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Americans
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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union, ending slavery, and rededicating the nation to nationalism, equal rights, liberty and democracy. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, he was mostly self-educated and became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives, but failed in two attempts at a seat in the United States Senate. He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband, and father of four children.
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African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry.
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Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart ( ); (born July 24, 1897; missing July 2, 1937; declared legally dead January 5, 1939) was a noted American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. Earhart joined the faculty of the world-famous Purdue University aviation department in 1935 as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers and help inspire others with her love for aviation. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party, and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
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American Australian
American Australians are Australians who are either born in, or descended from migrants from the United States and its territories. This can include people of European, African American, American Indian, Latin American, Asian, or Pacific Islander backgrounds.
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American Brazilian
An American Brazilian () is a Brazilian person of full, partial or predominant North American ancestry, or a US–born person immigrant in Brazil.
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Americo-Liberian
Americo-Liberians are a Liberian ethnicity of African American descent. The sister ethnic group of Americo Liberians are the Sierra Leone Creole people who are of African American, West Indian, and liberated African descent. Americo Liberians trace their ancestry to free-born and formerly enslaved African-Americans (who called themselves Americo Liberians) who immigrated in the 19th century to become founders of Liberia and other colonies along the coast in places that would become Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Later, these African Americans integrated 5,000 liberated Africans called Congos (descendents of freed slaves from the Congo Basins who never made it to the Americas) and 346 Barbadian immigrants into the hegemony. Like the Creoles of Freetown, Americos rarely intermarried with Natives. For 133 years after independence, the Republic of Liberia was a one-party state ruled by the Americo-Liberian dominated True Whig Party.
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Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. They comprise the third largest minority group in the United States. The most commonly used definition of Asian American is the U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asian, which includes individuals of East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian origin.
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Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.
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Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.
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Bill Richardson
William Blaine "Bill" Richardson III (born November 15, 1947) is the 30th and current Governor of New Mexico. Before being elected governor, Richardson served in the Clinton administration as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Energy Secretary. Richardson has also served as a U.S. Congressman, chairman of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. On December 3, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama designated Richardson for appointment to the cabinet-level position of Commerce Secretary. On January 4, 2009, Richardson announced his decision to withdraw his nomination because of an investigation into improper business dealings in New Mexico. In August 2009, federal prosecutors dropped the pending investigation against the governor, and there has been speculation in the media about Richardson's career, after his second and final term as New Mexico governor concludes.
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Black Hispanic
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Black people
The term black people usually refers to a racial group of humans with skin colors that range from light brown to nearly black. According to a recent scientific study, human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. It is also used to categorize a number of diverse populations together based on historical and prehistorical ancestral relationships. Some definitions of the term include only people of relatively recent Sub Saharan African descent (see African diaspora). Among the members of this group, dark skin is most often accompanied by the expression of natural afro-hair texture. Other definitions of the term "black people" extend to other populations characterized by dark skin, including some indigenous to Oceania and Southeast Asia.
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Bobby Jindal
Piyush Amrit "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) is the 55th and current Governor of Louisiana and formerly a member of the United States House of Representatives. He is a member of the Republican Party.
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British American
British Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland). The term is seldom used by people to refer to themselves (1,113,762 chose it in the 2008 American Community Survey) and is used primarily as a demographic or historical research term. In the modern age, it can refer to British people who live and work in the United States (some of who become American citizens), and Americans who do the same in the United Kingdom.
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Buddhism
Buddhism (Pali/Sanskrit: बौद्ध धर्म Buddha Dharma) is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha (Pāli/Sanskrit "the awakened one"). The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by adherents as an awakened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end suffering (or dukkha), achieve nirvana, and escape what is seen as a cycle of suffering and rebirth.
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Buddhist
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Cajun
Cajuns (; or les Acadiens, ) are an ethnic group mainly living in Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles (French-speaking settlers from Acadia in what are now the maritime provinces of Canada - New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Prince Edward Island). Today, the Cajuns make up a significant portion of south Louisiana's population, and have exerted an enormous impact on the state's culture.
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Cherokee
The Cherokee () are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States (principally Georgia, the Carolinas and Eastern Tennessee). Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian-language family. In the 19th century, historians and ethnographers recorded their oral tradition that told of the tribe having migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, where other Iroquoian-speaking peoples were located.
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Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ or Tsalagihi Ayeli) is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes Cherokee Freedmen and descendants of the Natchez Nation. Over 288,749 people are enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, with 181,867 living within the state of Oklahoma. According to Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) head Larry EchoHawk, the Cherokee Nation is not the historical Cherokee tribe but instead a "successor in interest."
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China
China is seen variously as an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia, a nation and/or a multinational entity.
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Chinese American
Chinese Americans (; ) are Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans. Within this community, the term Chinese American is often broadly defined to include not only immigrants from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and their descendants but also immigrants and descendants of Overseas Chinese people who migrated to the United States from places as diverse as Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
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Czech American
Czech Americans are citizens of the United States who were born in, or who descended from, the territory of the historic Czech lands, (consisting of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia), or succession states, now known as the Czech Republic (however, the descendants of German-speakers from these lands might choose to identity themselves as German Americans). In the 19th century, they were frequently called Bohemians. According to the 2000 US census, there are 1,262,527 Americans of full or partial Czech descent, in addition to 441,403 persons listing their ancestry as Czechoslovak.
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César Chávez
César Chávez Estrada (; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was a Mexican American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW).
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Danish American
Danish Americans (Danish: Dansk-Amerikanere) are Americans of Danish descent. There are approximately 1,500,000 Americans of Danish origin or descent. Most Danish-Americans live in the Western or Midwestern United States.
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Dutch (ethnic group)
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Dutch American
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Dwight D Eisenhower
A Dutch American is an American of Dutch descent.
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Edgar Allan Poe
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Eleanor Roosevelt
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
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Elvis Presley
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (; October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author, speaker, politician, and activist for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.
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English people
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".
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Ethiopian American
The English (from ) are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens.
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Filipino American
Ethiopian Americans are American citizens of Ethiopian descent as well as those of American and Ethiopian ancestry.
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French American
Filipino Americans are Americans of Filipino ancestry. Filipino Americans, often shortened to "Fil-Ams", reside mainly in the continental United States and form significant populations in California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Washington, Florida, Alaska, Guam, and Northern Marianas.
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George Washington
French Americans or Franco-Americans are Americans of French descent. About 11.8 million U.S. residents are of French descent, and about 1.6 million speak French at home.
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Georgia O'Keeffe
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799)
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German American
'''Georgia Totto O'Keeffe''' (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American artist. Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe was a major figure in American art from the 1920s. She received widespread recognition for her technical contributions, as well as for challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is chiefly known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones, and landscapes in which she synthesized abstraction and representation. Her paintings present crisply contoured forms that are replete with subtle tonal transitions of varying colors. She often transformed her subject matter into powerful abstract images. New York Times critic Jed Perl in 2004 described her paintings as both "bold and hermetic, immediately appealing and unnervingly impassive."
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Ghanaian American
German Americans comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group. California, Texas and Pennsylvania have the largest numbers of German origin, although upper Midwestern states, including Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and The Dakotas, have the highest proportion of German Americans at over one-third.
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Greek American
Ghanaian Americans are citizens of the United States who are of Ghanaian heritage or were born in Ghana and immigrated to the United States of America.
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Henry Ford
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Hungarian American
Greek Americans (, Ellinoamerikani) are Americans of Greek descent. According to the 2007 U.S. Census Bureau estimation, there were 1,380,088 people of Greek ancestry in the United States, while the State Department mentions that around 3,000,000 Americans claim to be of Greek descent. In addition, the 2000 census revealed that Greek was spoken at home by 365,436 people older than five. Greek Americans have a heavy concentration in the New York City metropolitan area, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland. Tarpon Springs, Florida is also home to a large Greek American community and the highest concentration of Greek-Americans in the country (11%). The United States is home to the largest overseas Greek community, ahead of Cyprus and the United Kingdom, which despite having a Greek population of less than 1 million has a larger percentage of Greeks than the U.S.
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Indian American
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company and developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", that is, mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the company permanently.
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Indian people
Hungarian Americans are American citizens of Hungarian descent. The constant influx of Hungarian immigrants was marked by several waves of sharp increase.
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Inuit
Indian Americans are Americans who are of Asian descent and have ancestors who are born and are native to Republic of India. To make a clear distinction and difference bettwen Indians of Asian origin and Indians "named as" who are Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with "American Indian".
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Irish American
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Italian American
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada (Northwest Territories, Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut), Denmark (Greenland), Russia (Siberia) and the United States (Alaska). The Inuit language is grouped under Eskimo-Aleut languages. An Inuk is an Inuit person.
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Japanese American
Irish Americans () are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. An estimated total of 36,278,332 Americans—11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey. The only self-reported ancestral group larger than Irish Americans are German Americans. In addition another 3.5 million Americans identify more specifically with Scots-Irish ancestry. The Irish are widely dispersed in terms of geography, and occupations. Irish American political leaders have played a major role in local and national politics since before the American Revolutionary War; eight Irish Americans signed the United States Declaration of Independence, and 22 American Presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama, have been at least partly of Irish ancestry. (See "American Presidents with origins in Ireland" below.)
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Japanese people
An Italian American ( singular, plural) is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship. Italian Americans are the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States.
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John F Kennedy
are Americans of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity. In the 2000 census, the largest Japanese American communities were in California with 394,896, Hawaii with 296,674, Washington with 56,210, New York with 45,237, and Illinois with 27,702. Each year, about 7,000 new Japanese immigrants enter United States ports, making up about 4% of immigration from Asia.
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Kenyan American
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries are referred to as . The term "Japanese people" may also be used in some contexts to refer to a locus of ethnic groups including the Yamato people, Ainu people, and Ryukyuans.
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Korean American
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Lakota people
Kenyan Americans are Americans of Kenyan descent. There are an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Kenyan Americans and at least 50% of all Kenyan American citizens are based in Washington, D.C., with other population concentrations in Texas, California, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, New York and North Carolina.
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Liberian American
Korean Americans (Korean: , Hanja: , Hangukgye Migukin) are Americans of Korean descent (both South and North). The Korean American community is the fifth largest Asian American subgroup, after the Chinese American, Filipino American, Indian American, and Vietnamese American communities. The United States is home to the second largest Korean diaspora community in the world after China.
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Lucy Liu
The Lakota (; also known as , Teton, Tetonwan, Teton Sioux) are a Native American tribe. They are part of a confederation of seven related Sioux tribes (the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ or seven council fires) and speak Lakȟóta, one of the three major dialects of the Sioux language.
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Mandé peoples
Liberian Americans are American citizens who are of Liberian descent. This includes Liberians who are of African American descent such as the Americo-Liberian people. Immigration to the United States by Liberians began after the First Liberian Civil War in the 1980s and after the Second Liberian Civil War in the early 2000s. An estimated 100,000 Liberians live in the U.S. as of this time.
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Marilyn Monroe
Lucy Alexis Liu (born December 2, 1968) is an American actress. She became known for her role in the television series Ally McBeal (1998–2002) as the vicious and ill-mannered Ling Woo, and has also appeared in several notable film roles, including ''Charlie's Angels, Chicago, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Panda''.
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Martín de Argüelles
:Often misused to refer to the Mandinka people, who constitute a branch of the Mandé: Mandinka people
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Michael Jackson
Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), born Norma Jeane Mortenson, but baptized Norma Jeane Baker, was an American actress, singer and model. After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950) were well received. By 1953, Monroe had progressed to leading roles. Her "dumb blonde" persona was used to comedic effect in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range, and her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination, and she received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like It Hot (1959).
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nation
Martín de Argüelles, Jr. (born 1566) was the first known child of European descent born in what is now the continental United States. His birthplace in St. Augustine, Florida (San Agustín, La Florida) marks the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city anywhere in the continental United States.
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Native Hawaiian
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and philanthropist. Referred to as the King of Pop, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The eighth child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in the mid-1960s, and began his solo career in 1971.
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Navajo people
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Neil Armstrong
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Nigerian American
The Navajo, or Diné, of the Southwestern United States are the second largest Native American tribe of Northern America. In the 2000 U.S. census, 298,197 people claimed to be fully or partly of Navajo ancestry. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the Four Corners area of the United States. The traditional Navajo language is still largely spoken throughout the region, although most Navajo speak English fluently as well. Navajo refer to themselves in their native language as Diné, which is translated as "the people" in English. Dineh carved medicine dancers are an example of Navajo appropriation of Hopi techniques.
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Non-Hispanic whites
Neil Alden Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is an American aviator and a former astronaut, test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor, and United States Naval Aviator. He was the first person to set foot on the Moon. His first spaceflight was aboard Gemini 8 in 1966, for which he was the command pilot, becoming one of the first U.S. civilians to fly in space (Joseph Albert Walker became the first US civilian in space aboard X-15 Flight 90 several years earlier). On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft together with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2½ hours exploring while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
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Norwegian American
Nigerian Americans are citizens of the United States of America who are or descend from immigrants from Nigeria. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, approximately one million Nigerians have immigrated in to the United States.
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Pacific Islanders
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Paul Newman
Norwegian Americans () are Americans of Norwegian descent. Norwegian immigrants went to the United States primarily in the later half of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century. There are more than five million Norwegian Americans according to the most recent U.S. census, and most live in the Upper Midwest. With the exception of Ireland, no single country contributed a larger percentage of its population to the United States than Norway.
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Paul Robeson
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Phillis Wheatley
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
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Pocahontas
Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert singer and film actor, who became noted for his wide-ranging social justice activism. A forerunner of the civil rights movement, Robeson was also an All-American athlete, lawyer, writer, trade unionist, peace activist, Phi Beta Kappa Society laureate, and a recipient of the Spingarn Medal and Stalin Peace Prize. Robeson achieved international notoriety for both his artistic accomplishments and his outspoken radical beliefs, which largely clashed with the Jim Crow climate of the pre-civil rights United States. As a result, he became a prime target of the political right during the McCarthyist era. Despite being one of the most internationally famous cultural figures of the 20th century, persecution by the US government and media virtually erased Robeson from mainstream US culture and subsequent interpretations of US history; including civil rights and black history.
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Polish American
Phillis Wheatley (1753 – December 5, 1784), enslaved at the age of eight, is widely known as the first African-American woman in United States' history to have her poetry published. Constant themes in Wheatley's poems are death, religion, and the struggle of blacks in the U.S. Wheatley also composed many poems that are a type of tribute to admirable figures or influential persons in her life. Wheatley traveled to London and back, with flexibility rare to other enslaved persons, and held an audience with the Lord Mayor of London as well as other delegates. Wheatley's works, at the time, were respected in the realm of literature and impressed all who didn't believe a young girl could produce such works.
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Portuguese American
Pocahontas (c. 1595 – March 21, 1617), later known as Rebecca Rolfe, was a Virginia Indian chief's daughter notable for having assisted colonial settlers at Jamestown. She converted to Christianity and married the English settler John Rolfe. After they traveled to London, she became famous in the last year of her life. She was a daughter of Wahunsunacawh, better known as Chief or Emperor Powhatan (to indicate his primacy), who headed a network of tributary tribal nations in the Tidewater region of Virginia (called Tenakomakah by the Powhatan). These tribes made up what is known as the Powhatan Chiefdom and spoke a language of the Algonquian family.
