Jump to content

African Americans in Georgia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

African Americans in Georgia
Total population
3,495,258[1] (2017)
Regions with significant populations
Atlanta, Stonecrest, Lithonia, Atlanta metropolitan area, Albany, Columbus, Augusta, Savannah, Macon, Valdosta, Hancock County, Dougherty County, Clayton County, Fulton County, DeKalb County,[2] many rural counties throughout the southwest part of the state
Languages
Southern American English, African American Vernacular English, African-American English, Gullah, African languages
Religion
Historically Black Protestant[3]
Part of a series on
African Americans
History
Periods
Aspects
Migrations
Culture
Lifeways
Schools
Academic study
Celebrations
Economic class
Symbols and ideas
Religion
Institutions
Theologies
Non-Christian groups
Politics
Organizations
Ideologies
Civic/economic groups
Organizations
Sports
Athletic associations and conferences
Sub-communities
Multiethnic
Specific ancestries
Sexual orientation
Dialects and languages
English dialects
Languages and other dialects
Population
US states
US cities
Historic places
Population count
Diaspora
Prejudice
Racism
Stereotypes and media depictions
Oldest African American church located in Georgia
African Americans picking cotton in Georgia, 1907

African-American Georgians are residents of the U.S. state of Georgia who are of African American ancestry. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans were 31.2% of the state's population.[4] Georgia has the second largest African American population in the United States following Texas.[5] Georgia also has a gullah community.[6] African slaves were brought to Georgia during the slave trade.[7]

History

[edit]
Part of a series on the
History of the
State of Georgia
flag Georgia (U.S. state) portal
African American slaves in 1850
See also: History of Georgia (U.S. state)

Spanish colonists brought African slaves to Georgia in 1526.[8] African slaves imported to Georgia primarily came from Angola, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia.[9] Slaves were also imported from South Carolina and the West Indies.[10] Slaves mostly worked on cotton and rice plantations.[11][12] By the mid-19th century the majority of white people in Georgia, like most White Southerners, had come to view slavery as economically indispensable to their society. Georgia, with the largest number plantations of any state in the Southern United States, had in many respects come to epitomize plantation culture. When the American Civil War started in 1861, most white people in the South joined in the defense of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy), which the state Georgia had helped to create.[13]

Between the years 1751 and 1773, the black population in Georgia grew from around 500 to around 15,000. Slaves from Georgia were also brought to Georgia by South Carolinian and Caribbean owners and those purchased in South Carolina, around 44% black slaves in Georgia were shipped to the colony from West Africa (57%), from or via the Caribbean (37%), and from the other mainland colonies in the United States (6%) in the years between 175s and 1771.[14]

In 1912, White people drove out every black resident in Forsyth County.[15]

Beginning in the 1890s, Georgia passed a wide variety of Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation and racial separation for white people in public facilities and effectively codified the region's tradition of white supremacy.[16] Lynching African Americans was also common in Georgia. White mobs would lynch black men.[17]

Georgia became a slave state in 1751.[18] Initially, Georgia was the only British colony in the United States to try to ban slavery.[19]

White slaveholders would frequently beat and sometimes had killed slaves.[20]

Civil War

[edit]

The Civil War happened in Georgia.[21] African American soldiers fought the Civil War in Georgia.[22]

Lynching

[edit]
Main article: Lynching in the United States

Many black men were lynched by white mobs in Georgia.[17] Notably, Robert Mallard and Isaiah Nixon, who were both lynched by the Ku Klux Klan for voting in the 1948 Georgia gubernatorial special election.[23]

Historically black colleges and universities

[edit]

Georgia is the home of ten historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs): Albany State University, Clark Atlanta University, Fort Valley State University, Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, Morris Brown College, Paine College, Savannah State University, and Spelman College.[24]

Politics

[edit]

The historically Republican state of Georgia flipped blue in the 2020 Presidential Election and the 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs, in part, due to high Black voter turnout. Joe Biden won the Black vote in Georgia in a 2020 exit poll with 88% of Black Georgians voting for Biden.[25][26][27]

