168-666: The White Citizens' Councils were an associated network of white supremacist , segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court 's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956. With about 60,000 members across
336-467: A "scientific" theory of white superiority and black inferiority . One such slave owner, future president Thomas Jefferson , wrote in 1785 that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." In the antebellum South , four million slaves were denied freedom. The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy being cited as a cause for state secession and
504-519: A "dark side" of social media: There certainly were hate groups before the Internet and social media. [But with social media] it just becomes easier to organize, to spread the word, for people to know where to go. It could be to raise money, or it could be to engage in attacks on social media. Some of the activity is virtual. Some of it is in a physical place. Social media has lowered the collective-action problems that individuals who might want to be in
672-585: A 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi , Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the US. Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became
840-597: A Nordic admixture and suitable for Aryanization . In the United States, the groups most associated with the white-supremacist movement are the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Aryan Nations , and the White American Resistance movement, all of which are also considered to be antisemitic . The Proud Boys , despite claiming non-association with white supremacy, have been described in academic contexts as being such. Many white-supremacist groups are based on
1008-472: A White American mother and a Kenyan father— defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected president. At least 95 percent of African American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated Whites, a majority of Asians , and Hispanics , picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost
1176-507: A black man raped, assaulted, talked to or glanced at them. The Tulsa race massacre , the destruction of Black Wall Street, was spurred by an incident between a white female elevator operator and a black man. As the Oklahoma Historical Society points out, the most common explanation is that he stepped on her toe. As many as 300 people were killed because of it. The torture and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955,
1344-708: A black man, a bird-watcher, that she was going to call the police and tell them that he was threatening her life. The Tuskegee Institute has estimated that 3,446 blacks were the victims of lynchings in the United States between 1882 and 1968, with the peak occurring in the 1890s at a time of economic stress in the South and increasing political suppression of blacks. If 1,297 whites were also lynched during this period, blacks were disproportionally targeted, representing 72.7% of all people lynched. According to scholar Amy L. Wood, "lynching photographs constructed and perpetuated white supremacist ideology by creating permanent images of
1512-559: A book which was titled Black Monday . The book detailed their belief that African Americans were inferior to white people which served as the basis for their belief that the races must remain separate. "If in one mighty voice we do not protest this travesty on justice, we might as well surrender," one of the authors, Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Tom P. Brady , wrote. In August 1956, their official newspaper reported councils in "at least 30 states" in places such as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Newark. In 1964,
1680-561: A broad array of institutions and social settings. African Americans African Americans , also known as Black Americans , formerly also called Afro-Americans , are an American racial or ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa . African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the US after White Americans . The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in
1848-639: A collective and an individual level ( ceteris paribus , i. e. , when individuals are compared that do not differ relevantly except in ethnicity). Legal scholar Frances Lee Ansley explains this definition as follows: By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups . I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across
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#17327811791832016-443: A controlled white citizenry juxtaposed to images of helpless and powerless black men." White supremacy has also played a part in U.S. school curriculum. Over the course of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, material across the spectrum of academic disciplines has been taught with a heavy emphasis on white culture, contributions, and experiences, and a lack of representation of non-white groups' perspectives and accomplishments. In
2184-557: A crucial role in producing the country's most valuable product and export: cotton . Enslaved people were instrumental in the construction of several prominent structures such as, the United States Capitol , the White House and other Washington, D.C.-based buildings. ) Similar building projects existed in the slave states . By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a significant and major economic activity in
2352-668: A federal crime to aid or assist those who had fled slavery or to interfere with their capture. By that time, slavery, which almost exclusively targeted Black people, had become the most critical and contentious political issue in the Antebellum United States , repeatedly sparking crises and conflicts. Among these were the Missouri Compromise , the Compromise of 1850 , the infamous Dred Scott decision , and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry . Prior to
2520-593: A former captain of the Mississippi State University football team. Additional chapters were established in many other southern towns in following years. At this time, most Southern states enforced the racial segregation of all public facilities; in places where local laws did not require segregation, Jim Crow harassment enforced it. From 1890 to 1908, most Southern states passed new constitutions or laws which disfranchised most blacks by imposing barriers to voter registration and voting. Despite
2688-549: A group formed to promote relations between the countries. After riots against Blacks in Cincinnati , its Black community sponsored founding of the Wilberforce Colony , an initially successful settlement of African American immigrants to Canada. The colony was one of the first such independent political entities. It lasted for a number of decades and provided a destination for about 200 Black families emigrating from
2856-666: A hate group would face. You can see that there are people out there like you. That's the dark side of social media. A series on YouTube hosted by the grandson of Thomas Robb , the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "presents the Klan's ideology in a format aimed at kids — more specifically, white kids." The short episodes inveigh against race-mixing, and extol other white-supremacist ideologies. A short documentary published by TRT describes Imran Garda's experience,
3024-479: A journalist of Indian descent, who met with Thomas Robb and a traditional KKK group. A sign that greets people who enter the town states " Diversity is a code for white genocide ." The KKK group interviewed in the documentary summarizes its ideals, principles, and beliefs, which are emblematic of white supremacists in the United States. The comic book super hero Captain America was used for dog whistle politics by
3192-1055: A later official in the RCNL and the future head of the Mississippi NAACP had met Patterson during their childhood. Within a few months, the White Citizens Council had attracted members whose racist views were similar to the views of its leaders; new chapters developed beyond Mississippi in the rest of the Deep South. The Council often had the support of the leading white citizens of many communities, including business, law enforcement, civic and sometimes religious leaders, many of whom were members. Member businesses, such as newspaper publishing, legal representation, medical service, were known for collectively acting against registered voters whose names were first published in local papers before additional retaliatory actions were taken against them. Council members published
3360-718: A lengthy investigation by the Jackson Clarion Ledger; he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Many leading state and local politicians were members of the Councils; in some states, this gave the organization immense influence over state legislatures. In Mississippi, the State Sovereignty Commission was established, ostensibly to encourage investment in the state and promote its public image. Although funded by taxes paid by all state residents, it made grants to