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Puritan
A Polish American (), is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 9–10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States. There is no distinction made between a non-ethnic Pole born in the territory of Poland, like a Jew or Ukrainian who considers themselves a Polish national, in the American census. Therefore, of the 10 million Poles in the United States, only a certain portion are of Polish ethnic descent.
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Raquel Welch
Portuguese Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates in the southwest European nation of Portugal, including the offshore island groups of the Azores and Madeira.
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Rita Hayworth
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1559, as an activist movement within the Church of England. The designation "Puritan" is often incorrectly used, notably based on the assumption that hedonism and puritanism are antonyms: historically, the word was used to characterize the Protestant group as extremists similar to the Cathari of France, and according to Thomas Fuller in his Church History dated back to 1564. Archbishop Matthew Parker of that time used it and "precisian" with the sense of . T. D. Bozeman therefore uses instead the term precisianist in regard to the historical groups of England and New England.
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Ronald Reagan
Raquel Welch (born September 5, 1940) is an American actress, author and sex symbol.
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Rosa Parks
Rita Hayworth (October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an American film actress and dancer who attained fame during the 1940s not only as one of the era's top stars, but also as a great sex symbol, most notably in Gilda (1946). She appeared in 61 films over 37 years and is listed as one of the American Film Institute's Greatest Stars of All Time.
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Russian American
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975).
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Samuel Wilson
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress later called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".
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Scottish American
Russian Americans are Americans whose ancestors were born in Russia. Non-ethnic Russians in this group could be Jews, Ukrainians, or any other ethnicity who were born and grew up in Russia or ex-USSR. Some Rusyn Americans identify as Russian American.
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Scottish people
Samuel Wilson (September 13, 1766 - July 31, 1854) was a meat-packer from Troy, New York whose name is purportedly the source of the personification of the United States, known as "Uncle Sam".
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Senegalese American
Scottish Americans or Scots Americans (Scottish Gaelic: Ameireaganaich Albannach) are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in Scotland. According to American Community Survey in 2008 data, Americans reporting Scottish ancestry made up an estimated 1.9% of the total U.S. population. Scottish and Scotch-Irish ancestry represent 3.1% of the U.S. population in 2008.
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Somalian American
The Scottish people (Scots Gaelic: Albannaich), or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Celtic Picts (east) and the Gaels (west), incorporating neighbouring Britons as well as Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.
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Spanish American
An Senegalese American is an American of descent Senegalese or a Senegalese who has the American citizenship. In surveys of 2007, some 9624 people claimed Senegalese descent in the United States.
http://wn.com/Spanish_American -
Sudanese American
http://wn.com/Sudanese_American -
Susan B Anthony
A Spanish American is a citizen or resident of the United States with ethnic origins in the southwestern European nation of Spain. Spanish Americans are the earliest European American group, with a continuous presence since 1565.
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Swiss American
Sudanese Americans are Americans of Sudanese descent. There is a community of 20,000 Sudanese Americans with Animist and Christian background who have emigrated from their native country to the U.S., mainly due to the Sudanese conflict, as the community is established in Omaha.
http://wn.com/Swiss_American -
Taiwanese American
http://wn.com/Taiwanese_American -
Taiwanese people
Swiss Americans are Americans of Swiss descent.
http://wn.com/Taiwanese_people -
Thomas Edison
Taiwanese Americans or American people of Taiwanese descent () are American having Taiwanese ancestry.
http://wn.com/Thomas_Edison -
Thomas Jefferson
Taiwanese people () may refer to individuals who either claim or are imputed cultural identity focused on the island of Taiwan and/or Taiwan Area which have been governed by the Republic of China since 1945. At least three competing (occasionally overlapping) paradigms are used to identify someone as a Taiwanese person: a nationalist criteria, self-identification (including the concept of "New Taiwanese") criteria, and socio-cultural criteria. These standards are fluid, in keeping with an evolving social and political milieu. The complexity resulting from competing and evolving standards is compounded by a larger dispute regarding Taiwan's identity crisis, the political status of Taiwan, and its potential de jure Taiwan independence or political integration with the People's Republic of China.
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Ugandan American
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
http://wn.com/Ugandan_American -
Vietnamese American
:
http://wn.com/Vietnamese_American -
Virginia Dare
A Ugandan American is an American citizen descendant of Ugandan or an Ugandan who has American citizenship. The survey of 2007 log-in 5.089 Ugandan Americans in United States.
http://wn.com/Virginia_Dare -
Welsh American
http://wn.com/Welsh_American -
White American
A Vietnamese American () is an American of Vietnamese descent. They make up about half of all overseas Vietnamese (Người Việt Hải Ngoại) and are the fourth-largest Asian American group.
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Wolof people
Virginia Dare (born August 18, 1587, date of death unknown) was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Eleanor (or Ellinor/Elyonor) and Ananias Dare. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina, USA. What became of Virginia and the other colonists has become an enduring mystery. The fact of her birth is known because the leader of the colony, Eleanor Dare's father, John White, returned to England to seek assistance for the colony. When White returned three years later, the colonists were gone.
http://wn.com/Wolof_people -
Wright Brothers
In the 2008 US Census community survey, an estimated 1.98 million Americans had Welsh ancestry, 0.6% of the total U.S. population. This compares with a population of 3 million in Wales. However, 3.8% of Americans bear a Welsh surname. However, a large proportion of the African American population have Welsh names due to the use of former slave owners' last names following emancipation.
http://wn.com/Wright_Brothers
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Americas
The Americas, or America, (, , , , , , ) are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. The plural form the Americas is often used in English, as the singular America is ambiguous: America is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
http://wn.com/Americas -
Boston
Boston (pronounced ) is the capital and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. Boston city proper had a 2009 estimated population of 645,169, making it the twentieth largest in the country. Boston is also the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region includes six Massachusetts counties, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Plymouth, and Worcester, all of Rhode Island and parts of New Hampshire; it is home to 7.5 million people, making it the fifth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.
http://wn.com/Boston -
Brunei
Brunei ( in English), officially the State of Brunei Darussalam or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace (, Jawi: بروني دارالسلام), is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia. Apart from its coastline with the South China Sea, it is completely surrounded by the state of Sarawak, Malaysia, and in fact it is separated into two parts by Limbang, which is part of Sarawak. It is the only sovereign state completely on the island of Borneo, with the remainder of the island belonging to Malaysia and Indonesia.
http://wn.com/Brunei -
California
California (pronounced ) is the most populous state in the United States and the third-largest by land area, after Alaska and Texas. California is also the most populous sub-national entity in North America. It's on the U.S. West Coast, bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west and by the states of Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, Baja California, Mexico, to the south. Its 5 largest cities are Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, and Long Beach, with Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose each having at least 1 million residents. Like many populous states, California's capital, Sacramento is smaller than the state's largest city, Los Angeles. The state is home to the nation's 2nd- and 6th-largest census statistical areas and 8 of the nation's 50 most populous cities. California has a varied climate and geography and a multi-cultural population.
http://wn.com/California -
Cambodia
The "Kingdom of Cambodia" "Royaume du Cambodge" (official name), also known as Cambodia, derived from Sanskrit Kambujadesa ()), is a country in Southeast Asia that borders Thailand to the west and northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east, and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. The geography of Cambodia is dominated by rivers and a lake namely: The Mekong River (Upper and Lower) (Khmer: ទន្លេមេគង្គ Tonlé Mékong Pronounced: Tonlé Mékung = Mother Water River), Sab River Tonlé Sap (Khmer: ទន្លេសាប Pronounced: Tonlé Sab = Fresh Water River), Bassac River Tonlé Bassac (Khmer: ទន្លេបាសាក់ Pronounced: Tonlé Bassuck = ?)
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Caribbean
The CaribbeanPronounced or . Both pronunciations are equally valid; indeed, they see equal use even within areas of the Caribbean itself. Cf. Royal Caribbean, which stresses the second syllable. In this case, as a proper noun, those who would normally pronounce it a different way may use the pronunciation associated with the noun when referring to it. More generic nouns such as the Caribbean Community are generally referred to using the speaker's preferred pronunciation.; Dutch ; or more commonly Antilles is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (most of which enclose the sea), and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and North America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America.
http://wn.com/Caribbean -
Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ or Tsalagihi Ayeli) is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes Cherokee Freedmen and descendants of the Natchez Nation. Over 288,749 people are enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, with 181,867 living within the state of Oklahoma. According to Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) head Larry EchoHawk, the Cherokee Nation is not the historical Cherokee tribe but instead a "successor in interest."
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Chicago
Chicago ( or ) is the largest city in the state of Illinois. With over 2.8 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous city in the country. Its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland," is the 26th most populous in the world, home to an estimated 9.7 million people spread across the U.S. states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County.
http://wn.com/Chicago -
China
China is seen variously as an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia, a nation and/or a multinational entity.
http://wn.com/China -
Dearborn, Michigan
Dearborn is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in the Detroit metropolitan area and Wayne County, and is the tenth largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, it had a population of 97,775. The city is the hometown of Henry Ford and the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company. It has a campus of the University of Michigan as well as Henry Ford Community College.
http://wn.com/Dearborn_Michigan -
Hawaii
: For geographic details see Geography and environment or Hawaiian Islands.
http://wn.com/Hawaii -
Houston
Houston () is the fourth-largest city in the United States of America and the largest city in the state of Texas. As of the 2009 U.S. Census estimate, the city had a population of 2.3 million within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of the metropolitan area—the metropolitan area in the U.S. with a population of approximately 5.9 million.
http://wn.com/Houston -
India
India (), officially the Republic of India ( ; see also official names of India), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.18 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Mainland India is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east; and it is bordered by Pakistan to the west; Bhutan, the People's Republic of China and Nepal to the north; and Bangladesh and Burma to the east. In the Indian Ocean, mainland India and the Lakshadweep Islands are in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share maritime border with Thailand and the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the Andaman Sea. India has a coastline of .
http://wn.com/India -
Japan
Japan (日本 Nihon or Nippon), officially the State of Japan ( or Nihon-koku), is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin" (because it lies to the east of nearby countries), which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
http://wn.com/Japan -
Kenya
The Republic of Kenya (pronounced ) is a country in East Africa. Lying along the Indian Ocean to its southeast and at the equator, Kenya is bordered by Somalia to the northeast, Ethiopia to the north, Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west and Tanzania to the south. Lake Victoria is to the southwest and is shared between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya has numerous wildlife reserves, containing thousands of animal species. The capital city is Nairobi. Kenya's area is 580,000 km2 with a population of nearly 39 million which is diverse: more than 40 different ethnic groups are present. The country is named after Mount Kenya, a significant landmark and second among Africa's highest mountain peaks.
http://wn.com/Kenya -
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2008 Census, the nation is home to 3,476,608 people and covers .
http://wn.com/Liberia -
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.
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Louisiana
Louisiana ( or ; , ; Louisiana Creole: Léta de la Lwizyàn) is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties. The largest parish by population is Jefferson Parish, and the largest by land area is Cameron Parish.
http://wn.com/Louisiana -
Malaysia
Malaysia (pronounced or ) is a federal constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia. It consists of thirteen states and three federal territories and has a total landmass of . The country is separated by the South China Sea into two regions, Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo (also known as West and East Malaysia respectively). Malaysia shares land borders with Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei and has maritime boundaries with Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population as of 2009 stood at over 28 million.
http://wn.com/Malaysia -
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.27 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858. Known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water". Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, offer residents and tourists a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities.
http://wn.com/Minnesota -
Montana
Montana is a state located in the Western United States. The western third of the state contains numerous mountain ranges. Other island ranges are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name, derived from the Spanish word montaña (mountain).
http://wn.com/Montana -
Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state located on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha.
http://wn.com/Nebraska -
New Mexico
New Mexico() is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also part of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth- most sparsely inhabited U.S. state.
http://wn.com/New_Mexico -
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the Southern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte. North Carolina is now ranked as one of the top 3 leading States for Green Technology, Bio-Chemical Engineering, Medical Sciences, and Computer Engineering through the long-range research and development programs of Research Triangle Park (RTP), UNC Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State .
http://wn.com/North_Carolina -
North Dakota
North Dakota () is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border, about halfway between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Lakes. North Dakota is the 19th largest state by area in the U.S. It is also the third least populous, with only about 646,850 residents as of 2009. North Dakota was carved out of the Dakota Territory and admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with South Dakota.
http://wn.com/North_Dakota -
Oklahoma
Oklahoma () is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,687,050 residents in 2009 and a land area of 68,667 square miles (177,847 km²), Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state. The state's name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people", and is known informally by its nickname, The Sooner State. Formed by the combination of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory on November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans, and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
http://wn.com/Oklahoma -
Pakistan
{{Infobox country
http://wn.com/Pakistan -
Philadelphia
Philadelphia () is the largest city in Pennsylvania, sixth-most-populous city in the United States and the fifty-first most populous city in the world.
http://wn.com/Philadelphia -
Philippines
The Philippines ( ), officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (), is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam. The Sulu Sea to the southwest lies between the country and the island of Borneo, and to the south the Celebes Sea separates it from other islands of Indonesia. It is bounded on the east by the Philippine Sea. Its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and its tropical climate make the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons but have also endowed the country with natural resources and made it one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world. An archipelago comprising 7,107 islands, the Philippines is categorized broadly into three main geographical divisions: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Its capital city is Manila.
http://wn.com/Philippines -
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration.
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South Dakota
South Dakota () is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. Once a part of Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. The state has an area of and an estimated population of just over 800,000. Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population of nearly 160,000, is South Dakota's largest city.
http://wn.com/South_Dakota -
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK, , ) and sometimes referred to simply as Korea, is a state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, and North Korea to the north. Its capital is Seoul. South Korea lies in a temperate climate region with a predominantly mountainous terrain. Its territory covers a total area of 99,392 square kilometers and has a population of .
http://wn.com/South_Korea -
Thailand
Thailand ( or ; Ratcha Anachak Thai, ), formerly Siam (, ), is an independent country that lies in the heart of Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Burma. Its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast and Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea to the southwest.
http://wn.com/Thailand -
United States
The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.
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Utah
Utah ( or ) is a western state of the United States. It was the 45th state admitted to the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,784,572 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the sixth most urbanized in the U.S. The name "Utah" is derived from the name of the Ute tribe and means "people of the mountains" in the Ute language. Utah is bordered by Arizona on the south, Colorado on the east, Wyoming on the northeast, Idaho on the north and Nevada on the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico.
