HISTORY92 - The Tragic History of America's Oppressed Minorities: Native Americans and African Americans

In the last few years, I’ve written tens of articles on some aspect of American history, ranging from the first settlement by native peoples, to European colonization, to the birth of the United States, and the country’s subsequent growth and expansion to today.  Along the way, I had numerous occasions to touch on the role of Native Americans and African Americans in that history - a role that with hindsight now seems both spotty and incomplete.

So, with this blog, I wanted to revisit the American history of these two minorities in the population of the U.S. today, in a way that I could, in one article, capture the important facts, get a complete picture in my mind of their complex and interrelated stories, evaluate their impact on the overall history of America, and finally reflect on what I learned.

I will start with Native American history, since it begins with the first indigenous peoples in America, thousands of years ago.  Then I will talk about African American History, beginning with the start of European colonization of the Western Hemisphere in the late 15^th century.  Finally, I’ll see what conclusions I can draw from considering these dual histories together.  I will list my principal sources at the end.

 

To get started, let me define some terms.  I will use Western Hemisphere, the New World, and the Americas interchangeably.  I will reserve the use of term America for the (future and current) United States of America.

History of Native Americans

I will discuss the history of Native Americans in three parts:  1.) before European first contact with the New World in 1492, 2.) after European contact, and 3.) Native Americans today.

I will use the politically correct term Native Americans (instead of Indians) to mean the indigenous people (and their descendants) of America.

Before 1492.  Native Americans are descendants of people who followed herds of large game animals from Siberia across a land bridge in the Bering Strait into Alaska between about 45,000 BC and 12,000 BC.  Subsequent generations of these hunter-gatherer Paleo-Indians (ancient ones) gradually spread southward to populate North and South America by around 8,000 BC.

During the thousands of years preceding European contact, while some native peoples belonged to small bands of hunters and gatherers, others natives developed inventive and creative cultures.  They cultivated plants for food, dyes, medicines, and textiles; irrigated their crops; domesticated animals; established extensive patterns of trade; built cities; produced monumental architecture; developed intricate systems of religious beliefs; and constructed a wide variety of systems of social and political organization ranging from kin-based bands and tribes to city-states and confederations.  Native Americans not only adapted to diverse and demanding environments, they also reshaped the natural environments to meet their needs.

Complex, agriculturally-based cultures developed in a number of regions in the future U.S., including the Moundbuilders and Mississippians in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys and, the Hohokam in southern Arizona.  Native Americans lived in organized societies with political structures, moral codes, and religious beliefs.  The idea of private land ownership was foreign; land was held communally and worked collectively.  Trans-continental trade routes, and multi-national Native American confederations existed in America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus.  

 

The Mississippian Native American capital city, Cahokia, located near present-day St. Louis, was occupied from about AD 600 to 1400.  At its peak, the population of Cahokia numbered between 8,000 and 40,000 inhabitants, larger than London, England at that time.

No one knows for sure how many indigenous people lived in the Western Hemisphere in 1492 when Christopher Columbus first landed in the Caribbean Islands, but the number was in the millions.  Russell Thornton, a Cherokee-American anthropologist, and professor of anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, who is known for his studies of the population history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, estimates that that about 75 million indigenous people lived in the Western Hemisphere in 1492, and that more than 5 million lived in what later became the continental U.S.  Native peoples in 1492 represented more than 600 tribes, languages, and ways of life.

After 1492.  The arrival of Europeans in the New World in 1492, had a devastating impact on Native Americans.  The hundreds of tribal ecosystems - deeply spiritual, deeply rooted in oral tradition and cultural practices, and deeply tied to specific areas of the land - were decimated by the introduction of foreign germs, foreign ways of life, and by the dominating, foreign forces of Western violence and constant expansion.

Over the next 500-plus years, Native Americans fell victim to devastating diseases, slavery, wars and massacres, and inhuman U.S. government policies.  Native Americans were abused, killed, and relocated from their ancestral lands in a slow genocide for the sake of ambitious settlers who began to make their home in the bountiful land of America. 