3528-495: A lynching actually, occurred because a white woman said that he "grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her". This practice, this exercise in racial extremism has been dragged into the modern era through the weaponizing of 9-1-1, often by white women, to invoke the power and force of the police who they are fully aware are hostile to black men. This was again evident when a white woman in New York's Central Park told
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#17327811791833696-613: A number of locations in the United States. In 1863, during the American Civil War , President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation . The proclamation declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation, with Texas being the last state to be emancipated, in 1865. Slavery in a few border states continued until
3864-499: A pageant illuminating the tyranny of White supremacy ". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-White jury . One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama—indeed, Parks told Emmett's mother Mamie Till that "the photograph of Emmett's disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on
4032-696: A process known as White flight . Despite discrimination, drawing cards for leaving the hopelessness in the South were the growth of African American institutions and communities in Northern cities. Institutions included Black oriented organizations (e.g., Urban League , NAACP ), churches, businesses, and newspapers, as well as successes in the development in African American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture (e.g., Harlem Renaissance , Chicago Black Renaissance ). The Cotton Club in Harlem
4200-593: A projection of the Joint Legislative Committee to Maintain Segregation." In Louisiana, leaders of the original Citizens' Council included State Senator and gubernatorial candidate William M. Rainach , U.S. Representative Joe D. Waggonner Jr. , the publisher Ned Touchstone , and Judge Leander Perez , considered the political boss of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes near New Orleans . On July 16, 1956, "under pressure from
4368-492: A racist faction of the skinhead subculture , despite the fact that when the skinhead culture first developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, it was heavily influenced by black fashions and music , especially Jamaican reggae and ska , and African American soul music . White-supremacist recruitment activities are primarily conducted at a grassroots level as well as on the Internet. Widespread access to
4536-516: A significant influence on worldwide culture, making numerous contributions to visual arts , literature , the English language, philosophy , politics, cuisine , sports , and music . The African-American contribution to popular music is so profound that most American music , including jazz , gospel , blues , rock and roll , funk , disco , house , techno , hip hop , R&B , trap , and soul , has its origins either partially or entirely in
4704-425: A small cash payment called "freedom dues". Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or European settlers . By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown , and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640,
4872-410: A social system in which white people enjoy structural advantages ( privilege ) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level, despite formal legal equality. White supremacy has ideological foundations that date back to 17th-century scientific racism , the predominant paradigm of human variation that helped shape international relations and racial policy from the latter part of
5040-586: A speech at the Brookings Institution , McAleenan cited a series of high-profile shooting incidents, and said "In our modern age, the continued menace of racially based violent extremism, particularly white supremacist extremism, is an abhorrent affront to the nation, the struggle and unity of its diverse population." The new strategy will include better tracking and analysis of threats, sharing information with local officials, training local law enforcement on how to deal with shooting events, discouraging
5208-423: A year, compared with 41 percent in 1960. In 1965, 19 percent of Black Americans had incomes equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960, the median level of education for Blacks had been 10.8 years, and by the late 1960s, the figure rose to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for Whites. Politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides during
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5376-743: Is now the continental United States. The first recorded Africans in English America (including most of the future United States) were "20 and odd negroes" who arrived in Jamestown , Virginia via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants . As many Virginian settlers began to die from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. An indentured servant (who could be White or Black) would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland
5544-402: Is openly white nationalist or white separatist because "white nationalism and white separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups". Use of the term to self-identify has been criticized as a dishonest rhetorical ploy. The Anti-Defamation League argues that white supremacists use the phrase because they believe it has fewer negative connotations than
5712-574: Is similar to that of many Christian Identity groups because it believes in the antisemitic conspiracy theory that there is a "Jewish conspiracy" in control of governments, the banking industry and the media. Matthew F. Hale , founder of the World Church of the Creator, has published articles stating that all races other than white are "mud races", which is what the group's religion teaches. The white-supremacist ideology has become associated with
5880-513: Is their greatest enemy. Different groups of white supremacists identify various racial, ethnic, religious, and other enemies, most commonly those of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania, Asians , multiracial people , Middle Eastern people , Jews , Muslims , and LGBTQ+ people. In academic usage, particularly in critical race theory or intersectionality , "white supremacy" can also refer to
6048-462: The 2016 United States Presidential Election reflect ongoing challenges with white supremacy. Psychologist Janet Helms suggested that the normalizing behaviors of social institutions of education, government, and healthcare are organized around the "birthright of...the power to control society's resources and determine the rules for [those resources]". Educators, literary theorists, and other political experts have raised similar questions, connecting
6216-692: The Age of Enlightenment until the late 20th century (marked by decolonization and the abolition of apartheid in South Africa in 1991, followed by that country's first multiracial elections in 1994 ). White supremacy was dominant in the United States both before and after the American Civil War , and it persisted for decades after the Reconstruction Era . Prior to the Civil War, many wealthy white Americans owned slaves ; they tried to justify their economic exploitation of black people by creating
6384-716: The American Revolution . After the United States was founded in 1783, most Black people continued to be enslaved , primarily concentrated in the American South , with four million enslaved people only liberated during and at the end of the Civil War in 1865. During Reconstruction , they gained citizenship and adult-males the right to vote ; however, due to the widespread policy and ideology of White supremacy , they were largely treated as second-class citizens and found themselves soon disenfranchised in
6552-793: The Atlantic slave trade , European colonial labor and social practices, the Scramble for Africa , Jim Crow laws in the United States, the activities of the Native Land Court in New Zealand, the White Australia policies from the 1890s to the mid-1970s, and apartheid in South Africa. This ideology is also today present among neo-Confederates . White supremacy underlies a spectrum of contemporary movements including white nationalism , white separatism, neo-Nazism , and
6720-552: The Christian Identity movement. In the United States, white supremacy is primarily associated with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Aryan Nations , and the White American Resistance movement, all of which are also considered to be antisemitic . The Proud Boys , despite claiming non-association with white supremacy, have been described in academic contexts as being such. In recent years, websites such as Twitter (known as X since July 2023), Reddit , and Stormfront , and