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Vietnam
Vietnam ( ; , ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (, ), is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People's Republic of China (PRC) to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea, referred to as East Sea (), to the east. With a population of over 86 million, Vietnam is the 13th most populous country in the world.
http://wn.com/Vietnam -
Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere, also Western hemisphere or western hemisphere, is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich in London, England, United Kingdom), the other half being the eastern hemisphere. It is also used, mainly in North America, to specifically refer to the Americas (or the New World) and adjacent waters, while excluding other territories that lie geographically in Western Hemisphere (parts of Africa, Europe, Antarctica, and Asia); thus, it is sometimes referred to as the American hemisphere.
http://wn.com/Western_Hemisphere -
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is mostly covered by the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High Plains. While the tenth largest U.S. state by area, Wyoming is the least populous, with a U.S. Census estimated population of 544,270 in 2009. This is a 5.9% increase since 2000. The capital and the most populous city of Wyoming is Cheyenne.
http://wn.com/Wyoming
- Africa
- African American
- Amelia Earhart
- American (word)
- American Australian
- American Brazilian
- American Canadians
- American culture
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- American English
- American government
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- Americo-Liberian
- Anglicans
- anthropomorphization
- Arizona
- Asian American
- Bantu peoples
- Barack Obama
- Benjamin Franklin
- Bible Belt
- Bill Richardson
- Black Hispanic
- Black people
- blood quantum laws
- Bobby Jindal
- Boston
- British American
- British Isles
- Brunei
- Buddhism
- Buddhist
- Cajun
- California
- Cambodia
- Caribbean
- Carolinian language
- Catholic
- Catholic Church
- Catholicism
- Central American
- Chamorro language
- Cherokee
- Cherokee Nation
- Chicago
- China
- Chinese American
- Chinese language
- Christian
- Christianity
- citizen
- culture of Mexico
- Czech American
- César Chávez
- Danish American
- Dearborn, Michigan
- developed nation
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- Dutch American
- Dwight D Eisenhower
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- Edgar Allan Poe
- editorial cartoon
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Ellison Onizuka
- Elvis Presley
- Emily Dickinson
- English American
- English language
- English people
- Ethiopian American
- Europe
- Filipino American
- French American
- French language
- Genetics
- George Washington
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- German American
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- Ghanaian American
- Gloria Estefan
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- Henry Ford
- Hinduism
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- Historical Columbia
- Houston
- Hungarian American
- Hyphenated American
- Igbo people
- India
- Indian American
- Indian people
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- Inuit
- Irish American
- Islam
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- Japan
- Japanese American
- Japanese people
- Jewish
- John F Kennedy
- Judaism
- Kenya
- Kenyan American
- Kongo people
- Korean American
- Korean language
- Kpelle people
- Lakota people
- Liberia
- Liberian American
- Library of Congress
- Louisiana
- Lucy Liu
- mainstream
- Malaysia
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- Marilyn Monroe
- Martín de Argüelles
- melting pot
- Michael Jackson
- Middle East
- Minnesota
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- nation
- national language
- Native Hawaiian
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- Nebraska
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- propaganda
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- Samoan language
- Samuel Wilson
- Scots-Irish American
- Scottish American
- Scottish people
- Senegalese American
- Sioux
- Somalian American
- South America
- South Dakota
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- Spanish American
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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- Susan B Anthony
- Swedish American
- Swiss American
- Tagalog language
- Taiwanese American
- Taiwanese people
- Thailand
- Thirteen Colonies
- Thomas Edison
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- top hat
- Ugandan American
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- Uncle Sam
- United States
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- Virginia Dare
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- Wright Brothers
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RELEASE
ALBUMS
Heat
(Released 2008)
- Attributes of the Strong
- Black Malicious Lie
- Columbian Neck Tie
- Anfal Campaign
- Krystal Clear
- Said Nothing, Began Firing
- Grace Period
- Son of a Machine Gun
- Flybag
- Finish 'em All
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Americans are NOT stupid - WITH SUBTITLES
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:48
- Published: 25 Jan 2007
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: eroncoelho
So what if they don´t know how many sides a triangle has? Or who Tony Blair is? That's not fair...if you still think american people are stupid, watch this video and change your mind :)
http://wn.com/Americans_are_NOT_stupid__WITH_SUBTITLES
America - Fuck Yeah!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:04
- Published: 28 Feb 2007
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: Simmyisdead
Satire of the US
http://wn.com/America__Fuck_Yeah!
Anonymous - Message to the American People
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:09
- Published: 03 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: anonymous04210
Dear brothers and sisters. Now is the time to open your eyes! In a stunning move that has civil libertarians stuttering with disbelief, the US Senate has just passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights in America. The National Defense Authorization Act is being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn't apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill, it essentially says it can apply to Americans "if we want it to. Bill Summary & Status, 112th Congress (2011 -- 2012) | S.1867 | Latest Title: National Defense Authorization Act for. This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a "battleground" upon which US military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate US citizens with impunity. Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting: Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial ...the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn't limited to foreigners. It's confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas' Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — "US citizens are included in the grant of detention authority." The passage of this law is nothing less than an <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Anonymous__Message_to_the_American_People
American Dream has turned into American Nightmare for many
A majority of Americans no longer believe in the inevitability of the American Dream. RT talks to people on the streets of Washington to hear what they think. Follow Kristine on Twitter at twitter.com
http://wn.com/American_Dream_has_turned_into_American_Nightmare_for_many
America the nation of pill poppers?
The US has turned into a nation of pill poppers and this isn't more evident with the sprouting of drug stores at every corner. According to the US government anti-depressant use has increased approximately 400 percent among Americans in the past twenty years. The pharmaceutical industry rakes in over $14 billion in sales each year and is the number one cause in accidental death. Marina Portnaya reports.
http://wn.com/America_the_nation_of_pill_poppers?
Do Black Americans Believe Ron Paul Is Racist?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:20
- Published: 27 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: MOXNEWSd0tC0M
December 26, 2011 Independent News Report MOXNews.com
http://wn.com/Do_Black_Americans_Believe_Ron_Paul_Is_Racist?
America fuck yeah-team america
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:04
- Published: 06 Oct 2008
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: PocketKnifeStudios
took 1.5 hours
http://wn.com/America_fuck_yeah-team_america
Chris Hedges "Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over & The Descent Is Going To Be Horrifying!"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 174:27
- Published: 02 Jan 2012
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: MOXNEWSd0tC0M
January 01, 2012 C-SPAN MOXNews.com
http://wn.com/Chris_Hedges_Brace_Yourself!_The_American_Empire_Is_Over_The_Descent_Is_Going_To_Be_Horrifying!
Ex-CIA Agent: America creates its own enemies
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:04
- Published: 13 Nov 2011
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: RussiaToday
Americans are in the crosshairs of terrorists worldwide purely due to Washington's policy in the Muslim world, not because there is an Islamic enemy whose only aim is to kill Americans for their freedoms and lifestyle, insists a former CIA officer. Historian Michael Scheuer, an author of "Through our enemies' eyes", who worked for the agency for over 20 years till 2004 and at one time was the chief of the CIA's 'Bin Laden unit', says America's greatest enemy -- radical Islam -- never existed: neither when Bin Laden was alive, nor now. RT on Twitter twitter.com RT on Facebook www.facebook.com
http://wn.com/Ex-CIA_Agent_America_creates_its_own_enemies
David Bowie (feat Nine Inch Nails) - I'm Afraid Of Americans
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:23
- Published: 19 Mar 2006
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: boxingclever85
David Bowie (feat Nine Inch Nails) - I'm Afraid Of Americans
http://wn.com/David_Bowie_feat_Nine_Inch_Nails__I'm_Afraid_Of_Americans
Are Americans STUPID?
Original "Direct Democracy" video: www.youtube.com reddit.com Vote for white team's next chess move: youtube.com Me on fuse! This: bit.ly Aaaaand this: bit.ly ///////// twitter: twitter.com facebook: facebook.com email: danbrownuniverse@gmail.com ///////// Viewer submitted music courtesy of soundcloud.com
http://wn.com/Are_Americans_STUPID?
Military Could Detain Americans Indefinitely
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:25
- Published: 01 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 27 Jan 2012
- Author: TheYoungTurks
A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would allow the military to detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens, indefinitely with no real trial. Cenk Uygur and Ben Mankiewicz discuss on The Young Turks. www.huffingtonpost.com Subscribe to The Young Turks: bit.ly The Largest Online New Show in the World. Google+: www.gplus.to Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/Military_Could_Detain_Americans_Indefinitely
With American Girl Dolls, History Comes Into Play
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:10
- Published: 16 Jan 2012
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: VOALearningEnglish
From voaspecialenglish.com | http American Girl dolls are costly for most Americans. But sales of the dolls are strong, even at a time when many people are concerned about the economy. Kaeli Chang has several American Girl dolls, including one that looks just like her. She and the doll wear the same kind of clothing. KAELI CHANG: "We got matching outfits and I love to match with my doll. And it makes me feel kinda cool because I have a friend just like me." We spoke with Kaeli and her mother, Liane Whalen-Chang, at the American Girl store in Tysons Corner, Virginia. KAELI CHANG: "I have nine American Girl dolls all together because my mom's an awesome shopper." LIANE WHALEN-CHANG: "What I like about it is that it kind of brings back the innocence of the kids. They grow up too fast. And so the American Girl allows her to just be a little girl a little bit longer." Kaeli got her first American Girl doll just after she was born. That was the beginning of her collection. A single American Girl doll sells for one hundred dollars. Extra clothing can increase the cost. Valerie Tripp has written more than thirty American Girl books. She loves writing for eight-year-old girls. VALERIE TRIPP: "We wanted to speak to girls who were eight, nine, ten years old and say whatever your passion is, whatever you're interested in right now, you know, hang onto that." She says most of them are reading by themselves for the first time. VALERIE TRIPP: "The ability to walk in somebody else's <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/With_American_Girl_Dolls,_History_Comes_Into_Play
Weekly Address: America is Open for Business
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:40
- Published: 21 Jan 2012
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: whitehouse
President Obama tells the American people about a series of steps he's taken without the help of Congress to grow the economy and create jobs -- including a new strategy aimed at boosting tourism introduced this week. In next week's State of the Union Address, the President will outline his blueprint for creating an economy built to last.
http://wn.com/Weekly_Address_America_is_Open_for_Business
The Americans
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:00
- Published: 05 Sep 2007
- Uploaded: 28 Jan 2012
- Author: chieftrent
"The Americans" On June 5 1973, Canadian radio commentator Gordon Sinclair delivered a stirring, pro-American editorial. The United States had just pulled out of the Vietnam War which ended in a stalemate - a war fought daily on TV, over radio and in the press. The war had divided the American people, and at home and abroad it seemed everyone was lambasting the United States. Outraged by what he saw and heard that morning, in his noon-hour broadcast, Sinclair rose to the defense of the American people - and his voice was heard around the world. His editorial was later released on a record (titled "The Americans"), with all royalties donated to the American Red Cross. A Windsor/Detroit radio broadcaster named Byron MacGregor recorded and released an unauthorized version of the piece which hit the record stores before Sinclair's official version; an infringement suit was avoided when MacGregor agreed to donate his profits to the Red Cross as well.
http://wn.com/The_Americans
Alex Jones: Government using drones against Americans
Predator drones have been used to fight the war on terror worldwide. Recently Iran shot down a US drone flying over the country and now reports have surfaced indicating these same drones are being used on American citizens. Alex Jones, radio show host, joins us to help us dig deeper and find out why US citizens are being targeted. Follow Liz on Twitter at twitter.com
http://wn.com/Alex_Jones_Government_using_drones_against_Americans
Terrorist Congress Declares War on American People
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:58
- Published: 03 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: TheAlexJonesChannel
Aaron Dykes Host tonights Infowars Nightly News. Aaron breaks down the recent passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act. Aaron looks back on the interview that Alex Jones just did this past Thursday with patriot, 2nd amendment advocate, Stewart rhodes of Oath Keepers. Darrin McBreen, Our Man on The Street, ask the people what they think of the passing of the NDAA Bill by the Senate. 'Indefinite Detention' Bill Passes Senate 93-7 Americans completely stripped of all rights under Section 1031 Paul Joseph Watson www.infowars.com www.prisonplanet.tv Friday, December 2, 2011 The Senate last night codified into law the power of the US military to indefinitely detain an American citizen with no charge, no trial and no oversight whatsoever with the passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act. One amendment that would have specifically blocked the measures from being used against US citizens was voted down and the final bill was passed 93-7. Another amendment introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein that attempted to bar the provision from being used on American soil, an effort to ensure "the military won't be roaming our streets looking for suspected terrorists," also failed, although Feinstein voted in favor of the bill anyway. www.infowars.com
http://wn.com/Terrorist_Congress_Declares_War_on_American_People
3/4 Americans: Rich, Corporations Have Too Much Power
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:17
- Published: 17 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: TheYoungTurks
A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows that a strong majority of Americans believe that the rich and corporations have too much power. But do they agree with Occupy Wall Street? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down. www.washingtonpost.com Subscribe to The Young Turks: bit.ly Download the politics or entertainment hour of this TYT episode: goo.gl The Largest Online New Show in the World. Google+: www.gplus.to Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/3/4_Americans_Rich,_Corporations_Have_Too_Much_Power
Stupid in America
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 40:46
- Published: 04 Mar 2007
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: GrillRotten
Stupid in America
http://wn.com/Stupid_in_America
I Cried Watching This. Americans and Nato Bombing Babies , Every Human Must Watch. Spread It
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:08
- Published: 07 Jan 2012
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: TheEricleeparker
Go thank " kennethogmarie " for making this www.youtube.com And thank " TruthSeekingElf " for spreading this www.youtube.com Re-upload and show your friends and family FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for 1. educational purposes 2. comments 3. Criticism 4. non commerical 5. Uses small amounts of The Original work 6. Does not harm the market for the original work. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 USC section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
http://wn.com/I_Cried_Watching_This_Americans_and_Nato_Bombing_Babies_,_Every_Human_Must_Watch_Spread_It
Dan Bull - America
Free MP3 - itsdanbull.com Here's the fifth track from my new album Face. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be sharing the whole album. If you don't want to wait, you can download the whole album for free from itsdanbull.com - you can also buy it if you like; I'd love for it to get into the charts. Like Dan on Facebook: facebook.com Follow Dan on Twitter: twitter.com Add Dan on Google+: goo.gl Subscribe to Dan on YouTube: youtube.com LYRICS: America, America Here's to your health America, America Now tell me, why's the country that's the most wealthy also amongst the most unhealthy? There's probably a lot of theories out there, but mine's got to be the lack of national healthcare - a category of welfare that happens to be well fair whether there's wealth there or whether it's elsewhere. Now you can probably tell where this is going from my accent, or you're thinking "why's this British guy rapping?" I like America - the music; the people. That's why I want to see improvements to each of them. There's problems here too, Britain's got its fair share. I'm sure you know about our questionable dental care, but there's one thing that stands better than the rest, and that's the NHS, yes. Where nobody faces rejection just because to treat them would be a dangerous investment. Where what the doctor prescribes is what you're given instead of having to wait for your insurer's decision. Where prescriptions are a reasonable price, if you need something lifelong you can even subscribe <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Dan_Bull__America
President Obama Speaks about Insourcing American Jobs
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 16:04
- Published: 11 Jan 2012
- Uploaded: 29 Jan 2012
- Author: whitehouse
President Obama welcomes to the White House business leaders whose companies are creating jobs in America. January 11, 2012.
http://wn.com/President_Obama_Speaks_about_Insourcing_American_Jobs
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Creative Commons![Kowalewicz at the Cardiff University Students' Union on August 8, 2006. This was the band's second international tour, but played in countries like Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, and Belgium for the first time.[8]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120203065720im_/http://cdn7.wn.com/pd/13/48/d2228495539ef15ffba5f900d8d3_small.jpg "Kowalewicz at the Cardiff University Students' Union on August 8, 2006. This was the band's second international tour, but played in countries like Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, and Belgium for the first time.[8]")
Creative Commons![The band found much success in their home country, with their debut album going 3x platinum in Canada.[2]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120203065720im_/http://cdn5.wn.com/pd/ff/7b/26f8baa1365bdf915d98132dc604_small.jpg "The band found much success in their home country, with their debut album going 3x platinum in Canada.[2]")
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![Kowalewicz at the Cardiff University Students' Union on August 8, 2006. This was the band's second international tour, but played in countries like Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, and Belgium for the first time.[8]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120203065720/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/13/48/d2228495539ef15ffba5f900d8d3_medium.jpg "Kowalewicz at the Cardiff University Students' Union on August 8, 2006. This was the band's second international tour, but played in countries like Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, and Belgium for the first time.[8]")
![The band found much success in their home country, with their debut album going 3x platinum in Canada.[2]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120203065720/http://cdn9.wn.com/pd/ff/7b/26f8baa1365bdf915d98132dc604_medium.jpg "The band found much success in their home country, with their debut album going 3x platinum in Canada.[2]")
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Deccan Chronicle
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The Examiner
'American Idol' held the final auditions for 2012 in St. Louis and if the first audition was any indication Missouri just might produce the next "Idol" singing sensation. Johnny Keyser opened the show with "Change is Gonna Come" and if he keeps performing like that, big changes are going to come his...