Disease.  Deadly epidemics aided the European conquest of America.  Native Americans were highly susceptible to European diseases (for which they had not developed antibodies), including smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, plague, cholera, measles, and influenza - which drastically reduced the Native American population.

Historians have estimated, that between 1492 and the late 1500s, when greater and greater numbers of settlers began to arrive, that there was a catastrophic loss of Native American lives - possibly up to 90% of the native population simply wiped out by the introduction of European diseases. 

This biological extermination continued in America as Western expansion pushed the tribes that remained further and further westward, and new tribes in the West were exposed to European diseases.

Historians estimate that up to 90% of Native Americans died from European diseases.

 

Slavery.  Forcing native peoples into slavery started with Columbus.  In his trading center on the Island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, it was the native Arawaks who were enslaved. 

Enslavement of native peoples in North and South America became common, not only in the case of Spanish merchants and settlers, but for other European settlers who learned the practice from the Spanish.  Natives were subjected to a system of bondage as degrading and vast as African slavery.  In the Western Hemisphere, indigenous slavery occurred in every major area, both predating and outlasting its African counterpart.  During the four centuries between the arrival of Columbus and the end of the 19^th century, some 2.5 to 5 million native people were enslaved.

In what became the United States, the Spanish first enslaved the Taino in Puerto Rico in the early 1500s.  The French and the Danish who colonized what are now the U.S. Virgin Islands also enslaved the native population.  Caribbean slaves were sold in the British colonies in America, and also taken as booty in raids by the British on the Spanish. 

Native American slavery was the common early form of slavery in the Carolinas, and also in Georgia, where African slavery was initially not allowed. 

Enslavement of Native Americans by Europeans persisted until the 19^th century.  In the British colonies, it was especially prevalent in the Southeast in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. 

In the early days of the French settlements in New Orleans and Mobile, Native American slaves were commonly kept along with African slaves.  The decline in Indian slavery in the Caribbean and in the American Southeast came as the population of Indians was decimated by European diseases.

In the American West, however, Native American slavery continued to thrive during the 19^th century.  California may have entered the Union as a “free-soil” state in 1850, but American colonists had already discovered that the buying and selling of native people was a common practice.

Wars and Massacres.  For more than 250 years, from the early 1600s to the late 1800s, as Europeans, and then Americans, sought to gain and control Native American lands, wars raged between the various Native American tribes and the frontiersmen who encroached on their territory, resources, and trade.  As settlers spread westward across the United States after 1780, armed conflicts increased in size, duration, and intensity.  Known as the American Indian Wars, these conflicts pitted indigenous people against the English, French, Spanish, American settlers, and U.S. Army - and ended with massive Native American population and tribal land losses, and the forced relocation of native survivors to reservations (see below). 

Conflicts were sometimes resolved by treaties between the federal government and specific tribes, which often required the tribes to sell or surrender land to the United States.  These treaties were frequently broken by the U.S. government.

Native American tribes and coalitions often won battles with the encroaching settlers and soldiers, but their numbers were too few, and their resources too limited, to win more than temporary victories.

The U.S. Census Bureau, in their 1894 Census report, estimated the number of deaths due specifically to war during the 102 years between 1789 and 1891: “The [American Indian] wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number.  They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women, and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Native Americans.  The actual number of killed and wounded Native Americans must be very much higher than the number given ... Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate.”

Up to 45,000 Native Americans were killed in the American Indian Wars between 1789 and 1891.

 

In addition to the horrifying losses in the American Indian Wars, a number of massacres of Native Americans occurred.  The term massacre became commonly used to describe mass killings of Native Americans, outside the confines of mutual combat in war, often with an element of indiscriminate targeting, barbarism, or genocidal intent.  

Here is a partial list (Native American deaths in parentheses):

May 26, 1637: Pequot Massacre (hundreds) - Pequot villagers were massacred by the Puritans in Mystic, Connecticut.

