African American Firsts

Race refers to classifications of humans into populations or groups based on various factors such as their culture, language, or heritable characteristics. Race has no genetic or biological basis because there is no characteristic trait or gene that distinguishes all members of a race from all members of another race. Genetic differences do exist between the populations, but they do not define historical ancestry, and in this sense, a human being is a human being. All people belong to the same human species as a human race. A known fact is that all humans can interbreed to produce offspring. Therefore, all humans must belong to the same genetic species.

In the history of the United States, the concept of race denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted. A unique set of circumstances led to the enslavement of people who looked similar. In the 17^th and 18^th century, European Scientists defined race by separating people into three to six groups:

               

Australoid – those from Australia, Melanesian islands

Caucasoid – those from Europe, North Africa, South west Asia  

Mongoloid – those from East Asia, Siberia, the Americas  

Negroid – those from Central and Southern Africa

The Mongoloid population was people in East Asia and Americas. They were described as a group because they were yellow or reddish brown skin color, with a medium height, broad head form, dark, straight, and coarse hair, with eye colors of dark brown to black.  The Caucasoid group was mainly found in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East to North India. They were grouped because they were pale reddish white to olive brown skin color, medium to tall height, light blond to dark drown, fine textured, straight or wavy hair, with light blue to dark brown eye colors. The Negroid population was categorized because the people had brown to brown-black color skin, dark, coarse hair, eyes that were dark, thick lips, and usually a long head form.

They categorized these populations because they seemed to have similar physical characteristics, and originated in a particular region of the world.  As the race concept evolved, it justified the extermination of Native Americans, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and taking of Mexican lands. It became a common practice within government, laws, and society.

In the minds of Europeans in the Middle Ages, three populations existed: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid, in Europe, Africa, and the Near East. In the 1600s, (the current United States of America only consisted 13 colonies; England, Scotland, France, Sweden, Spain, and the Netherlands in North America), the majority of the Negroid population became slaves to the Caucasoid population. The Negroids (also called Negros) were poor black people from Africa and considered the lowest of the populations. The English colonies (usually white men) legally owned, mated, and enslaved Negros. The English men imported the slaves to Americas as laborers for almost a decade.

In the 16^th century, it is estimated that twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas as slaves. The slaves learned survival techniques and various forms of resistance to their conditions. Some worked on tobacco, rice, and cotton plantations, farms, and as house servants of their overseers. Plantation slaves were more likely to be sold or transferred than a house servant slave. Plantation slaves were also subject to brutal and severe beatings and punishments because they were considered less valuable than the house servants, domestic, and farm slaves were. A plantation slaves’ work was very hard, but they were given Sundays off, as opposed to house servant slaves, who worked seven days a week. Household or domestic slaves were typically females, and had less privacy than a plantation slave had.  House servant slaves usually had better lives than the other class slaves did.

In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in states that had become independent from the Union were free. The Southern states were not advocates of the proclamation, but had no political choice. The state of Texas was the last state to become emancipated on June 19, 1865.

African Americans that immigrated to the Northern states found better job opportunities and living conditions and became intellectuals who wanted civil rights for the African Americans that immigrated to the Southern states that were still being hindered and discouraged to better their conditions through acts of violence and hatred. The Civil Rights movement was between 1954 and 1968. It promoted economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination against all acknowledged races in public accommodations, employment, and voting rights.

Today, in the United States, the people who identify themselves as black or African American range in skin color and other traits from light-skinned to dark-skinned. Black Americans are the second largest population after the Caucasian population, and the single largest minority race in the United States. The term African American (African-American) is referred to as the direct descendant of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the present United States.

African American Firsts

1773 – First African American woman to publish a book. Phillis Wheatley

1774 – First African American Baptist congregation. First Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia

1823 – First African American to receive a degree from an American college. Alexander Twilight

1827 – First African American owned and operated newspaper. Freedom’s Journal

1836 – First African American elected to public office and serve in the state legislature. Alexander Twilight

1837 – First African American doctor. Dr. James McCune Smith

1845 – First African American licensed to practice law in the United States. Macon Allen

1866 – First African American woman enlisted in the United States Army. Cathay Williams

1870 – First African American to vote in an election. Thomas Mundy Peterson

1879 – First African American to graduate from a formal nursing school. Mary Eliza Mahoney

1910 – First African American millionaire. Madam C. J. Walker

1911 – First African American intercollegiate Greek-letter organization. Kappa Alpha Psi

1927 – First African American to star in an international motion picture. Josephine Baker

1936 – First African American to conduct a major United States orchestra. William Grant Still

1952 – First African American woman elected to a United States state senate. Cora Brown

1953 – First African American basketball player to play in the NBA All-Star Game. Don Barksdale

1963 – First African American named as Time magazine’s Man of the Year. Martin Luther King Jr.

1965 – First African American star of a network television drama. Bill Cobsby

1967 – First African American appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Thurgood Marshall

1974 – First African American model on the cover of American Vogue magazine. Beverly Johnson

1980 – First African American Channel. Black Entertainment Television

1990 – First African American Playboy Playmate of the Year. Renee Tenison

2000 – First African American Secretary of State. Colin Powell

2002 – First African American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. Halle Berry

2007 – First known African American to reach the North Pole. Barbara Hillary

2009 – First African American President of the United States. Barack Obama

2010 – First African American to win the WWE Diva’s Championship. Alicia Fox

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