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The Examiner
The fact is that heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US. The statistics are staggering and there is much we can do to reverse this trend. In fact, the goal of the “Million Hearts” campaign, launched last year by the Department of Health and Human Services...
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The Examiner
On Thursday night's 'American Idol' 2012 auditions on Fox 25, Oklahoma City fans got to meet Ethan Jones. He talked about how he had dropped out of school to be a musician and wanted to do this full time. This show is a great start for this talented young man. He was in a band with his dad, but his...
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Detroit news
By David Goricki The Detroit News Comments Gawain Johnstone, 26, of Melbourne, who says he grew up watching NFL highlights and playing video games, can squat 850 pounds. "It was mind-boggling how beautiful" Michigan State's facilities are, he said. (Special to The Detroit News) Life Down Under just...
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The Hollywood Reporter
share Whitney Curtis/ FOX Missouri is known as the “show me” state, and American Idol certainly wanted to show off in St. Louis by reminding everyone that this was the city that gave birth to the career of season 4 winner Carrie Underwood.our editor recommends'American Idol' Season 11...
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IMDb
Last night, Britney. Tonight, the Biebs. Reis Kloeckener, whose carefully cropped hair with bangs lying...
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Indian-American student triggers Harvard probe
03 Feb 2012
Zeenews
Washington: A complaint from an Indian-American student who was near the top of his high school class but was rejected by both Harvard and Princeton universities has triggered an investigation by the US Education Department. The unnamed Indian-American student in California complained that the two...
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:''For other uses, see American (disambiguation), and American (word) for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts''.
American Australian
American Brazilian
American Canadians
Americo-Liberian
American New Zealander
American diaspora
Emigration from the United States
Hyphenated American
Immigration to the United States
The people of the United States or simply Americans or American people are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, some Americans do not treat their nationality as an ethnicity but as a citizenship with various ethnicities comprising the "American people." Aside from the indigenous Native American population, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture held in common by most Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English, Scottish, Welsh and Dutch settlers. German and Irish cultures have also been very influential. Certain cultural attributes of Igbo, Mandé, Kongo and Wolof slaves from West Africa were adopted by the American mainstream; based more on the traditions of Central African Bantu slaves, a distinct African American culture developed that would also deeply affect the mainstream. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced many new cultural elements. More recent immigration from Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America has had broad impact. The resulting cultural mix may be described as a homogeneous melting pot, or as a pluralistic salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.
In addition to the United States, Americans and people of American descent can be found internationally. As many as 4 million Americans are estimated to be living abroad.
Racial and ethnic groups
White and European Americans
Whites constitute the majority of the 308 million (308,745,538) people living in the United States, with 223,553,265 or 72.4% of the population in the 2010 United States Census. They are people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. White Americans are the majority in forty-nine of the fifty states, with Hawaii as the exception. Non-Hispanic whites are the majority in forty-six states; the four minority-majority states are California, Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia has a non-white majority.
The largest continental ancestral group of Americans are Europeans who have origins in any of the original peoples of Europe. This includes people via African, North American, Caribbean, Central American or South American and Oceanian nations which have a large European diaspora.
The Spanish were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States. Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the United States. Twenty-one years later, Virginia Dare born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the Thirteen Colonies to English parents.
In 2009, German Americans (16.5%), Irish Americans (11.9%), and English Americans (9.0%) were the three largest self-reported ancestry groups in the United States forming 37.4% of the population. Sixty million Americans, one fifth of the total United States population, claim British ancestry.
Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income, and median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation.
| colspan="9" style="padding:0.3em 0; line-height:1.2em; background:#f5f5f5;" | European ancestries | ||||||||
| ! Ancestry | ! Percentage | ! Pop. | ! Rank | ! Ancestry | ! Percentage | ! Pop. | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;">1 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;" | 15.2%| | 42,841,569 | 11 | Swedish American>Swedish | 1.4% | 3,998,310 | ||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 2 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Irish || | 10.8% | 30,524,799 | 12 | Russian American>Russian | 0.9% | 2,652,214 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 3 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"English || | 8.7% | 24,509,692 | 13 | Welsh American>Welsh | 0.6% | 1,753,794 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 4 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Italian || | 5.6% | 15,638,348 | 14 | Danish American>Danish | 0.5% | 1,430,897 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 5 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Polish || | 3.2% | 8,977,235 | 15 | Hungarian American>Hungarian | 0.5% | 1,398,702 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 6 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"French || | 3.0% | 8,309,666 | 16 | Czech American>Czech | 0.4% | 1,258,452 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 7 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Scottish || | 1.7% | 4,890,581 | 17 | Portuguese American>Portuguese | 0.4% | 1,173,691 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 8 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Dutch || | 1.6% | 4,541,770 | 18 | Greek American>Greek | 0.4% | 1,153,295 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 9 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Norwegian || | 1.6% | 4,477,725 | 19 | British American>British | 0.4% | 1,085,718 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 10 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Scotch-Irish || | 1.5% | 4,319,232 | 20 | Swiss American>Swiss | 0.3% | 911,502 | |
| colspan="8" style="background:#f5f5f5; text-align: center;" | 2000 United States Census Bureau | Benjamin Franklin (English). Henry Ford (Anglo-Irish, Belgian). Rita Hayworth (Spanish, English, Irish).Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis>Jacqueline Bouvier (French, English, Irish). Wright Brothers (English, Dutch, German-Swiss). Paul Newman (Hungarian, Polish, Slovak). |
Black and African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. According to the 2009 American Community Survey, there were 38,093,725 blacks in the United States, which represented 12.4% of the population. In addition, there were 37,144,530 non-Hispanic blacks, which represented 12.1% of the population.Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations. As an adjective, the term is usually spelled ''African-American''.
African American history starts in the 17th century with indentured servitude in the American colonies and progresses onto the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African Americans. Some of these were slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Black Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.
| colspan="8" style="padding:0.3em 0; line-height:1.2em; background:#f5f5f5;" | African ancestries < | ||||||
| ! Rank | ! Ancestry | ! Percentage | ! Pop. | ! Ancestry | ! Percentage | ! Pop. | ! rowspan="11"border|135px|Oprah WinfreyOprah Winfrey descendent of the Kpelle of Liberia.border|135px|Paul RobesonPaul Robeson of Igbo descent. |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;">1 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;" | 0.0%| | 254,794 | Ugandan American>Ugandan | 0.0% | 11,674 | |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 2 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Ethiopian || | 0.0% | 186,679 | Senegalese American>Senegalese | 0.0% | 8,767 |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 3 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Somalian || | 0.0% | 103,117 | Zimbabwean American>Zimbabwean | 0.0% | 6,367 |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 4 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Cape Verdean || | 0.0% | 90,828 | Other Subsaharan African | 0.0% | 126,463 |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 5 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Ghanaian || | 0.0% | 84,777 | Subsaharan African | 0.5% | 2,866,419 |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 6 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"South African || | 0.0% | 55,895 | Black Hispanic | 0.4% | 949,195 |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 7 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Liberian || | 0.0% | 49,428 | Black or African American alone | 12.3% | 38,093,725 |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 8 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Kenyan || | 0.0% | 44,467 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 9 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Sudanese || | 0.0% | 36,663 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 10 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Sierra Leonean || | 0.0% | 13,281 | |||
Asian Americans
Another significant population is the Asian American population, comprising 13.4 million in 2008, or 4.4% of the U.S. population. California is home to 4.5 million Asian Americans, whereas 495,000 live in Hawaii, where they compose the plurality, at 38.5% of the islands' people. This is their largest share of any state. Asian Americans live across the country, and are also found in large numbers in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, and other urban centers.They are by no means a monolithic group. The largest sub-groups are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Philippines, Pakistan, China, India, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Thailand. While the Asian American population is generally a fairly recent addition to the nation's ethnic mix, relatively large waves of Chinese, Filipino and Japanese immigration happened in the mid-to-late 19th century.
| colspan="8" style="padding:0.3em 0; line-height:1.2em; background:#f5f5f5;" | Asian ancestries < | ||||||
| ! Rank | ! Ancestry | ! Percentage | ! Pop. | ! Ancestry | ! Percentage | ! Pop. | ! rowspan="11"border|102px|Bobby Jindalborder|100px|Ellison Onizukaborder|100px|Lucy Liu Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal of Indian descent.Ellison Onizuka of Japanese descent. Lucy Liu of Taiwanese descent. |
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;">1 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;" | 1.0%| | 3,204,379 | ||||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 2 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Indian || | 0.8% | 2,602,676 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 3 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Filipino || | 0.8% | 2,475,794 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 4 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Vietnamese || | 0.5% | 1,481,513 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 5 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Korean || | 0.4% | 1,335,973 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 6 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Japanese || | 0.2% | 766,875 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 7 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Taiwanese || | 0.2% | 600,000 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 8 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Pakistani || | 0.1% | 210,245 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 9 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Other Asian || | 0.6% | 1,907,401 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 10 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"Asian American (total)|| | 4.5% | 13,774,611 | |||
| style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align: center;" | 11 | style="text-align: left; padding-left: 10px;"|| | |||||
Two or more races
The U.S. has a growing multiracial identity movement. Multiracial Americans numbered 7.0 million in 2008, or 2.3% of the population. They can be any combination of races (White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, "Some other race") and ethnicities. Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, is biracial with his mother being of English and Irish decent and his father being of Kenyan decent.
American Indians and Alaska Natives
Indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as American Indians and Inuit, made up 0.8% of the population in 2008, numbering 2.4 million. An additional 2.3 million declared part-American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry. The legal and official designation of who is Native American by descent aroused controversy by demographers, tribal nations and government officials for many decades. The blood quantum laws are complex and contradictory in admittance of new tribal members, or for census takers to accept any respondent's claims without official documents from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. Genetic scientists estimated that over 15 million other Americans may be one quarter or less of American Indian descent.Once thought to face extinction in race or culture, there has been a remarkable revival of Native American identity and tribal sovereignty in the 20th century. The Cherokee are at 800,000 full or part-blood degrees. 70,000 Cherokee live in Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation, and 15,000 in North Carolina on remnants of their ancestral homelands.
The second largest tribal group is the Navajo, who call themselves "Diné" and live on a 16-million acre (65,000 km²) Indian reservation covering northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southeast Utah. It is home to half of the 450,000 Navajo Nation members. The third largest group are the Lakota (Sioux) Nation located in the states of Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming; and North and South Dakota.
Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders
Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders numbered 427,810 in 2008, or 0.14% of the population. Additionally, nearly as many report partial Native Hawaiian ancestry, for a total of 829,949 people of full or part Native Hawaiian ancestry. This group constitutes the smallest minority race in the United States. Although the numbers show that just more than half are "full-blooded", most Native Hawaiians on the island chain of Hawaii are said to be highly mixed with Asian, European and other ancestries.Only 1 out of 50 Native Hawaiians can be legally defined as "full blood" and some demographers believe that by the year 2025, the last full-blooded Native Hawaiian will die off, leaving a culturally distinct, but racially-mixed population. However, there is more individual self-designation of Native Hawaiian than before the US annexed the islands in 1898. Native Hawaiians are receiving ancestral land reparations. Throughout Hawaii, the preservation and universal adaptation of Native Hawaiian customs, Hawaiian language, cultural schools solely for legally Native Hawaiian students, and historical awareness has gained momentum for Native Hawaiians.
National personification
A national personification is an anthropomorphization of a nation or its people; it can appear in both editorial cartoons and propaganda.Uncle Sam is a national personification of the United States and sometimes more specifically of the American government, with the first usage of the term dating from the War of 1812. He is depicted as a stern elderly white man with white hair and a goatee beard, and dressed in clothing that recalls the design elements of flag of the United States — for example, typically a top hat with red and white stripes and white stars on a blue band, and red and white striped trousers.
Columbia is a poetic name for the Americas and the feminine personification of the United States of America, made famous by African-American poet Phillis Wheatley during the American Revolutionary War in 1776. It has inspired the names of many persons, places, objects, institutions, and companies in the Western Hemisphere and beyond.
Language
{|class="infobox" style="font-size: 90%; border: 1px solid #999; float: right; margin-left: 1em; width: 200px;" |- style="background:#f5f5f5;" !colspan="2"|Languages (2007) |- |English (''only'')||style="text-align: center;"|225.5 million |- |Spanish, incl. Creole||style="text-align: center;"|34.5 million |- |Chinese||style="text-align: center;"|2.5 million |- |French, incl. Creole||style="text-align: center;"|2.0 million |- |Tagalog||style="text-align: center;"|1.5 million |- |Vietnamese||style="text-align: center;"|1.2 million |- |German||style="text-align: center;"|1.1 million |- |Korean||style="text-align: center;"|1.1 million |}English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2007, about 226 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states. Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.
While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French. Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms. Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.
Religion
{{bar box |title=Religion in the United States |titlebar=#ddd |left1=Religion |right1=Percent |float=right |bars= }}Religion in the United States has a high adherence level, compared to other developed countries, and diversity in beliefs. The First Amendment to the country's Constitution prevents the Federal government from making any "law respecting an establishment of religion", and guarantees the free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court has interpreted this as preventing the government from having any authority in religion. A majority of Americans report that religion plays a "very important" role in their lives, a proportion unusual among developed nations, although similar to the other nations of the Americas. Many faiths have flourished in the United States, including both later imports spanning the country's multicultural immigrant heritage, as well as those founded within the country; these have led the United States to become the most religiously diverse country in the world.