January 29, 1863: Bear River Massacre (hundreds) - - The U.S. Army attacked a Shoshone encampment gathered at the confluence of the Bear River and Battle Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory.  Hundreds of Shoshone men, women, and children were killed near their lodges.

November 29, 1864: Sand Creek Massacre (230) - A Colorado Cavalry unit, on orders from Colorado’s governor, and ignoring a surrender flag, brutally attacked Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. 

January 23, 1870: Marias Massacre (200) - In Montana Territory, the U.S. Army killed mostly Blackfeet women, children, and older men.

April 30, 1971: Camp Grant Massacre (144) - A mixed group of Tucson settlers allied Tohono O’odham Native Americans attacked an Apache camp in Aravaipa Canyon near Tucson, killing mostly women and children.

December 28, 1872: Skeleton Cave Massacre (100) - The Yavapai people’s shelter in Skeleton Cave in Arizona was attacked by the U.S. Army, trying to force them to reservations.

December 29, 1890: Wounded Knee Massacre (300) - A Lakota encampment on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was attacked by the U.S. Army, and close to 300 Native Americans were murdered near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

Note:  By 1800, the Native American population of the present-day United States had declined from five+ million in 1492 to approximately 600,000; only 250,000 Native Americans remained in the 1890s.

U.S. Government Policies.  The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the U.S. government to force Native American tribes to move from their lands east of the Mississippi River to the west on the American frontier, especially to Indian Territory which became the state of Oklahoma.  Between 1830 and 1850, President Andrew Jackson oversaw the forced relocation of 100,000 Native Americans at the hands of federal and local military forces, resulting in the loss of ancestral homelands and 15,000 deaths from exposure, disease, and starvation. 

In the 1830s, as American settlers expanded onto the Great Plains and the Western United States, the U.S. government was actively forcing tribes into treaties; under the treaty system, tribes were treated as independent nations with the right to govern themselves in exchange for giving up large sections of their ancestral lands.  Tribal nations moved onto small, geographically isolated tracts of land out West - the beginnings of the reservation system that exists to this day. 

Note:  The Native American reservation system established tracts of land called reservations for Native Americans to live on as white settlers took over their land.  The main goals of Indian reservations were to bring Native Americans under U.S. government control, minimize conflict between Native Americans and settlers, and encourage Native Americans to take on the ways of the white man.

In 1849, the U.S. Congress created the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) that moved quickly to address the continuing “Indian problem.”  Under pressure from an expanding American population and industry’s demand for natural resources, the BIA set out on a policy for the Native American “concentration, their domestication, and their incorporation” on reservations.  Using treaties, coercion, and military force, the government actively consolidated Native American societies.

By the late 1870s, a federally funded boarding school system, consisting of hundreds of schools (eventually over 400), began educating generations of Native American children far from their tribes and families.   This was the dominant form of Native American education in the United States for 50 years.  In many cases, Native children were forcibly removed from their parents to attend the boarding schools.  At these schools, they were forbidden to express any part of their Native culture, language, or identity.  Most schools forced Native American children into intense forms of physical labor.  Students endured rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and more than 500 Native children died.  The great cultures of the Native American tribes that once filled the land of America slowly dwindled. 

Until 1961, U.S. policy towards Native Americans vacillated bewilderingly, and to the overall detriment of Native Americans, from self-determination on reservations, to an attempt to assimilate individual Native Americans into the dominant American culture by “civilizing” them, to tribal restoration and reorganization of reservations, back to termination of reservations and attempts to assimilate Native Americans into “mainstream” society, to finally in 1961, a desire to improve Native American conditions through self-determination on reservations.

In 1887, the U.S. government adopted a new policy toward Native Americans.  The objective was to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant American culture by breaking up reservations into allotments for individual Native Americans - to develop values of individual property ownership and economically motivated farmers.  Simply, the government wanted to end tribal sovereignty and “civilize” the Native Americans.  As a result, Native Americans across the country were dispossessed of 60% of their land (from 138 million acres to 48 million acres), either selling parcels at low prices to speculators, or by the government selling surplus lands at auction to non-Indian outsiders.  Tribal governments were replaced by a paternalistic and unresponsive Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which contributed to further unraveling of tribes’ traditional ways of life, exacerbating extreme poverty and poor health.

