nations founders and in the nations important political documents. 

However, from the national beginnings African-American political culture has expressed a more egalitarian definition to the democratic values and American political prescriptions and has veered away from its egalitarian roots only as an African-American elite developed which sought acculturation into the dominant society through conforming to Anglo-Saxon traditions.  The expressions of egalitarianism are found in the calls for the extension of the franchise to all able-bodied citizens regardless of race, gender, creed, socioeconomic status or color.  Positions such as these are found in the writings of such noted African-Americans as Henry Highland Garnett, Henry McNeal Turner, and Frederick Douglass to name only of few of the early proponents.  Concerns with dominant group conformity are found in the works of emancipated enslaved Africans such as Phyllis Wheately and in the writings and program of Booker T. Washington.

African-American political culture like the dominant political culture consists of  political ideologies which supports the existence of American political institutions, reinforces the American ethos and sustains and undying belief in the patriotic assumptions of the American political psychology.  The conservative status quo supporting ideology has been found in the experiences of African-Americans and thus in African-American political culture from as early as the colonial era and continues to the present. Even more so, the liberal tradition with its emphasis on social reform. 

Where the dominant political culture and African-American political culture diverge in the ideological sphere is in the continuing necessity of social reform along democratic socialist lines as exemplified in limited fashion during the Progressive era and again during the New Deal and Great Society programs.  While the dominant political culture has ebbed and flowed with the occurrence of socioeconomic crisis between conservative and liberal ideologically based programs, African-American political culture has consistently overtime maintained a strong group centered focus on the need for universalistic policies and programs which stem from the egalitarian tradition of social democracy.  So much so in fact, that African-American political support overtime has fervently supported those political representatives that have maintained a strong mass centered policy perspective even if that perspective is only symbolic and lacking in legislative enactment and programmatic implementation.

---

[1] The ethnic groups include the Moors, Bambara, Mandinka, Mende, Dogon, Fulani, Mossi, Asante, Ewe, Fon, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Wolof, Fante, Edo, Serere, Luba, Congo, Ibibio, Ijaw, Sherbro, Mbundu, Ovimbundu, Fon, Bariba, Senufo, Soninke, Bobo, Dyula, Lobi, Fali, Fang, Bamum, Bamileke, Bakota, Bapounou, Mpongwe, Mamprusi, Akan, Kissi, Kpelle, Susu, Tukolor, Balanta, Manjaco, Baule, Kru, Mole-Dagbane, Bassa, Dan, Grebo, Ma, Songhay, Kanuri, Tiv, Wodaabe, Yakurr, Temne, Limba, Kono, and Temba. See, Molefi Kete Asante, "The Contours of African American Culture," (http://www.africawithin.com/asante/contours.htm, 2003); Nancy Bailey, Paul Copperwaite, Margaret Doyle, Moria Johnston, and Ian Wood (eds.), Encyclopedia of African Peoples (New York: Diagram Group, 2000); Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997) pp. 804-805.

[2] Nancy Bailey, Paul Copperwaite, Margaret Doyle, Moria Johnston, and Ian Wood (eds.), Encyclopedia of African Peoples (New York: Diagram Group, 2000)

[3] John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilization (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1994) pp. 196-231; Kevin Shillington, History of Africa (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995); Basil Davidson, A History of West Africa 1000-1800 (London: Longman Group Limited, 1977)

[4] Kevin Shillington, History of Africa (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995); Basil Davidson, A History of West Africa 1000-1800 (London: Longman Group Limited, 1977) pp. 170-241.

[5] Examples of the written scripts used are the Arabic alphabet, the Vai alphabet, Manding writing system, the Bassa Alphabet, and the Mende and Nsibidi script. See, Saki Mafundikwa, "Afrikan Alphabets," (Harare, Zimbabwe: http://www.ziva.org.zw/afrikan.htm November, 2000); Africana Library, "African Writing Systems," (Cornell University: http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems ); K. Hau, "The Ancient Writing of Southern Nigeria," Bulletin de l'IFAN Series B. No. 1 (1973); K. Hau, "Pre-Islamic writing in West Africa," Bulletin de l'IFAN 29, (1-2), (1973) pp. 150-185; Clyde A. Winters, "Manding Scripts in the New World," Journal of African Civilization 1 No. 1 (1979) pp. 61-97; Clyde A. Winters, "The Ancient Manding Script," in Ivan van Sertima (ed.) Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern (New Brunswik: Transaction Books, 1983) pp. 208-214.