The majority of Americans (76%) identify themselves as Christians, mostly within Protestant and Catholic denominations, accounting for 51% and 25% of the population respectively. Non-Christian religions (including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism), collectively make up about 4% to 5% of the adult population. Another 15% of the adult population identifies as having no religious belief or no religious affiliation. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, religious belief varies considerably across the country: 59% of Americans living in Western states (the "Unchurched Belt") report a belief in God, yet in the South (the "Bible Belt") the figure is as high as 86%.
Several of the original Thirteen Colonies were established by settlers who wished to practice their own religion without discrimination: the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by English Puritans, Pennsylvania by Irish and English Quakers, Maryland by English and Irish Catholics, and Virginia by English Anglicans. Although some individual states retained established religious confessions well into the nineteenth century, the United States was the first nation to have no official state-endorsed religion. Modeling the provisions concerning religion within the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the framers of the Constitution rejected any religious test for office, and the First Amendment specifically denied the federal government any power to enact any law respecting either an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, thus protecting any religious organization, institution, or denomination from government interference. The decision was mainly influenced by European Rationalist and Protestant ideals, but was also a consequence of the pragmatic concerns of minority religious groups and small states that did not want to be under the power or influence of a national religion that did not represent them.
Culture
The development of the culture of the United States of America has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration: European ideals, especially British; and domestic originality, such as Jeffersonian democracy. Thomas Jefferson's ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' was perhaps the first influential domestic cultural critique by an American.American culture encompasses traditions, ideals, customs, beliefs, values, arts, folklore and innovations developed both domestically and imported via colonization and immigration from the British Isles. Prevalent ideas and ideals which evolved domestically such as important national holidays, uniquely American sports, proud military tradition, and innovations in the arts and entertainment give a strong sense of national pride among the population as a whole.
See also
References
Category:Ethnic groups in the United States Category:American people Category:Immigration to the United States
be-x-old:Амэрыканцы cs:Američané eu:Estatubatuar ko:미국인 pl:Amerykanie pt:Estadunidenses ru:Американцы США sah:Американнар th:ชาวอเมริกัน ug:شىمالىي ئامېرىكىلىق vi:Người Mỹ zh:美國人This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations. As an adjective, the term is usually written as ''African-American''.
African Americans in the United States
! Year || Number || % of total population || Slaves || % in slavery
|-
| 1790 || 757,208 || 19.3% (highest) || 697,681 || 92%
|-
| 1800 || 1,002,037 || 18.9% || 893,602 || 89%
|-
| 1810 || 1,377,808 || 19.0% || 1,191,362 || 86%
|-
| 1820 || 1,771,656 || 18.4% || 1,538,022 || 87%
|-
| 1830 || 2,328,642 || 18.1% || 2,009,043 || 86%
|-
| 1840 || 2,873,648 || 16.8% || 2,487,355 || 87%
|-
| 1850 || 3,638,808 || 15.7% || 3,204,287 || 88%
|-
| 1860 || 4,441,830 || 14.1% || 3,953,731 || 89%
|-
| 1870 || 4,880,009 || 12.7% || – || –
|-
| 1880 || 6,580,793 || 13.1% || – || –
|-
| 1890 || 7,488,788 || 11.9% || – || –
|-
| 1900 || 8,833,994 || 11.6% || – || –
|-
| 1910 || 9,827,763 || 10.7% || – || –
|-
| 1920 || 10.5 million || 9.9% || – || –
|-
| 1930 || 11.9 million || 9.7% (lowest) || – || –
|-
| 1940 || 12.9 million || 9.8% || – || –
|-
| 1950 || 15.0 million || 10.0% || – || –
|-
| 1960 || 18.9 million || 10.5% || – || –
|-
| 1970 || 22.6 million || 11.1% || – || –
|-
| 1980 || 26.5 million || 11.7% || – || –
|-
| 1990 || 30.0 million || 12.1% || – || –
|-
| 2000 || 36.6 million || 12.3% || – || –
|-
| 2010 || 38.9 million || 12.6% || – || –
|-
|}
Affirmative action
African-American art
African-American history
African-American literature
African-American music
African American Muslims
African American National Biography Project
African American Vernacular English
African American Women, 1960's
American Black Upper Class
American Civil War
Black church
Black feminism
Black Loyalist
Black nationalism
Military history of African Americans
Slavery in the United States
African Americans in France
African diaspora
African immigrants to the United States
Afro-Latin American
American Black Indians
Americans of Igbo ancestry
Americo-Liberian
Black Hispanic and Latino Americans
Black Nova Scotians
Black people
Foreign-born Afro Americans
Sierra Leone Creole people
Lists of African Americans
List of African-American-related topics
List of topics related to Black and African people
Terminology: Colored, Creole peoples, Negro, Nigger, Nigga
Jack Salzman, ed., ''Encyclopedia of Afro-American culture and history'', New York, New York : Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996.
''African American Lives'', edited by Henry L. Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford University Press, 2004—more than 600 biographies.
''From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans'', by John Hope Franklin, Alfred Moss, McGraw-Hill Education 2001, standard work, first edition in 1947.
''Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia'', Darlene Clark Hine (Editor), Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Editor), Elsa Barkley Brown (Editor), Paperback Edition, Indiana University Press 2005.
Richard Thompson Ford Name Games, ''Slate'', September 16, 2004. Article discussing the problems of defining ''African American''
"Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"
''Scientific American'' Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements Reconnecting African-Americans to an ancestral past
"The Definition of Political Absurdity", ''San Francisco Chronicle'', March 2, 2007
African American archaeology in Sacramento, California pdf
African American archaeology in Oakland, California —See Part III, Chap 10
Black History related original documents and photos
President Obama's Speech to the NAACP on July 16, 2009—full video by ''MSNBC''
Black or African American?, Frank Newport. Gallup, September 28, 2007
The Long Journey of Black Americans - slideshow by ''The First Post''
African-American history starts in the 17th century with indentured servitude in British America and progresses onto the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African Americans. Some of these were slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.
History
Slavery era
The first recorded Africans in British North America (including most of the future United States) arrived in 1619 as indentured servants who settled in Jamestown, Virginia. As English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Africans for many years were similar in legal position to poor English indenturees, who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, marrying other Africans and sometimes intermarrying with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards.The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The first black congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after the English. During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American Independence by defeating the British in the American Revolution. Africans and Englishmen fought side by side and were fully integrated. James Armistead, an African American, played a large part in making possible the 1781 Yorktown victory, which established the United States as an independent nation. Other prominent African Americans were Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell, who are both depicted in the front of the boat in George Washington's famous ''1776 Crossing the Delaware'' portrait.
By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the United States due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 500,000 African Americans lived free across the country. In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in states which had seceded from the Union were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation with Texas being the last state to be emancipated in 1865.
Reconstruction and Jim Crow
[[File:Jesse Owens1.jpg|thumb|right|Jesse Owens shook racial stereotypes both with Nazis and segregationists in the USA at the 1936 Berlin olympics.]] African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools, community and civic associations, to have space away from white control or oversight. While the post-war reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, in the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Most African Americans followed the Jim Crow laws, using a mask of compliance to prevent becoming victims of racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States. These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities.
Great Migration and Civil Rights Movement
The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American community in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. The Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968 was directed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly in the Southern United States. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act (1965), which expanded federal authority over states to ensure black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority.
Post-Civil Rights era
Politically and economically, blacks have made substantial strides during the post-civil rights era. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African-American elected governor in U.S. history. There is currently one black governor; governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Clarence Thomas became the second African-American Supreme Court Justice.In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 black mayors.
On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected President. At least 95 percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated whites, a majority of Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost the overall white vote, although he won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. The following year Michael S. Steele was elected the first African-American chairman of the national Republican Party.
Demographics
In 1790, when the first U.S. Census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War, the African American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of the overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as "freemen". By 1900, the black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South, but large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration, as it was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million black people moved north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed, with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it.The following table of the African American population in the United States over time shows that the African American population, as a percentage of the total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then. {|class="wikitable" style="float:left; font-size:85%;"
By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the U.S. population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. In current demographics, according to 2005 U.S. Census figures, some 39.9 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 13.8% of the total population. The World Factbook gives a 2006 figure of 12.9% Controversy has surrounded the "accurate" population count of African Americans for decades. The NAACP believed it was under counted intentionally to minimize the significance of the black population in order to reduce their political power base.
At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin, many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ''ancestral'' groups larger than African Americans are the Irish and Germans. Because many African Americans trace their ancestry to colonial American origins, some simply self-identify as "American".
U.S. cities
Almost 58% of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000, overall the city has a 28% black population. Chicago has the second largest black population, with almost 1.6 million African Americans in its metropolitan area, representing about 18 percent of the total metropolitan population.Among cities of 100,000 or more, Detroit, Michigan had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2010, with 82%. Other large cities with African American majorities include New Orleans, Louisiana (60%), Baltimore, Maryland (63%) Atlanta, Georgia (54%), Memphis, Tennessee (61%), and Washington, D.C. (50.7%).
The nation's most affluent county with an African American majority is Prince George's County, Maryland, with a median income of $62,467. Within that county, among the wealthiest communities are Glenn Dale, Maryland and Fort Washington, Maryland. Other affluent predominantly African American counties include Dekalb County in Georgia, and Charles City County in Virginia. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than White Americans.
Religion
The majority of African Americans are Protestant of whom many follow the historically black churches. Black church refers to churches which minister predominantly African American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished more African Americans were allowed to create a unique form of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African spiritual traditions.
According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African American population are part of the historically black churches. The largest Protestant denomination among African Americans are the Baptists, distributed in four denominations, the largest being the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention of America. The second largest are the Methodists, the largest sects are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Pentecostals are mainly part of the Church of God in Christ. About 16% of African American Christians are members of white Protestant communions, these denominations (which include the United Church of Christ) mostly have a 2 to 3% African American membership. There are also large numbers of Roman Catholics, constituting 5% of the African American population. Of the total number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are black.
Some African Americans follow Islam. Historically, between 15 to 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during the era of American slavery. However during the 20th century, some African Americans converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; these include the Moorish Science Temple of America, though the largest organization was the Nation of Islam, founded during the 1930s, which attracted at least 20,000 people as of 1963, prominent members included activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali.
Malcolm X is considered the first person to start the movement among African Americans towards mainstream Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad who took control of the Nation after his death, guided majority of its members to orthodox Islam. However, few members rejected these changes, in particular Louis Farrakhan, who revived the Nation of Islam in 1978 based on its original teachings.
African American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population, the majority are Sunni or orthodox Muslims, some of these identify under the community of W. Deen Mohammed. The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan has a membership from 20,000—50,000 members.
There are relatively few African American Jews; estimates of their number range from 20,000 to 200,000. Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include the claim that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites.
Contemporary issues
African Americans have improved their social and economic standing significantly since the Civil Rights Movement and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. Unprecedented access to higher education and employment in addition to representation in the highest levels of American government has been gained by African Americans in the post-civil rights era.Nevertheless, due in part to the legacy of slavery, racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage in many areas relative to European Americans. Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime, poverty and substance abuse.
One of the most serious and long standing issues within African American communities is poverty. Poverty itself is a hardship as it is related to marital stress and dissolution, health problems, low educational attainment, deficits in psychological functioning, and crime. In 2004, 24.7% of African American families lived below the poverty level. In 2007, the average African American income was $33,916, compared with $54,920 for whites.
Politics and social issues
Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004. African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States. African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any minority group in the U.S.The large majority of African Americans support the Democratic Party. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W. Bush. Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African American organizations have had in domestic policy.
Historically, African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both right and left were represented equally in both parties.
The African American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans; Roosevelt's New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s.
After over 50 years, marriage rates for ''all'' Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed. These changes have been greatest among African Americans. After more than 70 years of racial parity black marriage rates began to fall behind whites. Single-parent households have become common, and according to US census figures released in January 2010, only 38 percent of black children live with both their parents. Despite that and heavy Democratic leanings, African Americans favor "traditional American values" about family and marriage.
While 52% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, only 30% of black Democrats do. In 2008, though Democrats overwhelmingly voted (64%) against the California ballot proposition banning gay marriage, blacks overwhelmingly approved (70% in favor) it, more than any other racial group. The high-profile candidacy of Barack Obama is credited with increasing black turnout on the bill which has been seen as the crucial difference in its passing.
Blacks also hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole. On financial issues, however, African Americans are very much in line with Democrats, generally supporting a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce injustice and as well as more government spending on social services.
News media and coverage
News media coverage of African American news, concerns or dilemmas is inadequate, some activists and academics contend. Activists also contend that the news media present distorted images of African Americans. To combat this African Americans founded their own television networks. Black Entertainment Television, founded by Robert L. Johnson is a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States.Most programming on the network consists of rap and R&B; music videos and urban-oriented movies and series. Additionally, the channel shows syndicated television series, original programs, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET broadcasts a lineup of network-produced Christian programming; other, non-affiliated Christian programs are also shown during the early morning hours daily. BET is now a global network that reaches 85 million viewers in the Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to BET there is Centric, which is a spin-off cable television channel of BET, created originally as BET on Jazz to showcase jazz music-related programming, especially that of black jazz musicians. Programming since has been expanded to include a block of urban programs as well as some R&B;, neo soul, and alternative hip hop, with the focus on jazz reduced to low-profile hours.
TV One is another African American-oriented network and a direct competitor to BET. It targets African American adults with a broad range of programming. The network airs original lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion and music programming, as well as classic series such as 227, Good Times, Martin, Boston Public and It's Showtime at the Apollo. The network primarily owned by Radio One. Radio One, Inc., founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes, it is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States.
Other African American networks scheduled to launch in 2009 are the Black Television News Channel founded by former Congressman J. C. Watts and Better Black Television founded by Percy Miller. In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio in partnership with the production team that created the black documentary film, Meeting David Wilson. It is the first African American video news site which focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History.
Education
By 2000, African Americans had advanced greatly. They still lagged overall in education attainment compared to white or Asian Americans, with 14 percent with four year and 5 percent with advanced degrees, though it was higher than for other minorities. African Americans attend college at about half the rate of whites, but at a greater rate than Americans of Hispanic origin. More African American women attend and complete college than men. Black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U.S., and a pattern towards re-segregation is currently occurring across the country.
Historically black colleges and universities remain today which were originally set up when segregated colleges did not admit African Americans. As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.
US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed high school, less than whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged behind whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism.
In Chicago, Marva Collins, an African American educator, created a low cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low-income African American children whom the public school system had labeled as being "learning disabled". One article about Marva Collins' school stated,
Working with students having the worst of backgrounds, those who were working far below grade level, and even those who had been labeled as 'unteachable,' Marva was able to overcome the obstacles. News of third grade students reading at ninth grade level, four-year-olds learning to read in only a few months, outstanding test scores, disappearance of behavioral problems, second-graders studying Shakespeare, and other incredible reports, astounded the public.During the 2006–2007 school year, Collins' school charged $5,500 for tuition, and parents said that the school did a much better job than the Chicago public school system. Meanwhile, during the 2007–2008 year, Chicago public school officials claimed that their budget of $11,300 per student was not enough.