During World War I, Native Americans were exempt from the military draft because they were not considered American citizens.

Native Americans were given U.S. citizenship and the right to vote in 1924, but Arizona, New Mexico, and Maine withheld voting rights until after World War II.

The Assimilation and Allotment policy was an abysmal failure.  In a complete about face, in 1934, the government adopted a Tribal Restoration and Reorganization policy to reconsolidate allotted lands into reservations, restore tribal sovereignty and self-government, and authorize creation of new reservations. The results were mixed: Tribal councils took more active roles in reservation affairs, but the constitutions were written by non-Native Americans and were based on the U.S. Constitution, rather than Native American legal and political traditions.

The federal government shut down many of the Native American boarding schools in the 1930s, and Native American education became public school education.  But some of the boarding schools continued, at the demand of Native American families, who used them as a poverty relief program for their families to survive the Great Depression.  The last boarding school shut down in 1969.

In 1945, reversing direction once again, the government instituted a Termination and Urbanization policy that urged wholesale breakup of Indian communities and emphasized assimilating Indians into “mainstream” society.  Federal officials withdrew from management of Native American affairs, including such aspects of reservation life as law and criminal justice and health services.  Congress acted to abolish (terminate) selected Indian reservations and the BIA launched a relocation program to move Indians from reservations to urban centers.  

The U.S. government terminated recognition of sovereignty of tribes.  Natives were now subject to state laws and federal taxes, to which they had previously been exempt. 

Official U.S. sentiment towards Native Americans started changing during the Civil Rights era.  Starting in 1961, the government now desired to improve Native American conditions through self-determination on Indian reservations.  Several previously terminated tribes were returned to tribal status.  Reservation governments could administer their own education and social service programs.  The new policy emphasized tribal nation sovereignty, reaffirmed treaties, and the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and authorized the BIA to contract directly with tribal nations to run their own programs and services.

A series of reform laws by the U.S. Congress were issued to improve conditions for Native Americans, including federal assistance for public housing, economic development, education and training, and business financing.  Other Congressional actions were issued to protect Native Americans’ religious freedom and child welfare rights.   More recently, Presidential Executive Orders have been issued to protect Indian sacred sites and religious practices, and reaffirm tribal sovereignty and the government-to-government relationship. 

Of particular importance to the economic future of Native Americans, the 1988 Indian Gaming Act set up the framework for gaming for profit on Indian reservations.

The federal government continues today to back the principle of Indian Self Determination, although federal programs for Native American self-betterment and tribal development have declined due to budget cutbacks. 

Native Americans Today.  In the 2020 U.S. Census, 3.7 million people identified as Native American (including Alaska natives), accounting for 1.1% of all people living in the United States.  An additional 6.0 million people identified as Native American and another race.  Together, these groups comprise 9.7 million people, about 2.9% of the total U.S. population of about 331.5 million in 2020.

As of 2022, there are 574 federally recognized Native Americans tribes existing in the United States.  The 2020 Census reveals that 87% of those who identified as Native American in combination with another race, live outside of tribal statistical areas.  60% live in metropolitan areas. 13% (or approximately 1.3 million people) live on reservations or other trust lands.

Some of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes govern more than one of the 326 government reservations in the United States, while some share reservations, and others have no reservation at all.  The total area of all reservations is 87,800 square miles, approximately 2.3% of the total area of the United States, and about the size of the state of Idaho.  Reservations in the continental U.S. are unevenly distributed throughout the country, with the majority situated west of the Mississippi River. 

 

The tribes on each reservation are sovereign and not subject to most federal laws.  They handle most reservation-related obligations but depend on the federal government for financial support.  On many reservations, the main sources of revenue are tourism and gambling.

