History of African Americans Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

History of African Americans - Essay Example In order to represent the black population, a number of terms have used in the history of United States such as Blacks, Africans, Afro- American, colored, Negro and the African American. Actually the accurate proportion of these African Americans is not known in the existing population of United States. During past three centuries a remarkable racial mixture took place in United States, not only with the people having African ancestry but with other ethnic backgrounds as well such as Europeans and Indian descents. In times gone by, the major approach about ethnic group association within the United States was that people bearing some colored African descent were believed to beAfricanAmerican. Laws have also been formulated in some parts of United States just like in antebellum South, in order to define ethnic association in this regard, by and large, to the disadvantage of non- Caucasian. Notably, though, those physical traits and descent backgrounds are merely a fraction of actual r easons that have placed African Americans separately as a diverse group. (Gilbert, 2009) Over a period of about 350 years, from the early 1500's to the mid-1800, slave traders forcibly transported approximately 12 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Of this number, about 8 percent, or approximately 1 million, were brought to North America (after 1619). The rest went to the islands of the Caribbean and the shores of Central and South America. European slave traders working out of western Africa collected the slaves. They took millions of Africans in exchange for guns, iron, beads, silks and other cloths, knives, basins, mirrors, and the like. The slaves were sold to colonial plantation owners in the Americas. (Baldwin, 2008) Outcomes The outcome of this phase was that even without the legitimate status and negative impacts of the local trade of slaves, the African American Families managed somehow to retain the conventional aspects of the ways which arranged the relationships between the elders and children. The influences of the African religious beliefs, customs and traditions were quite obvious, which were reflected by a prominent level of religious activities among the slaves, this also helped to distinguish their point of view about themselves from their owner's. These deep rooted relations with the religion enabled the blacks to establish a number of churches outside the South and later created the black Baptist churches due to the further divisions within Protestantism. Apart from the above the another significant quantifiable measure was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia and 1787, which was previously referred to as the Free African Society. (Baldwin, 2008) Religious Intolerance The religion in 17th century was a comprehensive power that assisted community to suffer the adversities and forfeits of everyday living in community. Moreover, colonial religiosity