Economic status
Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, 47% of African Americans owned their homes. The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004. African Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002 African American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses.In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest median earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States. Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields), and African Americans were no more or less likely than European Americans to work in the service industry. In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.
By 2006, gender continued to be the primary factor in income level, with the median earnings of African American men more than those black and non-black American women overall and in all educational levels. At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.
Overall, the median earnings of African American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men. On the other hand by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African American women have made significant advances; the median income of African American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.
African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%, while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.
The income gap between black and white families is also significant. In 2005, employed blacks earned only 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975. ''The New York Times'' reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African American families exceeded that of white families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true.
In 1999, the rate of births to unwed African American mothers was estimated by economist Walter E. Williams of George Mason University to be 70%. The poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the comparable rates were 26.4% and 6%.
According to ''Forbes'' magazine's "wealthiest American" lists, a 2000 net worth of $800 million dollars made Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the 20th century; by contrast, the net worth of the 20th century's richest American, Bill Gates, who is of European descent, briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. In Forbes' 2007 list, Gates' net worth decreased to $59 billion while Winfrey's increased to $2.5 billion, making her the world's richest black person. Winfrey is also the first African American to make Business Week's annual list of America's 50 greatest philanthropists. BET founder Bob Johnson was also listed as a billionaire prior to an expensive divorce and as of 2009, had an estimated net worth of $550 million. Winfrey remains the only African American wealthy enough to rank among the country's 400 richest people. Some black entrepreneurs use their wealth to create new avenues for both African Americans and new opportunities for American business in general. Examples such as Tyler Perry who created new filming studios in Atlanta, Georgia which makes it possible to film movies and television shows outside of California.
Health
African Americans continue to have lower life expectancies on average than whites in the United States. Even when adjusted for age, African Americans are 1.6 times more likely to die from one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States than European Americans. However, there is evidence that this may be changing: by 2003, sex had replaced race as the primary factor in life expectancy in the United States, with African American females expected to live longer than European American males born in that year.In the same year, the gap in life expectancy between American whites (78.0) and blacks (72.8) had decreased to 5.2 years, reflecting a long term trend of this phenomenon. By 2004, "the trend toward convergence in mortality figures across the major race groups also continued", with white–black gap in life expectancy dropping to five years. The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in countries with a high Human Development Index.
At the same time, the life expectancy gap is affected by collectively lower access to quality medical care. With no system of universal health care, access to medical care in the U.S. generally is mediated by income level and employment status. As a result, African Americans, who have a disproportionate occurrence of poverty and unemployment as a group, are more often uninsured than non Hispanic whites or Asians. For a great many African Americans, healthcare delivery is limited, or nonexistent. And when they receive healthcare, they are more likely than others in the general population to receive substandard, even injurious medical care. African Americans have a higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions.
African Americans are twice as likely to have diabetes, than whites, and twice as likely to die from the disease. Obesity affects 37% of men and 51% of women. This and other factors contribute to hypertension, which affects 40% of all adults. African American men are twice as likely to have diabetes induced end-stage kidney disease, and twice as likely to die of it than white men of the same age. African Americans are 1.7 times more likely to have a stroke and 60% more likely to die from it. Two reasons for poorer health are lack of routine preventative medical care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies and lack of the primary care physcian.
While 1 in 6 Americans (16.2 percent) between the ages of 14 and 49 is infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), the infection rate is more than three times higher among blacks (39.2 percent) than whites (12.3 percent). The most affected group is black women, with a prevalence rate of 48 percent. Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention stated that "high rates of herpes among African-Americans is most likely contributing to the high rate of HIV in that community. In fact, statistics show that people with herpes are two to three times more likely to get HIV if exposed."
African Americans are the American ethnic group most affected by HIV and AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black men are six times more likely to have HIV than white men and black women are nearly 18 times more likely to have HIV than white women. A 2004 "CDC analysis of MSM in five cities found that while only 18 percent of the HIV-infected white men were unaware of their infections, 67 percent of the infected black men were unaware."
It has been estimated that "184,991 adult and adolescent HIV infections [were] diagnosed during 2001–2005" (1). More than 51 percent occurred among blacks than any other race. Between the ages of 25–44 years 62 percent were African Americans. Dr. Robert Janssen (2007) states, "We have rates of HIV/AIDS among blacks in some American cities that are as high as in some countries in Africa". The rate for African Americans with HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. is 3 percent, based on cases reported. In a New York Times Article, about 50 percent of AIDS-related deaths were African American woman, which accounted for 25 percent of the city's population. In many cases there are a higher proportion of black people being tested than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen goes on by saying "We need to do a better job of encouraging African Americans to test. Studies show that approximately one in five black men between the ages 40 to 49 living in the city is HIV-positive, according to the ''TIMES''. Research indicates that African Americans' sexual behavior is no different than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen says "Racial groups tend to have sex with members of their own racial group.
Crime also plays a significant role in the racial gap in life expectancy. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice states "In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites" and "94% of black victims were killed by blacks."
Cultural influence in the United States
From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, language, social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the U.S., such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. Notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans; and George Crum, who invented the potato chip in 1853.African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B;, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music.
African American-derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular musical genre in the world, including country and techno. African American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.
African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Bill T. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally black fraternities and sororities at universities.
Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.
African American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. Most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the Confederate navy.
By 1913 over 1,000 inventions were patented by black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines. Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems, including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate. Garrett A. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask.
Lewis Howard Latimer invented an improvement for the incandescent light bulb. More recent inventors include Frederick McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains. Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb (code named the Manhattan Project.) Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.
A few other notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones. Dr. Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based. More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers, and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first black astronaut pilot but the person who redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system.
Political legacy
African Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.The gains made by African Americans in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow. They would often be the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post WWII era, African Americans became increasingly discontented with their long-standing inequality. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal ..."
The Civil Rights Movement marked a sea-change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; and disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties.
Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, ''de jure'' racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, women, Native Americans, and migrant workers.
The term "African American"
Political overtones
The term African American carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry. The terms were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of self-identification of their own choosing.With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, blacks no longer approved of the term Negro. They believed it had suggestions of a moderate, accommodationist, even "Uncle Tom" connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the United States, particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced ''Black'' as a group identifier. It was a term social leaders themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier, but they proclaimed, "Black is beautiful".
In this same period, a smaller number of people favored ''Afro-American'', a common shortening (as is 'Anglo-American'). However, after the decline in popularity of the 'Afro' hairstyle in the late 1970s, the term fell out of use.
In the 1980s the term ''African American'' was advanced on the model of, for example, German-American or Irish-American to give descendents of American slaves and other American blacks who lived through the slavery-era a heritage and a cultural base. The term was popularized in black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use.
Many blacks in America expressed a preference for the term, as it was formed in the same way as names for others of the many ethnic groups in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.
For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses pride in Africa and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embrace of pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore.
Who is African American?
Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government officially classified black people (revised to ''black'' or ''African American'' in 1997) as "having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa." Other federal offices, such as the United States Census Bureau, adhere to the OMB standards on race in its data collection and tabulations efforts. In preparation for the United States 2010 Census, a marketing and outreach plan, called ''2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan'' (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of black people in the United StatesThe ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity. The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire black population of the U.S. as though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation categorizes black or African American people as "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 OMB classification.
The African-American experience
Some black scholars have argued that the term "African-American" should refer strictly to the descendents of West or Central African slaves and free people of color who survived the slavery-era, and not the sons and daughters of black immigrants who lack that ancestry. The argument being that grouping all blacks together regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances would inevitably deny the lingering effects of slavery with in the American slave descendent community, in addition to denying black immigrants recognition of their own unique ancestral backgrounds.In the book ''The End of Blackness'' published by author Debra Dickerson, she warned against drawing favorable cultural implications from upwardly mobile black immigrants who are not the sons and daughters of American slavery and racial segregation. She used the political rise of President Barack Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan immigrant, a result of "Lumping us all together," Dickerson claimed it, "erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress." On the liberal website Salon Dickerson wrote, "African-American", in our political and social vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves". Similar statements have been echoed by Stanley Crouch in a New York Daily News piece, Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and African-American columnist David Ehrenstein of the LA Times who accused white liberals of flocking to blacks who were "Magic Negros", a term that refers to a black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream white (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda. Ehrenstein went on to say "He's there to assuage white 'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history." said "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African-Americans and instead prefers the term "black" or "white" to denote the African and European U.S. founding populations.
Terms no longer in common use
The terms mulatto and colored were widely used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when they were considered outmoded and generally gave way to the use of ''negro''. By the 1940s, the term commonly was capitalized, but by the mid 1960s, it had acquired negative connotations, though the term ''mulatto'' is still in use in many parts of Latin America and is not considered offensive there. Today, in the culture of the United States, the term is considered inappropriate and is now rarely used and perceived as a pejorative.The term Negro is largely out of use among the younger black generation, but is still used by a substantial block of older black Americans, particularly in the southern U.S. In Latin America, ''negro'', which translates as ''black'' is the term generally used to refer and describe black people and, similarly to ''mulatto'', it is not considered offensive at all in these regions. However, it is pronounced differently, with the ''e'' being closer to the sound in the English word egg.
See also
Diaspora:
Lists:
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Category:African American history Category:Ethnic groups in the United States Category:History of civil rights in the United States Category:Peoples of the African diaspora
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| Coordinates | 39°46′5.88″N86°9′29.52″N |
|---|---|
| birth date | October 03, 1967 |
| birth place | Anaheim, California, US |
| nationality | American |
| write | y |
| pencil | y |
| ink | y |
| edit | y |
| publish | y |
| notable works | ''Youngblood'' ''X-Force'' |
| website | http://www.robliefeld.net |
| sortkey | Liefeld, Rob |
| subcat | American }} |
In the early 1990s, self-taught artist Liefeld became prominent due to his work on Marvel Comics' ''The New Mutants'' and later ''X-Force''. In 1992, he and several other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which started a wave of comic books owned by their creators rather than by publishers. The first book published by Image Comics was Rob Liefeld's ''Youngblood'' #1.
Career
Early career
In 1986, Liefeld was a last-minute replacement penciller for the first issue of ''Stetch'', published by Silverwolf Comics. In the same year, Liefeld also had a pin-up page included in ''Boris the Bear'' #6.In 1988, at the age of 20, he completed his first significant published work for DC Comics' in ''Warlord'' #131 and ''Secret Origins'' #28. This was quickly followed by the ''Hawk and Dove'' limited series by Barbara and Karl Kesel, who also provided inks. Liefeld's layouts were oriented sideways in story pages taking place in a chaos dimension, so that a reader would have to turn the comic book at a right angle to read them. Because this was done without editorial input, editor Mike Carlin cut and pasted the panels into the proper order, and Kesel lightboxed them onto DC comics paper to ink them. The letters column of ''Hawk and Dove'' #5 mentions that Liefeld "showed something new to an editor who thought he’d seen everything." In his defense, Liefeld offered that that was how the dimension had been drawn the only other time it had been featured in the book, although Karl Kesel claims this is untrue.
In 1989, Liefeld moved to Marvel where he became the penciller for ''The New Mutants'', starting with issue #86. He is generally credited for turning this lowest-selling title of the X-franchise into a financial success.
With ''The New Mutants'' (vol. 1) #98, Liefeld assumed full creative control over the series, penciling, inking, and plotting, with Fabian Nicieza writing dialog. The ''New Mutants'' series was retitled ''X-Force'' (vol. 1), whose 1991 debut issue sold four million copies, setting an industry-wide record later broken by Jim Lee's ''X-Men'' (vol. 2) #1. The sales numbers were propelled by 1990s direct market sales strategies; variant editions were issued to encourage sales of multiple copies to single collectors. Lee's ''X-Men'' was published with five variant covers, and ''X-Force'' relied on multiple variant trading cards polybagged with the comic itself. In the early 1990s, Liefeld appeared in Spike Lee-directed commercials for Levi's 501 button fly jeans, in which Lee interviewed him about his career and his status as the creator of ''X-Force''.
Leaving Marvel Comics, co-founding Image Comics
Liefeld's relationship with Marvel began to break down in 1991 when he announced plans in a black-and-white advertisement in the ''Comics Buyers Guide'' to publish an original title with competitor Malibu Comics. The exact title is unknown, but according to journalist Michael Dean, it was something to the effect of ''The X-Cutioners'', a title whose similarity to Marvel's X-Men family of titles evoked the ire of Marvel editor Bob Harras, who threatened to fire Liefeld if he used that title. Liefeld and several other popular young artists including Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Jim Valentino and Marc Silvestri left Marvel in 1992 to form Image Comics. Each co-founder formed his own studio under the Image banner, such as Liefeld's Extreme Studios. Liefeld's superhero team series ''Youngblood'', which is loosely based on a 1991 ''Teen Titans'' series Liefeld had proposed to DC Comics, was the first comic Image published. He appeared on an episode of ''The Dennis Miller Show'' to promote the book. His other titles included ''Bloodstrike'' #1, which was released in April 1993.In an interview in ''Hero Illustrated'' #4 (October 1993), Liefeld conceded disappointment with the first four issues of ''Youngblood'', calling the first issue a "disaster". Liefeld explained that production problems, as well as sub-par scripting by his friend and collaborator Hank Kanalz, whose employment Liefeld later terminated, resulted in work that was lower in quality than that which Liefeld produced when Fabian Nicieza scripted his plots on ''X-Force'', and that reprints of those four issues would be re-scripted.
In 1996, Liefeld's and Lee's studios signed with Marvel to re-envision several of the company's core series, an event called "Heroes Reborn." Liefeld was contracted to write twelve issues of ''The Avengers'', co-written with Jeph Loeb, and was to pencil twelve issues of ''Captain America.'' However, he failed to meet the publishing schedule and his overall output met with a less-than enthusiastic response, failing to reach the sales targets required in his agreement with Marvel, although Loeb noted in ''Wizard Magazine'' #72 that their run on ''Captain America'' had three times the sales of issues prior to their run. Marvel terminated the agreement after six issues, and Marvel re-assigned the two series to Lee's studio.
Departure from Image
In June 1996, Marc Silvestri temporarily left Image with his ''Top Cow'' imprint, allegedly because of disputes with the other partners over Liefeld's status in the company. Among the many accusations against Liefeld, which came to light in subsequently filed legal complaints, was the charge that Liefeld routinely used his check-writing powers to cover personal debts from Image funds. Other dissatisfaction with Liefeld ranged from his alleged habit of copying art from other partners' comics to his plans to move titles that had been established at Image to the non-Image Maximum Press. Image Comics Executive Director Larry Marder is quoted as saying "He [Rob] was making an increasing number of business decisions that were counterproductive to being a business partner".In addition to allegedly siphoning funds, he was said to have used Image staff to do promotional and production work for Maximum. In early September, Liefeld issued a press release stating he was resigning his position at Image and leaving the group. Nearly simultaneously, the Image partners issued a press release stating that they had fired Liefeld. The other partners had already voted once to remove Liefeld from the group, a move he protested on the grounds that he was given too short a notice period. His resignation came only minutes before the second meeting that would have forced him out.