This shift from red to purple is in part, due to young, college-educated Black Americans, who largely vote for Democrats, moving from Northern and Western regions of the country to the South, in a phenomenon often referred to as the New Great Migration.[28]

Civil Rights

[edit]

Politics

[edit]

Music

[edit]

Sport

[edit]

Religious

[edit]

Film and television

[edit]
  • Chris Tucker (born 1971)
  • Donald Glover (born 1983), comedian, actor, rapper, writer, director, and producer who created the acclaimed comedy-drama Atlanta along with his brother Stephen.
  • Raven-Symoné (born 1985)
  • Spike Lee born 1957), born in Atlanta, moved with his family to Brooklyn during childhood. Returned to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College.

Writing

[edit]

Various

[edit]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Georgia Black Population". blackdemographics.com. Archived from the original on July 25, 2022. Retrieved July 25, 2022.
  2. ^ "Monday Mapday: The Distribution of Georgia's Black, Non-Hispanic Residents". February 17, 2020. Archived from the original on December 1, 2022. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
  3. ^ "Religious Landscape Study". Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  4. ^ "Georgia QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". Quickfacts.census.gov. 2011. Archived from the original on June 22, 2015. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  5. ^ "The Growing Diversity of Black America". March 25, 2021. Archived from the original on July 24, 2022. Retrieved July 25, 2022.
  6. ^ "Gullah History | Gullah Culture". Archived from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  7. ^ "Slavery in Antebellum Georgia".
  8. ^ "Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon". Today in Georgia History. July 22, 2021. Archived from the original on November 13, 2021. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  9. ^ "Slavery in Colonial Georgia". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on April 27, 2020. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
  10. ^ McMillin, James A. (February 3, 2024). The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783-1810. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-546-3.
  11. ^ "A New Encounter: Black Slaves in Georgia". Georgia Historical Society. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved July 9, 2022.
  12. ^ "Georgia - Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on June 23, 2021. Retrieved April 26, 2021.
  13. ^ "Georgia - Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction | Britannica". Archived from the original on June 23, 2021. Retrieved April 26, 2021.
  14. ^ Wood, Betty (December 2007). Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775. University of Georgia Press. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-8203-3149-2.
  15. ^ "In 1912, This Georgia County Drove Out Every Black Resident | HISTORY". August 20, 2019. Archived from the original on January 26, 2023. Retrieved January 26, 2023.
  16. ^ "Segregation". Archived from the original on January 26, 2023. Retrieved January 26, 2023.
  17. ^ a b "Lynching".
  18. ^ "Pre-Revolutionary Slavery - Georgia Historical Society". August 1, 2013.
  19. ^ "Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730–1775".
  20. ^ "Enslavement in Georgia". Race and Reckoning in Forsyth County - Stories of Life in Georgia - Digital Library of Georgia. February 8, 2021. Retrieved December 27, 2023.
  21. ^ "Civil War in Georgia".
  22. ^ "Black Troops in Civil War Georgia".
  23. ^ Congress (U.S.), Civil Rights (1952). We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People. International Publishers.
  24. ^ "Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative". Archived from the original on October 14, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  25. ^ Mayes, Brittany; Shapiro, Leslie; Alcantara, Chris; Clement, Scott; Guskin, Emily (November 9, 2020) [2020-11-02]. "Exit poll results and analysis for the 2020 presidential election". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409. Archived from the original on December 11, 2022. Retrieved July 25, 2022.
  26. ^ "Most Georgia voters say Senate runoff elections conducted fairly, CNN exit poll shows". CNN. January 5, 2021. Archived from the original on October 13, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  27. ^ "SNBC News Exit Poll: Black, liberal voters boost Warnock to projected Senate win in Georgia". NBC News. January 6, 2021. Archived from the original on October 13, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  28. ^ "A 'New Great Migration' is bringing Black Americans back to the South".