The BIA is responsible for improving Native American quality of life, providing them with economic opportunities, and improving their assets which the BIA holds in trust.

Despite the BIA’s efforts, living conditions on reservations aren’t ideal and are often compared to that of a third-world country.  Housing is overcrowded and often below standards, and many people on the reservations are stuck in a cycle of poverty.

Health care on reservations is provided through Indian Health Services, but it’s underfunded and, in some cases, practically non-existent.  Many Native Americans die from lifestyle-related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

Infant mortality rates are significantly higher for Native Americans than for whites, and alcohol and drug abuse are on the rise.  Many people leave the reservations for urban areas in search of employment and improved living conditions.

Tribal governments' relationships with federal, state, and local governments remain complex, and issues about land sovereignty and use are debated in legislatures and contested in the courts.

Today, Native Americans, wherever they live, are more likely to be killed by police than people of any other race.  Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than any other ethnic group, and 97% have experienced violence perpetrated by at least one non-Native person.  Native youth not only have the lowest graduation rates of any racial group, but they are also dying by suicide at the highest rate of any demographic in the United States.  These same teens are twice as likely to be disciplined than their white peers in school, and are twice as likely to be incarcerated for minor crimes than teens of any other race.

Compared to the national population, Native Americans have significantly lower median incomes, lower homeownership, increasing health disparities, and twice the level of poverty.

Modern forms of discrimination and harassment against Native Americans are systemic and untreated problems across multiple domains of their lives, regardless of geographic or neighborhood context.  More than one in five Native Americans (23%) experience discrimination in clinical encounters, while 15% avoid seeking health care for themselves or family members due to anticipated discrimination.  A notable share of Native Americans also reported they or family members have experienced violence (38%) or have been threatened or harassed (34%). 

Currently, Native Americans are underrepresented in the U.S. Congress with only one senator and four members of the House of Representative.

Much of modern Native resistance takes inspiration from the American Indian Movement of the 1970s, which temporarily repossessed the Native lands of Mount Rushmore, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and Alcatraz.  The federal government and corporate interests responded with beatings, attack dogs, and legal action.

Today, social justice movements for Native Americans are generally absent.

 

History of African Americans

I will discuss the history of African Americans in three parts: 1.) slavery, 2.) the Civil War and after, 3.) Black Americans today.

I will use the term African Americans to mean African slaves, first brought to America in the 16^th century, and their descendants.  I will use the broader term Blacks to include African Americans, other non-slave-related black people from Africa, and black people from the Caribbean Islands.

Slavery.  The Europeans who set up trade and settlements in the New World of the Americas, beginning with Columbus’s voyage in 1492, viewed slavery as an indispensable source of labor.  African slavery was already part of the social construct and economy of Spain and Portugal, and spreading to other parts of Europe.

Note:  The Portuguese began slave trading in Africa in 1441, when 12 Africans were captured and taken to Portugal as slaves.

The first African slaves were probably brought to the New World at Puerto Rico by Spain in 1513.  Because we usually think of the beginning of slavery in the U.S. by looking at the British colonies, Puerto Rico is rarely considered, but it is likely the first place in the current United States where African slaves were held.  The slave trade in the Caribbean influenced what happened in America as the Spanish, English, French, and Dutch established northern colonies. 

The first African slaves to be brought to the future continental United States were brought by the Spanish in 1526 as part of an unsuccessful attempt at European settlement, at San Miguel de Gualdape (in present day Georgia).  The colony lasted only a few months before it was abandoned. 

St. Augustine Florida was the first successful settlement by the Spanish in what is now the United States.  Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles claimed the area for a Spanish settlement in 1565.  Slaves were brought for the new colony.

On August 20, 1619, the first slaves were brought to the British colonies, when the privateer White Lion brought 20 enslaved Africans ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia.  The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista, and then sold them to the English colonists. 

Between 1526 and 1866, over the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, an incredible 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the New World.