The comics press variously reported several underlying issues: the effect of Liefeld's erratically published and critically derided lines on the company's reputation, his supposed misuse of his position as Image CEO to unfairly benefit his own publishing efforts (including Maximum Press, which was not a part of Image) and attempts to recruit artists employed by his Image partners, a violation of their informal agreements. As further financial reversals followed, Liefeld moved all of his publishing ventures into a new company, Awesome Comics. This new enterprise, announced in April 1997 as a partnership between Liefeld and Malibu Comics founding partner Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, concentrated its efforts on newer properties.
Awesome Comics
At Awesome, Liefeld and Loeb attempted to resurrect their unused ''Captain America'' plots for a new character, Agent America. This character was nearly identical in appearance and background to Captain America. Under legal pressure from Marvel, Liefeld scrapped ''Agent America'' and acquired the rights to Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's Fighting American, updating the design. Liefeld was allowed to publish the book, but legally this new character could not throw his shield, one of Captain America's trademarks.Meanwhile, Liefeld hired acclaimed comic book writer Alan Moore to revive many of his creations, which had declined in popularity. Moore wrote a few issues of ''Youngblood'' and ''Glory,'' but his most lauded work for Liefeld was on ''Supreme'', which played on the character's more generic traits in a clear tribute to the Mort Weisinger-era Superman.
Awesome's initial releases, including entirely new properties like ''Kaboom!'' created by Jeff Matsuda, were generally received more favorably by critics than the Extreme and Maximum lines had been. However, Awesome soon collapsed under the burdens of disputes among its partners, and an abrupt departure of its primary investor.
2000s work
In the 2000s, Liefeld returned to his former characters in the X-Men franchise, providing pencils for the occasional cover and/or interior of ''Cable'' and ''X-Force'' until the early 2000s, when both were cancelled.In 2004, he reunited with Fabian Nicieza for an ''X-Force'' limited series and illustrated the early covers for Nicieza's ''Cable and Deadpool''. In that same year, Liefeld formed Arcade Comics and once again announced plans to revive ''Youngblood''. These involved reprinting older material and providing the art for two new series ''Youngblood: Bloodsport'' with Mark Millar and ''Youngblood: Genesis'' with Brandon Thomas. Although the former only published one issue, Liefeld expressed hopes to finish the series.
Liefeld returned to the Heroes Reborn Universe with writer Jeph Loeb with the ''Onslaught Reborn'', a five-issue limited series that premiered in November 2006. This led to Liefeld having a pitch accepted for a plan to bring Killraven back, with writer Robert Kirkman.
In July 2007, it was announced that Rob Liefeld and Youngblood would be returning to Image Comics after years of self-publication. This new partnership marks the first time in a decade that Liefeld and Image would collaborate on a project. The new ''Youngblood'' series is written by Joe Casey with art by Derec Donovan and Val Staples, with covers by Liefeld, and started in January 2008. He took over writing and art duties with issue #9. To commemorate the event, and the 15th anniversary of Image Comics, the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con was headlined by the Image Founders panel, where all seven of the original Image Comics founders appeared on stage simultaneously for the first time in history.
2010 saw Liefeld return to the Deadpool character, first by penciling issue #1 of the ''Prelude to Deadpool Corps'' series, the issue focusing on Lady Deadpool. Liefeld became the regular artist on Deadpool Corps, providing the interior art for the first nine issues.
In March 2011 Liefeld was announced as the artist on ''The Infinite'', a mini-series written by Robert Kirkman. That June, he was announced as the artist on a new ''Hawk and Dove'' series, with writer Sterling Gates, as part of DC Comics massive relaunch of their entire superhero line, returning Liefeld to the characters that helped establish him in the industry.
Criticism
Since the heyday of Image Comics, Liefeld's name has become something of a lightning rod in the industry. In an interview, Brian Michael Bendis described the polarization of opinion on Liefeld: "There is a great dichotomy...There's either some great and generous story about [Liefeld] or you will hear some unbelievable thing like, 'How is he not in jail if he did that?' There is no middle ground."In interviews, Liefeld has compared himself to other popular artists who experience meteoric success and acclaim early in their careers but near-pariah status afterwards, notably Britney Spears, who "became vapid pop music, and perhaps I was nothing more than a vapid comic book artist." He seems to credit his success tapping into the zeitgeist: "I'll be the first to tell you that we [the Image collective] were never the best artists. We were never the best at anything, but just like a song or a band or whatever, we caught on and we toured rigorously."
He is not without supporters in the industry. The A.V. Club says of Liefeld's critics, "Rob Liefeld is the punching bag of choice for many discerning comics fans. But he’s also the man who defined what the 1990s looked like in superhero books, so he’s crying all the way to the bank. For every detractor who thinks he’s the worst thing to happen to comic books since Fredric Wertham, there are a dozen ravenous fanboys ready to snatch up whatever he does next." Writer Jeph Loeb, with whom Liefeld collaborated, and writer Mark Millar are reported to be admirers of his work. Millar in particular wrote the foreword to the 2008 ''Youngblood'' collection published by Image Comics, in which he defended that series as an entry in the celebrity superhero subgenre that predated ''The Authority'' and ''X-Statix''. Millar also compared critics of Liefeld's layouts and figure work to those who would have criticized Jack Kirby for exhibiting a cartoony style rather than photorealism, and asserted that his own children are avid fans of Liefeld's work in general, and ''Youngblood'' in particular.
Production and business problems
Liefeld has become known for producing late books, primarily his creator-owned ones, though somewhat less so when doing work-for-hire. Some issues of his series ''Youngblood'' shipped as much as nine months late. Liefeld has attributed this to the greater incentive a freelancer feels when doing work-for-hire assignments for a company, as opposed to working on one's self-owned work.It was alleged that Liefeld was too preoccupied by aspirations of Hollywood production deals, spending time in meetings with Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, to effectively publish comic books or participate in the business side of the Image venture, a criticism that Liefeld admits is at least partly true. He reportedly fell asleep at numerous Image board meetings.
After the San Diego Comicon panel in 2007, Liefeld was interviewed by ''Wizard'' magazine about his feud with the Image partners. He claimed the feud was in the past, saying: "The divorce was ugly, but to me it didn't linger....I realized you just need to let it go."
Art style and credit
Liefeld has been criticized for drawing figures with exaggerated muscular anatomy, long legs and tiny feet, along with an improbable profusion of weapons, accessories, and pouches, that have been subject to parody. On the one hand, these stylistic devices were seen as the impetus for his initial success, when such affectations were unusual in comics, and helped lend such characters to successfully merchandised products. On the other hand, the approach later became considered a cliché and led to a widespread hostility towards the style. Liefeld agrees for the most part with this estimation of his early work, saying, "In the mid-90's we Mortal Kombat'ed everything. I'm as guilty as anyone..."At the beginning of Liefeld's run on the ''New Mutants'' the heavily-muscled, heavily-armed cyborg character Cable was created for the team, and became a popular anti-hero, although there is some dispute over Cable's origin, with Liefeld, Bob Harras, and Louise Simonson all claiming credit for some or all of the character concept. For a time, Marvel credited only Liefeld and Simonson as Cable's creators within the ''Cable & Deadpool'' series. He also was credited as the sole creator of ''Youngblood'', when documentation suggests that Liefeld's longtime friend and collaborator Hank Kanalz co-developed that team with him.
In addition to this, Liefeld is also alleged to have made a habit of swiping, or copying, art from other artists. Liefeld responded to this accusation by stating that in these instances, which he said were limited to ten, he was offering tribute to the artists of the original pieces in question, rather than plagiarizing, and compared this to the work of filmmaker Brian De Palma, who explicitly used the techniques of Alfred Hitchcock, who influenced De Palma. Writer and ''Comics Buyer's Guide'' columnist Peter David responded to this rationale by pointing out that DePalma himself was criticized harshly by film critics for employing Hitchcock's techniques, and that Liefeld, who has identified himself as a "stickler" for credit, did not credit artists whose work he copied, instances of which exceeded the ten upon which Liefeld insisted. David also pointed out that some of these artists, such as John Byrne and George Pérez, did not react to this practice on Liefeld's part as a "tribute," and expressed displeasure at the degree to which Liefeld relied on their work.
Selected bibliography
Interior artwork
Writing
Notes
References
External links
Category:People from Anaheim, California Category:Living people Category:1967 births Category:Arcade Comics Category:Awesome Comics Category:Image Comics
de:Rob Liefeld es:Rob Liefeld fr:Rob Liefeld it:Rob Liefeld nl:Rob Liefeld pt:Rob LiefeldThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 39°46′5.88″N86°9′29.52″N |
|---|---|
| name | David Bowie |
| background | solo_singer |
| birth name | David Robert Jones |
| birth date | January 08, 1947 |
| birth place | Brixton, London, England |
| occupation | Musician, singer-songwriter,record producer, actor |
| years active | 1964–present |
| instrument | |
| genre | Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop |
| associated acts | The Riot Squad, Tin Machine |
| label | Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye |
| website | davidbowie.com }} |
Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture." The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.
In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album ''Young Americans'', which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album ''Low'' (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.
After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes" and its parent album, ''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)''. He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topping single "Under Pressure", then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with the album ''Let's Dance'', which yielded the hit singles "Let's Dance", "China Girl", and "Modern Love". Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was ''Reality'' (2003), which was supported by the 2003–2004 Reality Tour.
Biographer David Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure." In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the United States, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all-time.
History
1947–62: early years
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), of Irish descent, worked as a cinema usherette, while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones, was a promotions officer for Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, located near the border of the south London areas of Brixton and Stockwell. A neighbour recalled that "London in the forties was the worst possible place, and the worst possible time for a child to grow up in." Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School. His singing voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical ability. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Upon listening to "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God". Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin of mine dance to ... 'Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that." By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukelele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet." Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.
It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford writes:
Bowie studied art, music, and design, including layout and typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a local musician. He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would lose the sight of the eye, and he was forced to stay out of school for a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation. The damage could not be fully repaired, leaving him with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil (the latter producing Bowie's appearance of having different coloured eyes, though each iris has the same blue colour). Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.
1962–68: the Konrads to the Riot Squad
Graduating from his plastic saxophone to a real instrument in 1962, Bowie formed his first band at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them. When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his band-mates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul — "I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall. "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by The Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth unsuccessful single release, "Do Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number and Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.
Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie re-named himself after the 19th century American frontiersman Jim Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", utilising sped-up Chipmunk-style vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, ''David Bowie'', an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It would be his last release for two years.
Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus." Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside." Studying the dramatic arts under Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year. After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.
1969–73: psychedelic folk to glam rock
''Space Oddity'' to ''Hunky Dory''
Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for another by Kit Kat. Intended as a vehicle to promote the singer, a 30-minute film featuring performances from his repertoire, ''Love You till Tuesday'', was made. Although not released until 1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that would provide his commercial breakthrough. "Space Oddity" was released later in the year to coincide with the first moon landing. Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. This soon morphed into the Beckenham Arts Lab, and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song "Memory of a Free Festival". "Space Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit. Bowie's second album, ''Space Oddity'', followed in November; originally issued in the UK as ''David Bowie'', it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was instead titled ''Man of Words/Man of Music''. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They would marry within a year. Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence. Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie now began to sense a lack: "a full-time band for gigs and recording—people he could relate to personally". The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session guitarist. A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, was joined by Tony Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. After a brief and disastrous manifestation as the Hype, the group reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style; matters came to a head when Bowie, enraged, accused, "You're fucking up my album." Cambridge summarily quit and was replaced by Mick Woodmansey. Not long after, in a move that would result in years of litigation, at the conclusion of which Bowie would be forced to pay Pitt compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with Tony Defries.
The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, ''The Man Who Sold the World'' (1970). Characterised by the heavy rock sound of his new backing band, it was a marked departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by ''Space Oddity''. To promote it in the United States, Mercury Records financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later would depict the singer wearing a dress: taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews—to the approval of critics, including ''Rolling Stone''s John Mendelsohn who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall"—and in the street, to mixed reaction including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian, producing a gun and telling Bowie to "kiss my ass". During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that would eventually find form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol". A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".
''Hunky Dory'' (1971) found Visconti, Bowie's producer and bassist, supplanted in both roles, by Ken Scott and Trevor Bolder respectively. The album saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as "Kooks", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word ''zoe'', life.) Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", a Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant commercial success at the time.
''Ziggy Stardust''
With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture". Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed red, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth on 10 February 1972. The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the course of the next six months and creating, as described by Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (1972), combining the hard rock elements of ''The Man Who Sold the World'' with the lighter experimental rock and pop of ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July ''Top of the Pops'' performance of the song. The album, which would remain in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old ''Hunky Dory''. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing", and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.Bowie contributed backing vocals to Lou Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough ''Transformer'', co-producing the album with Mick Ronson. His own ''Aladdin Sane'' (1973) topped the UK chart, his first number one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. ''Aladdin Sane'' spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".
Bowie's love of acting led his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and, later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity." His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both ''Ziggy Stardust'' and ''Aladdin Sane'', were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar. Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final show was released in 1983 for the film ''Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''.
After breaking up the Spiders from Mars, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought: ''The Man Who Sold the World'' had been re-released in 1972 along with ''Space Oddity''. "Life on Mars?", from ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June 1973 and made number three in the UK singles chart. Entering the same chart in September, Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome", would reach number four. ''Pin Ups'', a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at number one, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums currently in the UK chart to six.
1974–1976: Soul, funk and the Thin White Duke
Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. ''Diamond Dogs'' (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's ''1984'' to music. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and number five in the US. To promote it, Bowie launched the Diamond Dogs Tour, visiting cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, ''Cracked Actor'', featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with the singer's slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems. He later commented that the accompanying live album, ''David Live'', ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory". ''David Live'' nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in Bowie's cover of "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was ''Young Americans'' (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now." The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. ''Young Americans'' yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and Carlos Alomar. Lennon would call Bowie's work as "great, but just rock and roll with lipstick on". Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show ''Soul Train'', Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden Years", his October single, and that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it. ''Young Americans'' was a commercial success in both the US and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US. Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record sales (over a million copies of ''Ziggy Stardust'' alone), existed essentially on loose change." In 1975, in a move echoing Pitt's acrimonious dismissal 15 years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door." Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman in turn would be awarded substantial compensation when Bowie fired him the following year.
''Station to Station'' (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'' the same year. Developing the funk and soul of ''Young Americans'', ''Station to Station'' also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence." His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree.
''Station to Station''s January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America. Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funkier "TVC 15" and "Stay". The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis—would continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in ''NME''. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke. "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...". According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in ''The Times'', "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."
