Black Southerners

Black Southerners
Southern counties that were at least 40% Black or African American in the 2000 Census.
Total population
11,054,127 (1980)
20,595,194 (2019)[1]
Regions with significant populations
 Mississippi1,156,497
 Georgia (U.S. state)3,996,697
 Louisiana1,554,297
 South Carolina1,441,530
 Alabama1,364,474
 North Carolina2,424,132
 Virginia1,820,891
 Tennessee1,228,973
 Florida3,772,874[2]
 Maryland1,946,932[3]
 Texas3,908,287[4]
 District of Columbia320,704
 Arkansas502,913
 Kentucky424,716
 Delaware237,780
 Oklahoma307,819
 West Virginia64,285
Languages
Southern American English, African American English, Gullah, Afro-Seminole Creole, Texan English, Louisiana Creole, African-American Vernacular English, New Orleans English, Louisiana French
Religion
Predominantly Protestantism[5]
Minorities: Roman Catholicism, Islam, Hoodoo (spirituality), Louisiana Voodoo, Atheism
Related ethnic groups
White Southerners, African Americans, Louisiana Creole people, Gullah, Melungeon, Black Seminoles, Redbones, Creoles of color

Black Southerners are African Americans living in the Southern United States, the United States region with the largest black population.[6]

Celebration of Emancipation Day (Juneteenth) in 1900, in Texas
African American children in the South

Despite a total of 6 million Blacks migrating from the South to cities in the North and West from 1916 to 1970, the majority of the Black population remains concentrated in the Southern states. In addition, since the 1970s, numerous Black Americans have migrated to the South from other U.S. regions in a reverse New Great Migration, but they tend to be educated and to settle in urban areas.[7] Black Southerners strongly contributed to the cultural blend of Christianity, foods, art, music (see spiritual, blues, jazz and rock and roll) that characterize Southern culture today.

African slaves were sent to the South during the slave trade. Slavery in the United States was primarily located in the American South. By 1850, about 3.2 million African slaves labored in the United States, 1.8 million of whom worked in the cotton fields. Black slaves in the South faced arbitrary power abuses from white people.[8][9] Before the Civil War, more than 4 million black slaves worked in the South.[10] Virginia had the largest slave population, followed by Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina.[11][12] There are large black communities in urban cities in the South such as Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas and Atlanta.[13]

Black Southerners are more likely to identify as a Southerner and claim Southern identity than their counterpart White Southerners.[14][15][16]

  1. ^ "Census profile: South Region".
  2. ^ "Census profile: Florida".
  3. ^ "Census profile: Maryland".
  4. ^ "Census profile: Texas".
  5. ^ "Black adults in the U.S. South more likely than those in other regions to attend a Black congregation".
  6. ^ Boles, John B. Black Southerners, 1619-1869 (New Perspectives on the South).
  7. ^ Sisson, Patrick. (July 31, 2018). How a 'reverse Great Migration' is reshaping U.S. cities. Curbed. Retrieved June 13, 2021.
  8. ^ "African Americans in the Antebellum United States". 7 May 2014.
  9. ^ "Antebellum slavery - PBS". PBS.
  10. ^ "Slavery in the American South".
  11. ^ Slavery in the United States
  12. ^ Which U.S. States Had The Most Slaves At The Start Of The Civil War?
  13. ^ Frazier, John W.; Tettey-Fio, Eugene (2006). Race, ethnicity, and place in a changing America. Binghamton, NY: Global Academic Publ. p. 78. ISBN 9781586842642.
  14. ^ Survey: Many Blacks Proud to be Southerners, Despite Region’s Racist History
  15. ^ Thompson, Ashley B.; Sloan, Melissa M. (2012). "Race as Region, Region as Race: How Black and White Southerners Understand Their Regional Identities". Southern Cultures. 18 (4): 72–95. doi:10.1353/scu.2012.0042. S2CID 143022245.
  16. ^ Moss, Christina L.; Inabinet, Brandon (November 2021). Reconstructing Southern Rhetoric. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781496836168.