Slave ships ranged in size from ten-tons, which could carry a crew plus thirty captive Africans, to 566-tons, which carried a crew of 100 and could hold a cargo of as many as 700 enslaved people.  The lower deck of a slave ship was divided into separate compartments for men and women, with the men shackled together in pairs and the women left unchained but confined below.  The conditions were appalling, with hundreds of people crowded together with little airflow and even less sanitation.  Captive Africans suffered from diseases such as dysentery and smallpox, depression, and outright despair, the cruelty of captain and crew, and sexual exploitation.  Nearly two million people died at sea during the agonizing journey.  10.7 million survived the dreaded passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean. and South America. 

Typical arrangement of captive slaves on a slave boat during the 6 to 8-week voyage from Africa to the Americas.

 

The number of slaves shipped directly to North America was relatively small, about 388,000.  The overwhelming percentage of African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone.  Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in America after landing in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade.

Note:  Today, most of the nation’s 46.9 million U.S.-born African Americans trace their roots to this population of African slaves.

In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, enslaved Africans in America worked mainly on the tobacco, rice, cotton, and indigo plantations of the southeastern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

By 1700, there were 27,817 enslaved Africans in British North America.  In 1740, there were 150,024.  By 1770, the number of slaves had grown to 462,000, about one-fifth of the total colonial population

After the American Revolution, many colonists - particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy - began to link the oppression of enslaved Africans to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition.

Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.  But after the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, when it determined that three out of every five enslaved people were counted when determining a state's total population for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress.  The Constitution's drafters also guaranteed the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor” (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

In the pre-Civil War United States, slave labor played a critical role in economic development.  One crop, slave-grown cotton, provided over half of all U.S. export earnings.  By 1840, the South grew 60% of the world's cotton, and provided 70% of the cotton used by the British textile industry.   Slavery paid for a substantial share of the capital, iron, and manufactured goods that laid the basis for American economic growth. 

Life for enslaved men and women was brutal.  They were bought and sold in slave markets.  They were subject to repression, harsh punishments, and strict racial policing.  They were frequently separated from their family members because most slaveowners had no compunction about splitting up families to improve their own financial situation.  Enslaved people were not allowed to defend themselves against violence from whites, nor did they have any legal standing in the courts.  They were not allowed to testify, unless it was against another enslaved person or a free black person.  They could not enter into contracts, nor could they own property; they were not allowed to leave their owner’s property without express permission.  Punishments for infractions were severe.  Whipping was prescribed for minor offenses, and branding, mutilation, and even death were employed as punishment for more serious transgressions. 

Commonly, slaves were sold on court days, usually outdoors at a location near the courthouse; those cities with a large slave market had a significant infrastructure dedicated to the buying and selling of humans.

 

By 1860, America’s westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War. 

Concentration of slavery in 1790 and 1860, just prior to the Civil War.

 

The Civil War and After.  During the Civil War, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

The population of the United States at that time was over 31 million people, including four and a half million enslaved African Americans.  Some 186,000 Black soldiers joined the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.

Following the Civil War, in the Reconstruction period, three amendments to the United States Constitution were ratified, intended to guarantee the freedom of the formerly enslaved and grant certain civil rights to them, and to protect the formerly enslaved and all citizens of the United States from discrimination:   The 13^th Amendment adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery.  The 14^th Amendment (1868) addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for all persons.  The 15^th Amendment (1870) prohibited discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” 

However, these provisions of the Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy.  Freed Black peoples’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges remained.  The effectiveness of the amendments was eroded by state laws and federal court decisions through the late 19^th century.

The legacy of slavery continued to influence American history. 

As American slavery had evolved, an elaborate and enduring mythology about the inferiority of Black people was created to legitimize, perpetuate, and defend slavery.  This mythology survived slavery’s formal abolition following the Civil War.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of Black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating (and dangerous) for African Americans.

Mass lynchings of African Americans, and lawlessness enabled white Southerners to create a regime of white supremacy and Black disenfranchisement alongside a new economic order that continued to exploit Black labor.