6888-630: The Civil War , eight serving presidents had owned slaves, a practice that was legally protected under the US Constitution. By 1860, the number of enslaved Black people in the US had grown to between 3.5 to 4.4 million, largely as a result of the Atlantic slave trade . In addition, 488,000–500,000 Black people lived free (with legislated limits) across the country. With legislated limits imposed upon them in addition to "unconquerable prejudice" from Whites according to Henry Clay . In response to these conditions, some free Black people chose to leave
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7056-639: The Dutch Empire . It continued when the British took over the Cape of Good Hope in 1795. Apartheid was introduced as an officially structured policy by the Afrikaner -dominated National Party after the general election of 1948 . Apartheid's legislation divided inhabitants into four racial groups — "black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian", with coloured divided into several sub-classifications. In 1970,
7224-699: The Great Awakening . By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies , which made them the second largest ethnic group after English Americans . During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious American colonists secure their independence by defeating the British in the American Revolutionary War . Blacks played a role in both sides in the American Revolution. Activists in
7392-598: The Irish and Germans . According to the 2010 census , nearly 3% of people who self-identified as Black had recent ancestors who immigrated from another country. Self-reported non-Hispanic Black immigrants from the Caribbean , mostly from Jamaica and Haiti, represented 0.9% of the US population, at 2.6 million. Self-reported Black immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa also represented 0.9%, at about 2.8 million. Additionally, self-identified Black Hispanics represented 0.4% of
7560-601: The Nordic theory , which regarded Nordics as the "master race", superior to all others, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans). Rosenberg got the racial term Untermensch from the title of Klansman Lothrop Stoddard 's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man . It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925). Rosenberg
7728-556: The Rhodesian Bush War which was fought by African nationalists , Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith acceded to biracial political representation in 1978 and the state achieved recognition from the United Kingdom as Zimbabwe in 1980. Nazism promoted the idea of a superior Germanic people or Aryan race in Germany during the early 20th century. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in
7896-524: The Southern United States , the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The Councils also worked to oppose voter registration efforts in the South (where most African Americans had been disenfranchised since the late 19th century) and integration of public facilities in general during
8064-571: The US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. At the time, schools and other public facilities were segregated by state laws in Southern states. The Citizens' Councils were founded in Indianola, Mississippi two months after the Brown v. Board ruling. The recognized leader was Robert B. Patterson , a plantation manager and
8232-511: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 . Patterson and his followers formed the White Citizens Council in response to increased civil rights activism, activism which it responded to with economic retaliation and violence. The Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a grassroots civil rights organization founded in 1951 by T. R. M. Howard of the all-black town Mound Bayou, Mississippi , was based 40 miles from Indianola. Aaron Henry ,
8400-489: The WLBT as a television program, it switched to a radio format and was broadcast from Washington, DC, using congressional studios with the help of people like James Eastland , a U.S. senator from Mississippi. Various personalities such as Eastland or John Bell Williams were interviewed there. From 1966, they did emissions from African countries such as Rhodesia , interviewing Ian Smith . Among its other activities, throughout
8568-666: The Western states. The west does have a sizable Black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin , many of whom may be of Brazilian , Puerto Rican , Dominican , Cuban , Haitian , or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ancestral groups larger than African Americans are
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#17327811791838736-428: The civil rights movement . In an analysis of American history textbooks, she highlights word choices that repetitively "normalize" slavery and the inhumane treatment of black people. She also notes the frequent showcasing of white abolitionists and actual exclusion of black abolitionists and the fact that black Americans had been mobilizing for abolition for centuries before the major white American push for abolition in
8904-446: The colony of Georgia to come to Florida as a refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism . King Charles II issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism. Most went to the area around St. Augustine , but escaped slaves also reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had mustered an all-Black militia unit defending Spanish Florida as early as 1683. One of
9072-956: The dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race ... has come in and taken their place." British historian Richard Toye , author of Churchill's Empire , concluded that "Churchill did think that white people were superior." A number of Southern African nations experienced severe racial tension and conflict during global decolonization , particularly as white Africans of European ancestry fought to protect their preferential social and political status. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under
9240-502: The scapegoating of disenfranchised populations to white superiority. As of 2018, there were over 600 white-supremacist organizations recorded in the U.S. On July 23, 2019, Christopher A. Wray , the head of the FBI , said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the agency had made around 100 domestic terrorism arrests since October 1, 2018, and that the majority of them were connected in some way with white supremacy. Wray said that
9408-401: The "Nordic peoples" to be a superior race. By the early 19th century, white supremacy was attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer attributed cultural primacy to the white race: The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians , are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples,
9576-524: The "purity" of the Nordic or Germanic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan or Germanic peoples and Jewish culture. As the Nazi Party 's chief racial theorist, Alfred Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies . Rosenberg promoted
9744-641: The 16th century, with Africans from West Africa and coastal Central Africa being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere . After arriving in the Americas , they were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations , particularly in the southern colonies . A few were able to achieve freedom through manumission or escape, and founded independent communities before and during
9912-429: The 1790s, Governor Francisco Luis Héctor, baron of Carondelet reinforced local fortifications and recruit even more free Black men for the militia. Carondelet doubled the number of free Black men who served, creating two more militia companies—one made up of Black members and the other of pardo (mixed race). Serving in the militia brought free Black men one step closer to equality with Whites, allowing them, for example,
10080-633: The 1900 Hampton Negro Conference , Reverend Matthew Anderson said: "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South." Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants , redlining and racial steering ". While many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions,
10248-434: The 1940s, became minority views within the white community by the mid-1970s, and continued to decline in 1990s' polls to a single-digit percentage. For sociologist Howard Winant , these shifts marked the end of "monolithic white supremacy" in the United States. After the mid-1960s, white supremacy remained an important ideology to the American far-right . According to Kathleen Belew , a historian of race and racism in
