Africans in the Americas

Africans in the Americas
Name	Africans in the Americas
Regions	Caribbean, Brazil, United States, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile
Languages	English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Creole languages
Religions	Christianity, Islam, African traditional religions, Vodou, Candomblé, Santería, Obeah

Contents

Africans in the Americas are people of African descent living across the Caribbean, North America, South America, and Central America, whose histories link to pre-Columbian contacts, the Transatlantic slave trade, voluntary migration, and diasporic exchanges. Their presence shaped colonial societies like New Spain, British America, Portuguese America, and French colonial empire, and influenced national developments in states such as the United States, Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica.

Introduction and Definitions

Scholars classify populations by ancestry, lineage, and cultural affiliation using sources like the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, census records from the United States Census, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, and parish registers in Saint-Domingue and Martinique. Terms include Afro-Caribbean people, Afro-Latino, African American, Afro-Brazilian, and Afro-Canadian while debates invoke works by W.E.B. Du Bois, Stuart Hall, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, and Paul Gilroy. Legal categories evolved through statutes such as the Slave Codes, the Three-Fifths Compromise, and post-emancipation laws like the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.

Large-scale forced migration occurred via voyages contracted by firms including the Royal African Company, Dutch West India Company, French West India Company, and Portuguese merchants from Luanda and Cape Verde. Destinations varied: plantations in Barbados, Saint-Domingue, and Jamaica; sugar estates in São Tomé and Príncipe networks tied to Lisbon and Salvador, Bahia; and rice and cotton plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. Resistance at sea and ashore involved uprisings like the Stone Rebellion, the Haitian Revolution, and Zambo communities in Colombia and Panama Republic. Emancipation pathways included decrees in Haiti (1804), the British Empire abolition (1833), Brazil’s Lei Áurea (1888), and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Contemporary concentrations appear in urban centers such as New York City, São Paulo, Kingston, Jamaica, Havana, Toronto, Miami, Caracas, Lima, and Buenos Aires. National demographics differ: large Afro-descendant majorities in parts of Haiti and Brazil; pluralities in Cuba and Colombia; and minority communities in Chile and Argentina. Migration flows include the Great Migration within the United States, postwar diasporas to London and Paris, and recent movements to Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Data sources include reports by the United Nations, the World Bank, and national statistical agencies.

Artistic and intellectual contributions span music genres and scenes tied to African rhythms expressed in samba, salsa, reggae, blues, jazz, hip hop, rumba, and calypso, with artists like Miriam Makeba, Gilberto Gil, Bob Marley, Celina González, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, James Brown, Tito Puente, Payola? —and movements led by figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Amado, and Chinua Achebe influencing literature and criticism. Culinary traditions derived from African crops and techniques are visible in acarajé, mofongo, jollof rice variants adapted in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, and in soul food linked to Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans. Religious syncretism produced systems like Vodou in Haiti, Candomblé in Brazil, Santería in Cuba, and Obeah in Barbados and Jamaica.

Resistance took diverse forms: maroon societies such as Maroons in Suriname, the Jamaican Maroons, and Quilombos including Quilombo dos Palmares; slave rebellions like the Nat Turner rebellion and the Stono Rebellion; and legal challenges through abolitionist networks including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Tubman, Toussaint Louverture, Simón Bolívar alliances, José Martí’s anti-colonialism, and British abolitionists like William Wilberforce. Twentieth-century struggles included the Civil Rights Movement with leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and organizations such as the NAACP, the Black Panther Party, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and pan-Africanist networks including Organization of African Unity initiatives and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Current debates address racial classification in censuses like the United States Census Bureau forms and Brazil’s IBGE self-identification, affirmative action policies in Brazilian universities, United States affirmative action litigation, and reparations discussions referencing Ta-Nehisi Coates and initiatives in Barbados and Jamaica. Health disparities cite studies by the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization; economic inequality intersects with labor markets in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles. Movements include contemporary activism by Black Lives Matter, grassroots groups in Haiti and Venezuela, and cultural campaigns like Kwanzaa celebrations, academic centers such as Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Center for Latin American Studies, and museums like the National Museum of African American History and Culture.