Since March 1877, when the United States removed federal troops from the South, and gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan - the U.S. has been locked in a near-perpetual cycle of racial advancement and white backlash.  According to the Equal Justice Initiative, between 1877 and 1950, there were (documented) nearly 6,500 lynching of African Americans.  Thousands more were attacked, sexually assaulted, and terrorized by white mobs and individuals who were shielded from arrest and prosecution.

White officials in the North and West similarly rejected racial equality, codified racial discrimination, and occasionally embraced the same tactics of violent control seen in the South.

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the Civil Rights Movement, a nonviolent social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country. 

But the African American Civil Rights Movement in the South was often met with violence, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.  Pushing back on Supreme Court rulings banning segregation in housing, education and public facilities, whites in some communities closed pools, shut down schools and fled to the suburbs. 

The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

Black Americans Today.  In the 2020 Census, 46.9 million respondents identified as Black or African American (14.1% of the U.S. population in 2020).  The “Black” category included African Americans, Sub-Saharans (Nigerians, Ethiopians, Somalis, Ghanaians), Caribbeans (Jamaicans, Haitians, Trinidadians and Tobagonian, West Indians), and other blacks.  22.1 million respondents identified as African American alone.

Politically and culturally, Black Americans have made profound advances in a country that once saw them as chattel.  But there is a long way to go to reach parity with the white population.

Black voters have become a powerful political bloc that helped President Barack Obama serve two terms and propelled President Joe Biden, a one-time longshot, into the Oval Office with Vice President Kamala Harris.  Marin Luther King, the civil rights icon, has been memorialized with a federal holiday and a memorial in Washington, near those dedicated to Lincoln and Jefferson. 

But the success of individual people of color is different from the elimination of structural barriers.  Centuries of racism, discrimination, and the long-lasting effects of slavery have created conditions that make it difficult for many Black Americans to get ahead. 

Racial discrimination today contributes to disparities in many Black American “success” indicators, including health, education, employment, wealth, criminal justice, and political representation. 

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Blacks ages 18 to 49 are twice as likely than whites to die from heart disease, and are more likely than whites to be diagnosed with chronic afflictions like hypertension and diabetes.  Black Americans are also almost twice as likely as white Americans to lack health insurance, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, making it difficult to receive proper care.  Black women die three times more often giving birth than white women.  Black men and women live shorter lives. 

For decades, Black students in the United States have lagged behind their white peers in academic achievement.  In 2014, the high school graduation rate for white ­students was 87%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.  For Black students, the rate was 73%.  Test scores show a similar racial gap.  Research shows that compared with white students, Black students are more likely to be suspended or expelled, less likely to be placed in gifted programs, and subject to lower expectations from their teachers.

Black unemployment is about double that of whites.  Blacks are often left out of high-paying jobs, government data show.  In corporate America, many Black people say they've endured racism in the workplace.  Black CEOs among Fortune 500 companies, make up a tiny fraction” of the list of corporate leaders. 

Black median household income trails other races.  The percentage of Black people living in poverty is more than twice that of whites.  Black Americans are also less likely to own a home than other racial and ethnic groups.  A 2019 Federal Reserve study found that, on average, a white household has eight times the wealth of a Black one.  That gap, according to the report, has held steady since 2016.

Black men and women are jailed at more than triple the rate of whites, and nearly half of all inmates awaiting execution are Black.   Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men, according to a study from the University of Michigan, Rutgers University and Washington University.  Bias has also been documented in plea bargains and sentencing. 

According to Pew Research, Blacks view “political representation as a potential catalyst for increased racial equality.”  However, voter suppression remains a critical issue.  While there has been increased Black political leadership in the House of Representatives, the Senate only has four Black senators. 

Discrimination persists in America today. 

Unlike the practically nonexistent social justice movements for Native Americans, the social justice environment for blacks today is alive with attempts to improve understanding of Black racial discrimination and injustice issues, and to find solutions.