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#173278117918310416-484: The 1950s and 1960s. Members employed tactics such as economic boycotts, unjustified termination of employment, propaganda, and outright violence. By the 1970s the influence of the Councils had waned considerably due to the passage of federal civil rights legislation. The councils' mailing lists and some of their board members found their way to the St. Louis –based Council of Conservative Citizens , founded in 1985. In May 1954,
10584-414: The 19th century, Geography lessons contained teachings on a fixed racial hierarchy, which white people topped. Mills (1994) writes that history as it is taught is really the history of white people, and it is taught in a way that favors white Americans and white people in general. He states that the language used to tell history minimizes the violent acts committed by white people over the centuries, citing
10752-448: The 19th century, black Americans were consistently portrayed as lazy, immature, and intellectually and morally inferior to white Americans, and in many ways not deserving of equal participation in U.S. society. For example, a math problem in a 19th-century textbook read, "If 5 white men can do as much work as 7 negroes..." implying that white men are more industrious and competent than black men (p. 99). In addition, little to nothing
10920-592: The 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that white people were members of an Aryan " master race " that was superior to other races, particularly the Jews, who were described as the "Semitic race", Slavs , and Gypsies , who they associated with "cultural sterility". Arthur de Gobineau , a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed
11088-399: The 19th century. She ultimately asserts the presence of a masternarrative that centers Europe and its associated peoples (white people) in school curriculum, particularly as it pertains to history. She writes that this masternarrative condenses history into only history that is relevant to, and to some extent beneficial for, white Americans. Elson (1964) provides detailed information about
11256-553: The 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 neo-Nazis . Fifty-one people died from two consecutive terrorist attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre by an Australian white supremacist carried out on March 15, 2019. The terrorist attacks have been described by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as "One of New Zealand's darkest days". On August 27, 2020,
11424-477: The 20th and 21st centuries, immigration has played an increasingly significant role in the African-American community. As of 2022, 10% of Black Americans were immigrants, and 20% were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first, and so far only, African American to be elected president of the United States. Kamala Harris became the nation's first African-American vice president in 2020. African-American culture has had
11592-461: The African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación , which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others. Although some did not have the money to do so, government measures on slavery enabled the existence of many free Blacks. This caused problems to the Spaniards with the French creoles (French who had settled in New France ) who had also populated Spanish Louisiana. The French creoles cited that measure as one of
11760-463: The African-American community. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from several Central and West Africa ethnic groups. They had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids, or sold by other West Africans, or by half-European "merchant princes" to European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo in
11928-417: The Afrikaner-run government abolished non-white political representation , and starting that year black people were deprived of South African citizenship. South Africa abolished apartheid in 1991. In Rhodesia a predominantly white government issued its own unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 during an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid majority rule. Following
12096-507: The American Revolution. They fought in the 1779 battle in which Spain captured Baton Rouge from the British. Gálvez also commanded them in campaigns against the British outposts in Mobile , Alabama , and Pensacola , Florida. He recruited slaves for the militia by pledging to free anyone who was seriously wounded and promised to secure a low price for coartación (buy their freedom and that of others) for those who received lesser wounds. During
12264-687: The Blood Law. To preserve the Aryan or Nordic race , the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later between Germans and Romani and Slavs . The Nazis used the Mendelian inheritance theory to argue that social traits were innate, claiming that there was a racial nature associated with certain general traits, such as inventiveness or criminal behavior. According to
12432-463: The Bureau was "aggressively pursuing [domestic terrorism] using both counterterrorism resources and criminal investigative resources and partnering closely with our state and local partners," but said that it was focused on the violence itself and not on its ideological basis. A similar number of arrests had been made for instances of international terrorism. In the past, Wray has said that white supremacy
12600-516: The Caribbean to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina ), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans . De Ayllón and many of
12768-458: The Councils operated by "unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo". Their targets included black professionals such as teachers, as well as farmers, high school and college students, shop owners, and housewives. Medgar Evers ' first work for the NAACP on a national level involved interviewing Mississippians who had been intimidated by
12936-546: The Councils published lists of names of NAACP supporters and signers of anti-segregation petitions in local newspapers in order to encourage economic retaliation. For instance, in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1955, the Citizens' Council published in the local paper the names of 53 signers of a petition for school integration. Soon afterward, the petitioners lost their jobs and had their credit cut off. As Charles Payne puts it,
13104-642: The Councils published two advertisements in the newspapers of several cities, the first claiming that Lincoln was a segregationist and the second citing Thomas Jefferson's quotes claiming that "nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between" both races. As a result, interest for the Councils in the Pacific Northwest and Missouri emerged. Likewise, the 1964 George Wallace campaign created interest in Indiana and Wisconsin. Two full-time organizers were named to create councils outside
13272-484: The Deep South: former John Birch Society staff member Kent H. Steffgen was named for California, where the recent riots created interest for the Councils, and Joseph McDowell Mitchell , the actor of the "Battle of Newburgh", was named for Virginia, Maryland and Washington. By the 1970s, as white Southerners' attitudes towards desegregation began to change following the passage of federal civil rights legislation and
13440-481: The Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson , would later own one of the first Black "slaves", John Casor , resulting from the court ruling of a civil case. The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven Black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City ). All
13608-626: The Holocaust . Christian Identity is another movement closely tied to white supremacy. Some white supremacists identify themselves as Odinists , although many Odinists reject white supremacy. Some white-supremacist groups, such as the South African Boeremag , conflate elements of Christianity and Odinism. Creativity (formerly known as "The World Church of the Creator") is atheistic and it denounces Christianity and other theistic religions . Aside from this, its ideology
13776-412: The Internet has led to a dramatic increase in white-supremacist websites. The Internet provides a venue for open expression of white-supremacist ideas at little social cost because people who post the information are able to remain anonymous. White separatism is a political and social movement that seeks the separation of white people from people of other races and ethnicities . This may include
13944-456: The Jim Crow laws, to avoid racially motivated violence . To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools , churches , banks, social clubs, and other businesses. In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in