  29. ^ "Georgia: Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)". Archived from the original on October 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  30. ^ "Clarence Thomas". Oyez. Archived from the original on December 15, 2022. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  31. ^ "U.S. Senate: U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock". Archived from the original on October 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  32. ^ "Georgia's Daring Heroine on a Secret Mission". Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  33. ^ "Library Research Guides: African American History: Georgia- Prominent African American History Makers".
  34. ^ "Kanye West Biography, Songs, & Albums". AllMusic. Archived from the original on September 29, 2020. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  35. ^ "8-time All-Star Dwight Howard pondering retirement: 'No teams want to allow me to play'". October 16, 2022. Archived from the original on October 18, 2022. Retrieved October 18, 2022.
  36. ^ "Herschel Walker". Archived from the original on October 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  37. ^ "Biography - the Official Licensing Website of Jackie Robinson". Archived from the original on October 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  38. ^ Holden, Stephen (March 22, 2002). "FILM REVIEW; Jim Brown as Football Legend, Sex Symbol and Husband". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2022.
  39. ^ "Legendary sixth man Lou Williams officially announces retirement". NBC Sports. June 18, 2023.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Bacote, Clarence A. "Some aspects of negro life in Georgia, 1880-1908." Journal of Negro History 43.3 (1958): 186–213. online
  • Bacote, Clarence A. "Negro proscriptions, protests, and proposed solutions in Georgia, 1880-1908." Journal of Southern History 25.4 (1959): 471–498. online
  • Bernd, Joseph L. "White supremacy and the disfranchisement of Blacks in Georgia, 1946." Georgia Historical Quarterly 66.4 (1982): 492–513. online
  • Blassingame, John W. "Before the Ghetto: The Making of the Black Community in Savannah, Georgia, 1865-1880." Journal of Social History 6#4 (1973), pp. 463–88. ]online
  • Dittmer, John. Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (University of Illinois Press, 1980).
  • Drago, Edmund L. Black politicians and reconstruction in Georgia: A splendid failure (University of Georgia Press, 1992) online.
  • Fischer, David Hackett. African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals (Simon & Schuster, 2022), ch 5. before 1860.
  • Flynn Jr, Charles L. White land, Black labor: Caste and class in late nineteenth-century Georgia (LSU Press, 1999).
  • Grant, Donald Lee. The way it was in the South: The Black experience in Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2001).
  • Grantham, Dewey W. "Georgia Politics and the Disfranchisement of the Negro." Georgia Historical Quarterly 32.1 (1948): 1-21. online
  • Hornsby, Alton. "Black Public Education in Atlanta, Georgia, 1954-1973: From Segregation to Segregation." Journal of Negro History 76#1 (1991), pp. 21–47. online
  • Inscoe, John C., ed. Georgia in Black and White: Explorations in Race Relations of a Southern State, 1865-1950 (University of Georgia Press, 2009).
  • Jones, Jacqueline. Soldiers of light and love: Northern teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 (University of Georgia Press, 1992) online.
  • Meier, August, and David Lewis. "History of the Negro upper class in Atlanta, Georgia, 1890-1958." Journal of Negro Education 28.2 (1959): 128–139. online
  • Matthews, John M. "Black Newspapermen and the Black Community in Georgia, 1890-1930." Georgia Historical Quarterly 68#3 (1984), pp. 356–81. online
  • Range, Willard. The rise and progress of Negro colleges in Georgia, 1865-1949 (University of Georgia Press, 2009).
  • Wood, Betty. Slavery In Colonial Georgia, 1730–1775 (2007) online
  • Wood, Betty. Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia, 1750-1830 (1995) excerpt.

Further reading

[edit]
  • WRIGHT, C. T. "THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION FOR BLACKS IN GEORGIA, 1865-1900" (PhD dissertation, Boston University Graduate School; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1977. 7711433).
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to African Americans in Georgia (U.S. state).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=African_Americans_in_Georgia&oldid=1247416406"