Growing out of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, Affirmative Action policies were instituted to bridge inequalities in employment and pay, increase access to education, promote diversity, and redress wrongs, harms, or hindrances.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (usually abbreviated DEI) refers to organizational frameworks which seek to promote "the fair treatment and full participation of all people,” particularly groups "who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination" on the basis of identity or disability.

Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.”  Beginning in the 2010s, the term woke came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights.  Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.

Efforts toward reparations for slavery and racial discrimination have moved forward in some places in recent years.  In 2021, Evanston, Illinois, became the first U.S. city to create a reparations plan for its Black residents, and California that year set up the nation’s first state-level reparations task force.  Harvard University created a $100 million “Legacy of Slavery” fund to allow scholars and students to examine the university’s connections to slavery. 

 

Conclusions

The treatment of Native Americans and African Americans by European colonizers, American settlers, the United States government, and certain white supremacist American citizens has been intolerably cruel. 

Native Americans were first decimated by European diseases; then forced into slavery; relentlessly pushed out of their ancestral lands with lies and broken promises, wars, and massacres; almost wiped out as a race; the remainder forced onto reservations; and subjected to frequently-changing, upsetting government policies, that made retaining their historic heritage impossible.

Rather than living in a country where discrimination has lessened, and or access to resources and rights has been improved, Native Americans live in a country that consistently pretends like they do not exist.  Invisibility and inaction are the modern forms of racism against Native Americans.

For almost 350 years, Black Africans were captured and transported to America under horrible conditions; forced into slavery and treated as less than human; only to be freed during the Civil War to suffer violent and persistent reprisals, including mass lynchings; purposely prevented by federal, state, and local government from achieving social and economic freedoms; and finally achieving their just equal civil rights, only to remain today under heavy racial discrimination.   

Words that come to mind in realization and appreciation of this history are overwhelming sadness, revulsion, and shame for America.

Finally, when you look at the current environment for initiatives to eliminate discrimination and improve social justice for our Native American and Black minorities, activity for Blacks is clearly dominating.  You never see Native people in media at all.

The American Declaration of Independence states, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Only when everyone can come together as equals will America be a great country.

 

Principal Sources: “Native American History, Life, and Culture,” nativehope.org; “Overview of the First Americans,” digitalhistory.uh.edu; “Population history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas,” wikipedia.com; “Perspective: The Other Slavery,” americanindian.si.edu; “List of Indian massacres in North America,” en.wikipedia.org; “Counting the Dead: Estimating the Loss of Life in the Indigenous Holocaust, 1492-Present,” se.edu; “Eleventh Census - Volume 1. (Part I and II) Report on Population of the United States,” census.gov; “Indian reservation,” en.wikipedia.org; “The History of Native American Boarding Schools Is Even More Complicated that a New Report Reveals,” time.com; “American Indian/Alaska Native Health,” minorityhealth.hhs.gov; Slavery in America,” history.com; “Beyond 1619: Slavery and the Cultures of America,” blogs.loc.gov; “History of slavery,” en.wikipedia.org; “How Many Africans Were Really Taken to the U.S. During the Slave Trade?” abhmuseum.org; “Was slavery the engine of economic growth?” digitalhistory.uh.edu; “Slave Ships,” encyclopediavirginia.org; “Reconstruction in America,” eji.org; “History of Lynching in America,” naacp.org; “New Population Counts for 62 Detailed Black or American Groups,” census.gov; “Improved Race and Ethnicity Measures Reveal U.S. Population is Much More Multiracial,” census.gov; “12 charts show how racial disparities persist across wealth, health, education and beyond,” usatoday.com; “Woke,” en.wikipedia.org; “Black and White Americans are far apart in their views of reparations for slavery,” pewresearch.org; “The Legacy of Injustices Against Native Americans,” networkadvocates.org; “Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Native Americans,” ncbi.nim.nih.gov; “Invisibility is the Modern Form of Racism Against Native Americans,” teenvogue.com; plus numerous other online sources.