14112-680: The Montgomery bus." The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson . Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions , and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure Black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966,
14280-772: The Patriot cause included James Armistead , Prince Whipple , and Oliver Cromwell . Around 15,000 Black Loyalists left with the British after the war, most of them ending up as free Black people in England or its colonies, such as the Black Nova Scotians and the Sierra Leone Creole people . In the Spanish Louisiana , Governor Bernardo de Gálvez organized Spanish free Black men into two militia companies to defend New Orleans during
14448-401: The South . These circumstances changed due to participation in the military conflicts of the United States , substantial migration out of the South , the elimination of legal racial segregation , and the civil rights movement which sought political and social freedom. However, racism against African Americans and racial socioeconomic disparity remain a problem into the 21st century. In
14616-546: The South sparked the Great Migration during the first half of the 20th century which led to a growing African American community in Northern and Western United States. The rapid influx of Blacks disturbed the racial balance within Northern and Western cities, exacerbating hostility between both Blacks and Whites in the two regions. The Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across
14784-630: The Southern Reconstruction era that was the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan. Nazi Germany promulgated white supremacy based on the belief that the Aryan race , or the Germans, were the master race . It was combined with a eugenics programme that aimed for racial hygiene through compulsory sterilization of sick individuals and extermination of Untermenschen ("subhumans"): Slavs , Jews and Romani , which eventually culminated in
14952-521: The US Census Bureau, evidence from the 2000 census indicates that many African and Caribbean immigrant ethnic groups do not identify as "Black, African Am., or Negro". Instead, they wrote in their own respective ethnic groups in the "Some Other Race" write-in entry. As a result, the census bureau devised a new, separate "African American" ethnic group category in 2010 for ethnic African Americans. Nigerian Americans and Ethiopian Americans were
15120-661: The US and emigrate to Liberia in West Africa. Liberia had been established in 1821 as a settlement by the American Colonization Society (ACS), with many abolitionist members of the ACS believing Black Americans would have greater opportunities for freedom and equality in Africa than they would in the US. Slaves not only represented a significant financial investment for their owners, but they also played
15288-506: The US as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919 . Overall, Blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. At
15456-407: The US. As a result of this large-scale forced movement, countless individuals lost their connection to families and clans, and many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. The 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn , a branded slave from Louisiana, along with the famous image of Gordon and his scarred back, served as two of the earliest and most powerful examples of how
15624-523: The United States , white militancy shifted after the Vietnam War from supporting the existing racial order to a more radical position (self-described as " white power " or " white nationalism ") committed to overthrowing the United States government and establishing a white homeland. Such anti-government militia organizations are one of three major strands of violent right-wing movements in
15792-533: The United States . Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African American, the majority of first-generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. Most African Americans are of West African and coastal Central African ancestry, with varying amounts of Western European and Native American ancestry. African-American history began in
15960-423: The United States . In June 2021, Juneteenth , a day which commemorates the end of slavery in the US, became a federal holiday. In 1790, when the first US census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War , the African American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of
16128-477: The United States population, at about 1.2 million people, largely found within the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. Self-reported Black immigrants hailing from other countries in the Americas, such as Brazil and Canada, as well as several European countries, represented less than 0.1% of the population. Mixed-race Hispanic and non-Hispanic Americans who identified as being part Black, represented 0.9% of
16296-763: The United States, a period often referred to as the " nadir of American race relations ". These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities. The desperate conditions of African Americans in
16464-638: The United States, continuing to flourish until the 1860s. Historians estimate that nearly one million individuals were subjected to this forced migration, which was often referred to as a new "Middle Passage". The historian Ira Berlin described this internal forced migration of enslaved people as the "central event" in the life of a slave during the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Berlin emphasized that whether enslaved individuals were directly uprooted or lived in constant fear that they or their families would be involuntarily relocated, "the massive deportation traumatized Black people" throughout
16632-583: The United States, many people who were considered non-white were disenfranchised , barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Professor Leland T. Saito of the University of Southern California writes: "Throughout the history of the United States, race has been used by whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion." The denial of social and political freedom to minorities continued into
16800-402: The United States, with white-supremacist groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan , neo-Nazi organizations, and racist skinheads ) and a religious fundamentalist movement (such as Christian Identity ) being the other two. Howard Winant writes that, "On the far right the cornerstone of white identity is belief in an ineluctable, unalterable racialized difference between whites and nonwhites." In
16968-524: The Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced John Punch , a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn , for running away. In Spanish Florida , some Spanish married or had unions with Pensacola , Creek or African women, both enslaved and free, and their descendants created a mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattos . The Spanish encouraged slaves from
17136-533: The White Citizens Councils publicly eschewed the use of violence , they condoned the harsh economic and political tactics which were used against registered voters and activists. The members of the White Citizens Councils collaborated in order to threaten jobs, causing people to be fired or evicted from rental homes; they boycotted businesses, ensured that activists could not get loans, among other tactics. As historian Charles Payne notes, "Despite
17304-919: The White Citizens Councils," the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law mandating racial segregation in nearly every aspect of public life; much of the segregation already existed under Jim Crow custom. The bill was signed into law by governor Earl Long on July 16, 1956, and went into effect on October 15, 1956. The act read, in part: An Act to prohibit all interracial dancing , social functions, entertainments , athletic training , games , sports , or contests and other such activities; to provide for separate seating and other facilities for white and negroes [lower case in original] ... That all persons, firms, and corporations are prohibited from sponsoring, arranging, participating in or permitting on premises under their control ... such activities involving personal and social contact in which
17472-511: The White Citizens' Councils and preparing affidavits for use as evidence against the Councils if necessary. Evers was assassinated in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith , a member of the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan . The Citizens' Council paid Beckwith's legal expenses in his two trials in 1964, which both resulted in hung juries. In 1994, Beckwith was tried by the state of Mississippi based on new evidence, in part revealed by