[6] Gerhard Lenski, Jean Lenski, and Patrick Nolan, Human Societies (New York: McGraw Hill, Inc., 1991) pp. 69-84.

[7]Paul Bohannan and Phillip Curtin, Africa and Africans (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 1988) pp. 147-167.

[8] John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilization (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1994) pp. 293-295.

[9] Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization (Chicago: Third World Press, 1987) pp. 162-165.

[10] Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization (Chicago: Third World Press, 1987) pp. 170-173.

[11] Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, An Eyewitness History of Slavery in America From Colonial Times to the Civil War (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001) pp. 51-65; J. A. Rogers, Africa's Gift to America (St. Petersburg, FL.: Helga M. Rogers, 1989) pp. 67.

[12] August Meier and Elliot M. Rudwick, From Plantation to Ghetto An Interpretive History of American Negroes (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969) pp. 36-39.

[13] Howard Dodson, Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture (New York: National Geographic, 2003)

[14] Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1964) pp. 88.

[15] Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, An Eyewitness History of Slavery in America From Colonial Times to the Civil War (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001) pp. 194-219; Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1964) pp. 86-140.

[16] Gold Refined Wilson, "The Religion of the American Negro Slave: His Attitude Toward Life and Death," Journal of Negro History 8, No. 1 (January, 1923) pp. 41-71.

[17] C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990) pp. 1-19; Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston:  Harper & Brothers, 1941)

[18] C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990) pp. 4.

[19] Reverend Cain Hope Felder (ed.) The Original African Heritage Study Bible King James Version (Nashville: The James C. Winston Publishing Company, 1993) pp. 1069: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn."

[20] Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, An Eyewitness History of Slavery in America From Colonial Times to the Civil War (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001) pp.  139-156.

[21] Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, An Eyewitness History of Slavery in America From Colonial Times to the Civil War (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001) pp. 150.  In Prigg v. Pennsylvania the Supreme Court ruled that an owner had a legal right to use what ever methods possible to recover his property including extreme violence and in Jones v. Van Zandt the Supreme Court ruled that the 1793 Act was constitutional and that persons who aided escaped African-Americans could be sued for damages.

[22] J. Mason Brewer, "Old-Time Negro Proverbs," in Allan Dundes (ed.), Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, Inc., 1973) pp. 248.

[23] Ibid., pp. 248.

[24] Ibid., pp. 248.

[25] Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, An Eyewitness History of Slavery in America From Colonial Times to the Civil War (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001) pp. 204-205.

[26] C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk, (New York: Dover Publications, 1994)

[27] W.E.B. Dubois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935)

[28] Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before The Mayflower: A History of Black America (New York: Penguin Books, 1993) pp. 218.

[29] W.E.B. Dubois, "Of the Dawn of Freedom," in The Souls of Black Folks (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1994) pp. 9-24.

[30] Allen W. Trelease, White Terror The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971)

[31] Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before The Mayflower: A History of Black America (New York: Penguin Books, 1993) pp. 250-254.

[32] Kenneth Stamp, The Era of Reconstruction 1865-1877,  (New York: Vintage Books,1965); Eric Foner, Reconstruction Americas Unfinished Revolution, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988); C. Vann Woodward, Reunion & Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956)

[33] Henry McNeal Turner, The Barbarous Decision of the United States Supreme Court Declaring the Civil Rights Act Unconstitutional and Disrobing the Colored Race of All Civil Protection. The Most Cruel and Inhuman Verdict Against a Loyal People in the History of the World. Also the Powerful Speeches of Hon. Frederick Douglass and Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, Jurist and Famous Orator (Atlanta, GA.: Bishop H.M. Turner, 1893) pp. 7-10.

[34] C. Vann Woodward, Reunion & Reaction, (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956); Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt, 1993); Manning Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2000) pp. 3-12.

[35] Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1996) pp. 57-74.

[36] Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1996) pp. 57-74.

