What is African American ?

As I left the broadcast booth, a knot of black men and women—most of them technicians at the station—were talking about emancipation and its meaning. Once I was drawn into their discussion, I was surprised to learn that no one in the group was descended from anyone who had been freed by the proclamation or any other Civil War measure.

Born into slavery in Missouri in 1864, George Washington Carver later became a famous African American botanist and inventor. During his lifetime, he developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. In 1941, Time magazine even dubbed him a "Black Leonardo".

Oprah Winfrey, a popular talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, is currently the only African American billionaire. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", Winfrey is sometimes even considered the most influential woman in the world. But her childhood was anything but idyllic. Born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single mother, she was raped at the age of nine. Remembering her hard and humble beginnings, Winfrey is now one of the most generous philanthropists in the world.

Two had been born in Haiti, one in Jamaica, one in Britain, two in Ghana, and one, I believe, in Somalia. Others may have been the children of immigrants. While they seemed impressed—but not surprised—that slaves had played a part in breaking their own chains, and were interested in the events that had brought Lincoln to his decision during the summer of 1862, they insisted it had nothing to do with them. Simply put, it was not their history.

But Winfrey was far from being the first African American self-made millionaire. Madam C. J. Walker, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, is the holder of the primacy. Born in 1867 in Louisiana as the first slavery-free child of the family, she made her fortune by developing and marketing a successful line of beauty and hair products for black women.

The conversation weighed upon me as I left the studio, and it has since. Much of the collective consciousness of black people in mainland North America—the belief of individual men and women that their own fate was linked to that of the group—has long been articulated through a common history, indeed a particular history

The very first African American to achieve world championship in any sport was Marshall Taylor. In 1899, the African American cyclist won the world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination.

The very first African American to achieve world championship in any sport was Marshall Taylor. In 1899, the African American cyclist won the world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination.

centuries of enslavement, freedom in the course of the Civil War, a great promise made amid the political turmoil of Reconstruction and a great promise broken, followed by disfranchisement, segregation and, finally, the long struggle for equality

The very first African American to achieve world championship in any sport was Marshall Taylor. In 1899, the African American cyclist won the world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination.

In commemorating this history—whether on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, during Black History Month or as current events warrant—African- Americans have rightly laid claim to a unique identity

Currently, about 80% of the NBA players are of African American origin, which is the highest percentage of black players of any major professional sport leagues in the US, but it was not until 1947 when the first African American basketball player was drafted by the NBA. Born in 1923, Don Barksdale was not only the first African American to play in the NBA but he was also the first black player to play in the United States men's Olympic basketball team.

Such celebrations—their memorialization of the past—are no different from those attached to the rituals of Vietnamese Tet celebrations or the Eastern Orthodox Nativity Fast, or the celebration of the birthdays of Christopher Columbus or Casimir Pulaski; social identity is ever rooted in history. But for African-Americans, their history has always been especially important because they were long denied a past.

The same year witnessed another important event African Americans' sport history – on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play in the MLB. By this turning point, his team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, ended racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades.

While Halle Berry was the first African American actress to win an Oscar for a leading role, the very first Oscar awarded to an African American belongs to Hattie McDaniel for her performance in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind. However, during the ceremony, she was required to sit at a segregated table, apart from her Gone with the Wind colleagues and she was not allowed to attend the national premier of the movie.

And so the “not my history” disclaimer by people of African descent seemed particularly pointed—enough to compel me to look closely at how previous waves of black immigrants had addressed the connections between the history they carried from the Old World and the history they inherited in the New

Known as the “First Lady of Civil Rights”, Rosa Parks, an African American civil rights activist famous for the act of refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, became the first woman and second non-U.S. government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. On December 1st, 2005, (the 50th anniversary of the event) transit authorities in many American cities symbolically left the seats behind bus drivers empty to commemorate Mrs. Parks’ act.

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which became a critical marker in African-American history. Given opportunity, black Americans voted and stood for office in numbers not seen since the collapse of Reconstruction almost 100 years earlier.

Despite getting the most publicity, Rosa Parks was not the first African American woman who refused to obey the racist bus law. Several women including Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith had been arrested for the same disobedient act months before Parks. Claudette Colvin was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when she committed this “crime”.

It was not until 1960 when an African American ran for the presidential office for the first time. As a candidate of the Independent Afro-American Party, Clennon Washington King, a civil rights activist, came in eleventh place of twelve candidates, well behind John F. Kennedy's 34,220,984 votes. He ran for the office a few more times, which earned him the nickname "Black Don Quixote“.

They soon occupied positions that had been the exclusive preserve of white men for more than half a century. By the beginning of the 21st century, black men and women had taken seats in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as well as in state houses and municipalities throughout the nation.

In 2009, the office of the President of the United States finally housed the first African American in history. The son of an English mother and Kenyan father, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first non-white American President on January 20, 2009. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama was also named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

In 2009, a black man assumed the presidency of the United States. African-American life had been transformed.
Within months of passing the Voting Rights Act, Congress passed a new immigration law, replacing the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which had favored the admission of northern Europeans, with the Immigration and Nationality Act.

new law scrapped the rule of national origins and enshrined a first-come, first-served principle that made allowances for the recruitment of needed skills and the unification of divided families.

This was a radical change in policy, but few people expected it to have much practical effect. It “is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon Johnson intoned. “It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.