17640-521: The agenda of the Klan with the demeanor of the Rotary Club ". From October 1954, the council published a newsletter, The Citizens' Council , which evolved into a magazine in October 1961 and continued to be published until 1989 as The Citizen . From 1957 to 1966, the Citizens' Council had a broadcast program, The Citizens Forum , where they exposed their doctrine of segregation. First broadcast by
17808-478: The alt-right and people who have come in from the more traditional neo-Nazi world. We're in a very different world now." David Duke , a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan , wrote in 1999 that the Internet was going to create a "chain reaction of racial enlightenment that will shake the world." Daniels documents that racist groups see the Internet as a way to spread their ideologies, influence others and gain supporters. Legal scholar Richard Hasen describes
17976-487: The alt-right in college campus recruitment in 2017, an ironic co-optation because Captain America battled against Nazis in the comics, and was created by Jewish cartoonists. There has been debate whether Winston Churchill , who was voted "the greatest ever Briton" in 2002, was "a racist and white supremacist". In the context of rejecting the Arab wish to stop Jewish immigration to Palestine , he said: I do not admit that
18144-555: The arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. The eugenicist Madison Grant argued in his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race , that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and that admixture was "race suicide". In this book, Europeans who are not of Germanic origin but have Nordic characteristics such as blonde/red hair and blue/green/gray eyes, were considered to be
18312-469: The campaign and presidency of Donald Trump , have contributed to an increased activity and interest in white supremacy. Different forms of white supremacy have different conceptions of who is considered white (though the exemplar is generally light-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed — traits most common in northern Europe and that are viewed pseudoscientifically as being traits of an Aryan race ), and not all white-supremacist organizations agree on who
18480-504: The colonists died shortly afterward, due to an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to the Island of Hispaniola , whence they had come. The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free Black domestic servant from Seville , and Miguel Rodríguez, a White Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what
18648-430: The colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the English. Massachusetts was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women would take the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as was the case under common law . This legal principle was called partus sequitur ventrum . By an act of 1699, Virginia ordered
18816-426: The concept of preserving genetic purity, and do not focus solely on discrimination based on skin color. The KKK's reasons for supporting racial segregation are not primarily based on religious ideals, but some Klan groups are openly Protestant . The 1915 silent drama film The Birth of a Nation followed the rising racial, economic, political, and geographic tensions leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation and
18984-570: The demographic mix in the U.S. as a result. With 38 U.S. states having banned interracial marriage through anti-miscegenation laws , the last 16 states had such laws in place until 1967 when they were invalidated by the Supreme Court of the United States ' decision in Loving v. Virginia . These mid-century gains had a major impact on white Americans' political views; segregation and white racial superiority, which had been publicly endorsed in
19152-428: The deportation of all free Blacks, effectively defining all people of African descent who remained in the colony as slaves. In 1670, the colonial assembly passed a law prohibiting free and baptized Blacks (and Native Americans) from purchasing Christians (in this act meaning White Europeans) but allowing them to buy people "of their owne nation". In Spanish Louisiana , although there was no movement toward abolition of
19320-539: The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White authority. During the post-war period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged relative to other Americans. Average Black income stood at 54 percent of that of White workers in 1947, and 55 percent in 1962. In 1959, median family income for Whites
19488-409: The enforcement of integration and voting rights in the 1960s, the activities of the White Citizens' Councils began to wane. The Council of Conservative Citizens , founded in 1985 by former White Citizens' Council members, continued the agendas of the earlier Councils. Unlike the secretive Ku Klux Klan but working in unison, the White Citizens Council met openly. It was seen superficially as "pursuing
19656-559: The establishment of a white ethnostate by removing non-whites from existing communities or by forming new communities elsewhere. Most modern researchers do not view white separatism as distinct from white-supremacist beliefs. The Anti-Defamation League defines white separatism as "a form of white supremacy"; the Southern Poverty Law Center defines both white nationalism and white separatism as "ideologies based on white supremacy." Facebook has banned content that
19824-424: The extent of white-supremacist activity in the country, but nevertheless she and other experts see an increase in the number of hate crimes and amount of white-supremacist violence. In the latest wave of white supremacy, in the age of the Internet, Blee sees the movement as having become primarily a virtual one, in which divisions between groups become blurred: "[A]ll these various groups that get jumbled together as
19992-408: The fact that civil rights organizations won some legal challenges, such as the prohibition on white primaries , most blacks were still disfranchised in the South in the 1950s. They risked retaliation by challenging the segregation of seating on buses as well as the segregation of seating at lunch counters, including segregation in department stores. The risks did not end immediately after the passage of
20160-536: The first African American woman elected to the US Senate . There were 8,936 Black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001, there were 484 Black mayors. In 2005, the number of Africans immigrating to the United States, in a single year, surpassed the peak number who were involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic slave trade . On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama —the son of
20328-617: The formation of the Confederate States of America . In an 1890 editorial about Native Americans and the American Indian Wars , author L. Frank Baum wrote: "The Whites, by law of conquest , by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians." The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only. In some parts of
20496-401: The historic dissemination of simplistic and negative ideas about non-white races. Native Americans, who were subjected to attempts of cultural genocide by the U.S. government through the use of American Indian boarding schools , were characterized as homogenously "cruel," a violent menace toward white Americans, and lacking civilization or societal complexity (p. 74). For example, in
20664-504: The hosting of hate sites online, and encouraging counter-messages. In a 2020 article in The New York Times titled "How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror", columnist Charles M. Blow wrote: We often like to make white supremacy a testosterone-fueled masculine expression, but it is just as likely to wear heels as a hood. Indeed, untold numbers of lynchings were executed because white women had claimed that
20832-440: The image of Till's body in the casket, one hundred days after his murder Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. Sociologist Stephen Klineberg has stated that U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965 clearly "declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race". The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened entry to the U.S. to non-Germanic groups, and significantly altered
21000-622: The immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races." German praise for America's institutional racism, previously found in Hitler's Mein Kampf , was continuous throughout the early 1930s. Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models. Race-based U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation laws directly inspired the Nazis' two principal Nuremberg racial laws —the Citizenship Law and