[37] Ida B. Well-Barnett, Lynch Law in America (Chicago: 1900)

[38] NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889-1918 (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1919)

[39] Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before The Mayflower: A History of Black America (New York: Penguin Books, 1993) pp. 283; Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (ed.) Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York: Basic Books, 1999)

[40] African-American leaders, such as Edward Wilmot Blyden, Martin Delaney and Henry McNeal Turner had long advocated the internationalization of the African-American struggle, by associating their fight for socioeconomic and political rights with the efforts with of other Africans in the Diaspora and on the Continent, who were engaged in the same actions against the same interests.

[41] Margaret Canovan, Populism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanoch, 1981); Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995); John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1972); Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," in Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1965); David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: The American Far Right From Nativism to the Militia Movement (New York: Vintage Books, 1988)

[42] Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices on Resistance, Reform and Renewal (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) pp. 181-230.

[43] Vincent Harding, The Other American Revolution (Atlanta, GA.: Institute of the Black World, 1980) pp. 107-113.

[44] Ibid., pp. 115-121.

[45] Vincent Harding, The Other American Revolution (Atlanta, GA.: Institute of the Black World, 1980) pp. 124.

[46] Ibid., pp. 124-125.

[47] Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined The War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) pp. 19.

[48] Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined The War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) pp. 19-22.

[49] John Hope Franklin  and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994) pp.395-401.

[50] W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1994) pp. 2.

[51] Julius Jeppe, "Cultural Dimensions of Development Policy Management in the New South Africa," DPMN Bulletin, 2(2) (August, 1994) pp. 8-10.

[52] Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1993) pp. 26-37.

[53] Vincent Harding, The Other American Revolution (Atlanta, GA.: Institute of the Black World, 1980) pp. 54-55.

[54] Vincent Harding, The Other American Revolution (Atlanta, GA.: Institute of the Black World, 1980) pp. 56.

[55] Ibid., pp. 56

[56] John Hope Franklin  and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994); Ronald Segal, The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience Outside Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995)

[57] Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (New York: Penguin Books, 1993) pp. 233.  According to the 1860 U.S. Census, South Carolina had 412,000 African-Americans and 291,000 whites.  Eighty thousand African-Americans in South Carolina were registered voters with 46,000 whites registered.  Mississippi had 437,000 African-Americans with 60,000 of them registered voters and 353,000 whites with 46,000 of them registered.  Louisiana had 350,000 African-Americans with 84,000 of them registered voters and 357,000 whites with 45,000 of them registered.  Florida had 62,000 African-Americans with 16,000 registered voters and 77,000 whites with 11,000 registered voters.  North Carolina had 361,000 African-Americans with 72,000 registered voters and 629,000 whites with 106,000 registered voters.  Alabama had 437,000 African-Americans with 104,000 registered voters and 526,000 whites with 61,000 registered voters.  Georgia had 465,000 African-Americans with 95,000 registered voters and 591,000 whites with 96,000 registered voters.  Virginia had 548,000 African-Americans with 105,000 registered voters and 1 million whites with 120,000 registered voters.  White voter registration was restricted to those willing to take an oath of allegiance to the United States government and who had not been federal officeholders in the Union prior to the Civil War and then served in the Confederate government thereby going back on their oath of office.  African-American voter registration was restricted by Southern terrorist groups, and socioeconomic intimidation.

[58] E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1949) pp. 171-177; Vincent Harding, The Other American Revolution (Atlanta, GA.: Institute of the Black World, 1980) pp. 93-94.

[59] Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992)

[60] George Ritzer, Social Problems (New York: Random House, 1986) pp. 263-265; Michael Banton, Race Relations (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1967) pp. 68-76.

[61] John Hope Franklin  and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994) pp. 352.

[62] John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957)

[63] George Ritzer, Social Problems (New York: Random House, 1986) pp. 263-265; Michael Banton, Race Relations (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1967) pp. 68-76.

[64] August Meier and Elliott M. Rudwick, From Plantation to Ghetto: An Interpretive History of American Negroes (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969) pp. 156-188.

[65] George Ritzer, Social Problems (New York: Random House, 1986) pp. 263-265; Michael Banton, Race Relations (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1967) pp. 68-76.