21168-633: The last half of the 1950s, the White Citizens' Councils produced racist children's books, for instance, teaching that heaven (in the Christian conception) is segregated. The White Citizens' Council in Mississippi prevented school integration until 1964. As school desegregation increased in some parts of the South, in some communities the White Citizens' Council sponsored "council schools," private institutions set up for white children. Such private schools, also called segregation academies, were beyond
21336-494: The maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism . As a political ideology , it imposes and maintains cultural, social , political , historical or institutional domination by white people and non-white supporters. In the past, this ideology had been put into effect through socioeconomic and legal structures such as
21504-422: The mid-20th century, resulting in the civil rights movement . The movement was spurred by the lynching of Emmett Till , a 14-year-old boy. David Jackson writes it was the image of the "murdered child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism ." Vann R. Newkirk II wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy." Moved by
21672-489: The most reported sub-Saharan African groups in the United States. Historically, African Americans have been undercounted in the US census due to a number of factors. In the 2020 census, the African American population was undercounted at an estimated rate of 3.3%, up from 2.1% in 2010. Texas has the largest African American population by state. Followed by Texas is Florida , with 3.8 million, and Georgia , with 3.6 million. After 100 years of African Americans leaving
21840-465: The newborn medium of photography could be used to visually document and encapsulate the brutality and cruelty of slavery. Emigration of free Blacks to their continent of origin had been proposed since the Revolutionary war. After Haiti became independent, it tried to recruit African Americans to migrate there after it re-established trade relations with the United States. The Haitian Union was
22008-551: The official disclaimers, violence often followed in the wake of Council intimidation campaigns." Occasionally some Councils directly incited violence, such as lynchings , shootings , rapes and arson , as did Leander Perez during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis . In some cases, Council members were directly involved in acts of violence. Entertainer Nat King Cole was assaulted in Birmingham, Alabama while he
22176-451: The overall White vote, although he won a larger proportion of White votes than any previous non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter . Obama was reelected for a second and final term , by a similar margin on November 6, 2012. In 2021, Kamala Harris , the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American to serve as Vice President of
22344-417: The overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as " freemen ". By 1900, the Black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South. Large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration , as it
22512-421: The participants are members of the white and negro races ... That white persons are prohibited from sitting in or using any part of seating arrangements and sanitary or other facilities set apart for members of the negro race. That negro persons are prohibited from sitting in or using any part of seating arrangements and sanitary or other facilities set apart for white persons. In 1964, the Councils' membership
22680-452: The population. Of the 12.6% of United States residents who identified as Black, around 10.3% were "native Black American" or ethnic African Americans, who are direct descendants of West/Central Africans brought to the US as slaves. These individuals make up well over 80% of all Blacks in the country. When including people of mixed-race origin , about 13.5% of the US population self-identified as Black or "mixed with Black". However, according to
22848-509: The post-war Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. By the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement . Segregation was now imposed with Jim Crow laws, using signs used to show Blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Most African Americans obeyed
23016-510: The post–civil rights era. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the US Congress . In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected governor in US history. Clarence Thomas succeeded Marshall to become the second African American Supreme Court Justice in 1991. In 1992, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became
23184-629: The public domain" and intensified the New Zealand head tax . In 1921, Massey wrote in the Evening Post : "New Zealanders are probably the purest Anglo-Saxon population in the British Empire. Nature intended New Zealand to be a white man's country, and it must be kept as such. The strain of Polynesian will be no detriment". This is one of many quotes attributed to him regarded as being openly racist. Supporters of Nordicism consider
23352-552: The pursuit of dead niggers . The Citizens' Councils used economic tactics against African Americans who they believed were supportive of desegregation and voting rights , as well as African Americans who were members of the NAACP , and African Americans who they suspected of being activists. The tactics included "calling in" the mortgages of black citizens, denying loans and business credit, pressing employers to fire certain people, and boycotting black-owned businesses. In some cities,
23520-642: The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. While the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship to Whites only, the 14th Amendment (1868) gave Black people citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave Black men the right to vote. African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from White control or oversight. While
23688-579: The reach of the ruling on public schools. Many of these private " segregation academies " continue to operate today. The Council sponsored a system of twelve segregated schools in Jackson, Mississippi. Citizens' Councils conducted voter purges to remove Black voters from election rolls. Before the practice was found illegal in a federal court case of 1963, the Council pushed a public challenge law allowing two voters to challenge another voter to see if he
23856-468: The right to carry arms and boosting their earning power. However, actually these privileges distanced free Black men from enslaved Blacks and encouraged them to identify with Whites. Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the US Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the 3/5 compromise . Due to the restrictions of Section 9, Clause 1 , Congress
24024-590: The ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins , the Incas , and the rulers of the South Sea Islands . All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all
24192-499: The same curriculum as white Americans because they supposedly were intellectually inferior, and Asian Americans, some of whom were prevented from learning much about their ancestral lands because they were deemed a threat to "American" culture, i.e. white culture, at the turn of the 20th century. With the emergence of Twitter in 2006, and platforms such as Stormfront , which was launched in 1996, an alt-right portal for white supremacists with similar beliefs, both adults and children,
24360-399: The segregationist Citizens' Councils, in some years providing as much as $ 50,000. This state agency also shared information with the Councils that it had collected through its secret police-type investigations and surveillance of integration activists. For example, Dr. M. Ney Williams was both a director of the Citizens' Council and an adviser to governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi. Barnett
24528-502: The shooter was sentenced to life without parole . In 2016, there was a rise in debate over the appropriateness of the naming of Massey University in Palmerston North after William Massey , whom many historians and critics have described as a white supremacist. Lecturer Steve Elers was a leading proponent of the idea that Massey was an avowed white supremacist, given Massey "made several anti-Chinese racist statements in
24696-682: The south in large numbers seeking better opportunities and treatment in the west and north, a movement known as the Great Migration , there is now a reverse trend, called the New Great Migration . As with the earlier Great Migration, the New Great Migration is primarily directed toward cities and large urban areas, such as Charlotte , Houston , Dallas , Fort Worth , Huntsville , Raleigh , Tampa , San Antonio , New Orleans , Memphis , Nashville , Jacksonville , and so forth. A growing percentage of African Americans from
24864-741: The system's worst elements. First established in South Carolina in 1704, groups of armed White men— slave patrols —were formed to monitor enslaved Black people. Their function was to police slaves, especially fugitives. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or slave rebellions , so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols. These patrols were used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or rebellions . The earliest African American congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following
25032-470: The term white supremacist . Dobratz and Shanks-Meile reported that adherents usually reject marriage "outside the white race" . They argued for the existence of "a distinction between the white supremacist's desire to dominate (as in apartheid , slavery , or segregation ) and complete separation by race". They argued that this is a matter of pragmatism, because, while many white supremacists are also white separatists, contemporary white separatists reject
25200-541: The total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then. By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the US population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. At the time of the 2000 US census , 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South . In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest , while only 8.9% lived in
25368-557: The use of the words, for example, "discovery," "colonization," and " New World " when describing what was ultimately a European conquest of the Western Hemisphere and its indigenous peoples . Swartz (1992) seconds this reading of modern history narratives when it comes to the experiences, resistances, and accomplishments of black Americans throughout the Middle Passage , slavery , Reconstruction , Jim Crow , and
25536-535: The view of philosopher Jason Stanley , white supremacy in the United States is an example of the fascist politics of hierarchy, in that it "demands and implies a perpetual hierarchy" in which whites dominate and control non-whites. The presidential campaign of Donald Trump led to a surge of interest in white supremacy and white nationalism in the United States, bringing increased media attention and new members to their movement; his campaign enjoyed their widespread support. Some academics argue that outcomes from
25704-401: The view that returning to a system of segregation is possible or desirable in the United States. The term white supremacy is used in some academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred. According to this definition, white racial advantages occur at both
25872-523: The west and north are migrating to the southern region of the US for economic and cultural reasons. The New York City , Chicago , and Los Angeles metropolitan areas have the highest decline in African Americans, while Atlanta , Dallas , and Houston have the highest increase respectively. Several smaller metro areas also saw sizable gains, including San Antonio; Raleigh and Greensboro, N.C.; and Orlando. Despite recent declines, as of 2020,
26040-543: Was $ 5,600 (equivalent to $ 58,532 in 2023), compared with $ 2,900 (equivalent to $ 30,311 in 2023) for non-White families. In 1965, 43 percent of all Black families fell into the poverty bracket, earning under $ 3,000 (equivalent to $ 29,005 in 2023) a year. The 1960s saw improvements in the social and economic conditions of many Black Americans. From 1965 to 1969, Black family income rose from 54 to 60 percent of White family income. In 1968, 23 percent of Black families earned under $ 3,000 (equivalent to $ 26,285 in 2023)
26208-401: Was a Whites-only establishment, with Blacks (such as Duke Ellington ) allowed to perform, but to a White audience. Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in Northern cities, without the enforced disabilities of Jim Crow . By the 1950s, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till ,
26376-519: Was a member of the council, as was Jackson mayor Allen C. Thompson . In 1955, in the midst of the bus boycott seeking integration of seating on city buses, all three members of the Montgomery city commission in Alabama announced on television that they had joined the Citizens' Council. Numan Bartley wrote, "In Louisiana the Citizens' Council organization began as (and to a large extent remained)
26544-473: Was a significant and "pervasive" threat to the U.S. On September 20, 2019, the acting Secretary of Homeland Security , Kevin McAleenan , announced his department's revised strategy for counter-terrorism, which included a new emphasis on the dangers inherent in the white-supremacy movement. McAleenan called white supremacy one of the most "potent ideologies" behind domestic terrorism-related violent acts. In
26712-454: Was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million Black people moved north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed , with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it. The following table of the African American population in the United States over time shows that the African American population, as a percentage of
26880-514: Was distributed. Its rhetoric was a parody of the Declaration of Independence : When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race , proper methods should be used. Among these are guns , bows and arrows , sling shots and knives . We hold these truths to be self-evident that all whites are created equal with certain rights; among these are life, liberty and
27048-580: Was lawfully registered, a provision they used to purge the rolls of Black voters. In one parish, Bienville Parish , 95% of Black voters were purged. Similarly, the Council distributed such pamphlets as "Voter Qualification Laws in Louisiana: The Key to Victory in the Segregation Struggle" to white registrars and required them to participate in mandatory seminars about preventing Black registration and purging Black voters. Although
27216-503: Was on tour. Byron De La Beckwith , a KKK and Council member, murdered Medgar Evers , the head of the NAACP in Mississippi. For instance, in Montgomery, Alabama , during the Montgomery bus boycott , at which Senator James Eastland "ranted against the NAACP" at a large openly held Council meeting in the Garrett Coliseum , a mimeographed flyer publicly espousing extreme racial White Citizens Council and Ku Klux Klan views
27384-399: Was provided in which they were given a way to connect. Jessie Daniels, of CUNY-Hunter College , discussed the emergence of other social media outlets such as 4chan and Reddit , which meant that the "spread of white nationalist symbols and ideas could be accelerated and amplified." Sociologist Kathleen Blee notes that the anonymity which the Internet provides can make it difficult to track
27552-510: Was said to be nearly all supporting Barry Goldwater . Major media outlets observed the support George Wallace received from groups such as White Citizens' Councils. It has been noted that members of such groups had permeated the Wallace campaign by 1968 and, while Wallace did not openly seek their support, he did not refuse it. White supremacy White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors
27720-413: Was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased, and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or attempting to running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed after their term of service expired or if their freedom was purchased. Their children did not inherit their status, and on their release from contract they received "a year's provision of corn, double apparel, tools necessary", and
27888-401: Was taught about black Americans' contributions, or their histories before being brought to U.S. soil as slaves. According to Wayne (1972), this approach was taken especially much after the Civil War to maintain whites' hegemony over emancipated black Americans. Other racial groups have received oppressive treatment, including Mexican Americans , who temporarily were prevented from learning
28056-515: Was the leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard. An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by " colored " peoples to white civilization, and wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. In establishing a restrictive entry system for Germany in 1925, Hitler wrote of his admiration for America's immigration laws: "The American Union categorically refuses
28224-414: Was unable to pass an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves until 1807. Fugitive slave laws (derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution— Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 ) were passed by Congress in both 1793 and 1850 , guaranteeing the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave anywhere within the US. Slave owners, who viewed enslaved people as property, ensured that it became
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