1976–79: the Berlin era
Bowie moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use increased; so too did his interest in pursuits outside his musical career. He took up painting, producing a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. [...] Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography".Before the end of 1976, Bowie's interest in the burgeoning German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to West Berlin to clean up and revitalise his career. Working with Brian Eno while sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with Iggy Pop, he began to focus on minimalist, ambient music for the first of three albums, co-produced with Tony Visconti, that would become known as his Berlin Trilogy. During the same period, Iggy Pop, with Bowie as a co-writer and musician, completed his solo album debut, ''The Idiot'', and its follow-up, ''Lust for Life'', touring the UK, Europe, and the US in March and April 1977. ''Low'' (1977), partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu!, evidenced a move away from narration in Bowie's songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were sporadic and optional. It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, ''Low'' yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of ''Station to Station'' in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Leading contemporary composer Philip Glass described ''Low'' as "a work of genius" in 1992, when he used it as the basis for his ''Symphony No. 1 "Low"''; subsequently, Glass used Bowie's next album as the basis for his 1996 ''Symphony No. 4 "Heroes"''. Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".
Echoing ''Low''s minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, ''"Heroes"'' (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. Like ''Low'', ''"Heroes"'' evinced the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of Berlin. Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesizers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had been released in both German and French. Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc Bolan's television show ''Marc'', and again two days later for Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. Five years later, the duet would prove a worldwide seasonal hit, charting in the UK at number three on Christmas Day, 1982.
After completing ''Low'' and ''"Heroes"'', Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. [...] Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album ''Stage'', released the same year.
The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", ''Lodger'' (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of New Wave and World Music, in places incorporating Hejaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop. The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's ''Sergeant Pepper'' [...] a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." As described by biographer Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." ''Lodger'' reached number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ". Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angela initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980.
1980–89: from superstar to megastar
''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'' (1980) produced the number one hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time. While ''Scary Monsters'' utilised principles established by the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge included conspicuous guitar contributions from Robert Fripp, Pete Townshend, Chuck Hammer and Tom Verlaine. As "Ashes to Ashes" hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September, starring in ''The Elephant Man''.Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number one single. The same year, he made a cameo appearance in the German film ''Christiane F.'', a real-life story of teenage drug addiction in 1970s Berlin. The soundtrack, in which Bowie's music featured prominently, was released as ''Christiane F.'' a few months later. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1981 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play ''Baal''. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play, recorded earlier in Berlin, was released as ''David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal''. In March 1982, the month before Paul Schrader's film ''Cat People'' came out, Bowie's title song, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", was released as a single, becoming a minor US hit and entering the UK top 30.
Bowie reached a new peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with ''Let's Dance''. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top twenty hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of acclaimed promotional videos that, as described by biographer David Buckley, "were totally absorbing and activated key archetypes in the pop world. 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aborigine couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially-censored) beach lovemaking scene (a homage to the film ''From Here to Eternity''), was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV. By 1983, Bowie had emerged as one of the most important video artists of the day. ''Let's Dance'' was followed by the Serious Moonlight Tour, during which Bowie was accompanied by guitarist Earl Slick and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The world tour lasted six months and was extremely popular.
''Tonight'' (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Tina Turner and, once again, Iggy Pop. It included a number of cover songs, among them the 1966 Beach Boys hit "God Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit "Blue Jean", itself the inspiration for a short film that won Bowie a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, "Jazzin' for Blue Jean". Bowie performed at Wembley in 1985 for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. During the event, the video for a fundraising single was premièred, Bowie's duet with Jagger. "Dancing in the Street" quickly went to number one on release. The same year, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group to record "This Is Not America" for the soundtrack of ''The Falcon and the Snowman''. Released as a single, the song became a top 40 hit in the UK and US.
Bowie was given a role in the 1986 film ''Absolute Beginners''. It was poorly received by critics, but Bowie's theme song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also appeared as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 Jim Henson film ''Labyrinth'', for which he wrote five songs. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's ''Never Let Me Down'', where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead offering harder rock with an industrial/techno dance edge. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits "Day-In, Day-Out" (his 60th single), "Time Will Crawl", and "Never Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir", calling it "an awful album". Supporting ''Never Let Me Down'', and preceded by nine promotional press shows, the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour commenced on 30 May. Bowie's backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing.
1989–91: Tin Machine
Bowie shelved his solo career in 1989, retreating to the relative anonymity of band membership for the first time since the early 1970s. A hard-rocking quartet, Tin Machine came into being after Bowie began to work experimentally with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. The line-up was completed by Tony and Hunt Sales, known by Bowie since the late 1970s for their contribution, on drums and bass respectively, to Iggy Pop's 1977 album ''Lust For Life''.Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making. The band's album debut, ''Tin Machine'' (1989), was initially popular, though its politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie described one song as "a simplistic, naive, radical, laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis"; in the view of biographer Christopher Sandford, "It took nerve to denounce drugs, fascism and TV [...] in terms that reached the literary level of a comic book." EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production". The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK. Tin Machine's first world tour was a commercial success, but there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member. A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label. Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band. Tin Machine began work on a second album, but Bowie put the venture on hold and made a return to solo work. Performing his early hits during the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, he found commercial success and acclaim once again.
In October 1990, a decade after his divorce from Angela, Bowie and Somali-born supermodel Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. Bowie recalled, "I was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely immediate." They would marry in 1992. Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed little interest in a second. ''Tin Machine II''s arrival was marked by a widely publicised and ill-timed conflict over the cover art: after production had begun, the new record label, Victory, deemed the depiction of four ancient nude Kouroi statues, judged by Bowie to be "in exquisite taste", "a show of wrong, obscene images", requiring air-brushing and patching to render the figures sexless. Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album ''Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby'' failed commercially, the band drifted apart, and Bowie, though he continued to collaborate with Gabrels, resumed his solo career.
1992–99: electronica
In April 1992 Bowie appeared at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen frontman's death the previous year. As well as performing "Heroes" and "All the Young Dudes", he was joined on "Under Pressure" by Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part. Four days later, Bowie and Iman were married in Switzerland. Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel, under curfew: the 1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They settled in New York instead.1993 saw the release of Bowie's first solo offering since his Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced ''Black Tie White Noise''. Making prominent use of electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with ''Let's Dance'' producer Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity, hitting the number one spot on the UK charts and spawning three top 40 hits, including the top 10 song "Jump They Say". Bowie explored new directions on ''The Buddha of Suburbia'' (1993), a soundtrack album of incidental music composed for the TV series adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel. It contained some of the new elements introduced in ''Black Tie White Noise'', and also signalled a move towards alternative rock. The album was a critical success but received a low-key release and only made number 87 in the UK charts.
Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial ''Outside'' (1995) was originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved US and UK chart success, and yielded three top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reaction from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February the following year, the tour saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist.
Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996. Incorporating experiments in British jungle and drum 'n' bass, ''Earthling'' (1997) was a critical and commercial success in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album became UK top 40 hits. Bowie's song "I'm Afraid of Americans" from the Paul Verhoeven film ''Showgirls'' was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the song's 16-week stay in the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The Earthling Tour took in Europe and North America between June and November 1997. Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record "(Safe in This) Sky Life" for ''The Rugrats Movie''. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, it would later be re-recorded and released as "Safe" on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single "Everyone Says 'Hi'". The reunion led to other collaborations including a limited-edition single release version of Placebo's track "Without You I'm Nothing", co-produced by Visconti, with Bowie's harmonised vocal added to the original recording.
1999–present: Neoclassicist Bowie
Bowie created the soundtrack for ''Omikron'', a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also appeared as characters. Released the same year and containing re-recorded tracks from Omikron, his album '''Hours...''' featured a song with lyrics by the winner of his "Cyber Song Contest" Internet competition, Alex Grant. Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's exit from heavy electronica. Sessions for the planned album ''Toy'', intended to feature new versions of some of Bowie's earliest pieces as well as three new songs, commenced in 2000, but the album was never released. Bowie and Visconti continued their collaboration, producing a new album of completely original songs instead: the result of the sessions was the 2002 album ''Heathen''. Alexandria Zahra Jones, Bowie and Iman's daughter, was born on 15 August.In October 2001, Bowie opened The Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's "America", followed by a full band performance of "Heroes". 2002 saw the release of ''Heathen'', and, during the second half of the year, the Heathen Tour. Taking in Europe and North America, the tour opened at London's annual ''Meltdown'' festival, for which Bowie was that year appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the festival were Philip Glass, Television and The Polyphonic Spree. As well as songs from the new album, the tour featured material from Bowie's ''Low'' era. ''Reality'' (2003) followed, and its accompanying world tour, the A Reality Tour, with an estimated attendance of 722,000, grossed more than any other in 2004. Onstage in Oslo, Norway, on 18 June, Bowie was hit in the eye with a lollipop thrown by a fan; a week later he suffered chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked artery, requiring an emergency angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining 14 dates of the tour were cancelled.
Since recuperating from the heart surgery, Bowie has reduced his musical output, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1972 song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film ''Shrek 2''. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the film ''Stealth''. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed back-up vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album ''Return to Cookie Mountain'', made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album ''No Balance Palace''.
Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, "I’m taking a year off—no touring, no albums." He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for Keep a Child Alive.
Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival, selecting musicians and artists for the Manhattan event, and performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, ''Anywhere I Lay My Head''. On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 moon landing—and Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with "Space Oddity"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest inviting members of the public to create a remix. ''A Reality Tour'', a double album of live material from the 2003 concert tour, was released in January 2010.
In late March 2011, ''Toy'', Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was leaked onto the internet, containing material used for ''Heathen'' and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard new versions of his early back catalogue.
Acting career
Biographer David Buckley writes, "The essence of Bowie's contribution to popular music can be found in his outstanding ability to analyse and select ideas from outside the mainstream—from art, literature, theatre and film—and to bring them inside, so that the currency of pop is constantly being changed." Buckley says "Just one person took glam rock to new rarefied heights and invented character-playing in pop, marrying theatre and popular music in one seamless, powerful whole." Bowie's career has also been punctuated by various roles in film and theatre productions, earning him some acclaim as an actor in his own right.The beginnings of his acting career predate his commercial breakthrough as a musician. Studying avant-garde theatre and mime under Lindsay Kemp, he was given the role of Cloud in Kemp's 1967 theatrical production ''Pierrot in Turquoise'' (later made into the 1970 television film ''The Looking Glass Murders''). In the black-and-white short ''The Image'' (1969), he played a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him. The same year, the film of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel ''The Virgin Soldiers'' saw Bowie make a brief appearance as an extra. Bowie starred in ''The Hunger'' (1983), a revisionist vampire film, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In Nagisa Oshima's film the same year, ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence'', based on Laurens van der Post's novel ''The Seed and the Sower'', Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Bowie had a cameo in ''Yellowbeard'', a 1983 pirate comedy created by Monty Python members, and a small part as Colin, the hitman in the 1985 film ''Into the Night''. He declined to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film ''A View to a Kill'' (1985).
''Absolute Beginners'' (1986), a rock musical based on Colin MacInnes's 1959 novel about London life, featured Bowie's music and presented him with a minor acting role. The same year, Jim Henson's dark fantasy ''Labyrinth'' found him with the part of Jareth, the king of the goblins. Two years later he played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film ''The Last Temptation of Christ''. Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in ''The Linguini Incident'' (1991), and the mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'' (1992). He took a small but pivotal role as Andy Warhol in ''Basquiat'', artist/director Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and co-starred in Giovanni Veronesi's Spaghetti Western ''Il Mio West'' (1998, released as ''Gunslinger's Revenge'' in the US in 2005) as the most feared gunfighter in the region. He played the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's ''Everybody Loves Sunshine'' (1999), and appeared in the TV horror serial of ''The Hunger''. In ''Mr. Rice's Secret'' (2000), he played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve-year-old, and the following year appeared as himself in ''Zoolander''.
Bowie portrayed physicist Nikola Tesla in the Christopher Nolan film, ''The Prestige'' (2006), which was about the bitter rivalry between two magicians in the early 20th century. He voice-acted in the animated film ''Arthur and the Invisibles'' as the powerful villain Maltazard, and lent his voice to the character Lord Royal Highness in the ''SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis'' television film. In the 2008 film ''August'', directed by Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie, alongside Josh Hartnett and Rip Torn, with whom he had worked in 1976 for ''The Man Who Fell to Earth''.
Sexual orientation
Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." Bowie declared himself bisexual in an interview with Michael Watts of ''Melody Maker'' in January 1972, a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.In a 1983 interview with ''Rolling Stone'', Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made", and on other occasions he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being".
Asked in 2002 by ''Blender'' whether he still believed his public declaration was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied: }}
Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock", and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time, experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional'." Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world [...] and they created their bisexual fantasy." Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' [...] Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women."
Musicianship
From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie has employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced not only by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley but also by the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, ''David Bowie'' (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register [...] his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."
Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's chamaeleon-like nature is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them [...] His voice changes dramatically from section to section."
Bowie plays many instruments, among them electric, acoustic, and twelve-string guitar, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, keyboards including piano, synthesizers and Mellotron, harmonica, Stylophone, xylophone, vibraphone, koto, drums and percussion, and string instruments including viola and cello.
Legacy
Bowie's innovative songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent development. A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie, according to music historians Schinder and Schwartz, has joint responsibility with Marc Bolan for creating the genre. At the same time, he inspired the innovators of the punk rock music movement—historian Michael Campbell calls him "one of punk's seminal influences". While punk musicians trashed the conventions of pop stardom, Bowie moved on again—into a more abstract style of music making that would in turn become a transforming influence. Biographer David Buckley writes, "At a time when punk rock was noisily reclaiming the three-minute pop song in a show of public defiance, Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation." Bowie's record company sought to convey his unique status in popular music with the slogan, "There is old wave, there is new wave, and there is Bowie..." Musicologist James Perone credits him with having "brought sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently acknowledge the intellectual depth of his work and influence.Buckley writes that, in an early 1970s pop world that was "Bloated, self-important, leather-clad, self-satisfied, ... Bowie challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day." As described by John Peel, "The one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change." Buckley says that Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star", with the result that "After Bowie there has been no other pop icon of his stature, because the pop world that produces these rock gods doesn't exist any more. ... The fierce partisanship of the cult of Bowie was also unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." Buckley concludes that "Bowie is both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced ... has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. ... His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."
Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Through perpetual reinvention, he has seen his influence continue to broaden and extend: music reviewer Brad Filicky writes that over the decades, "Bowie has become known as a musical chameleon, changing and dictating trends as much as he has altered his style to fit", influencing fashion and pop culture to a degree "second only to Madonna". Biographer Thomas Forget adds, "Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie."
Awards and recognition
Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, the song "Space Oddity", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality. For his performance in the 1976 science fiction film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'', he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the ensuing decades he has been honoured with numerous awards for his music and its accompanying videos, receiving, among others, two Grammy Awards and two BRIT Awards.
In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music the same year. He declined the British honour Commander of the British Empire in 2000, and a knighthood in 2003, stating: "I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for."
Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 136 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded 9 Platinum, 11 Gold and 8 Silver albums, and in the United States, 5 Platinum and 7 Gold. In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time and the 23rd best singer of all time. Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.
Discography
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Category:1947 births Category:Bisexual actors Category:Bisexual musicians Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Decca Records artists Category:EMI Records artists Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English multi-instrumentalists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English record producers Category:English rock musicians Category:English singer-songwriters Category:Glam rock Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Category:LGBT parents Category:LGBT people from England Category:Living people Category:Musicians from London Category:People from Brixton Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Singers from London Category:Virgin Records artists Category:Androgyny
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| Coordinates | 39°46′5.88″N86°9′29.52″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Dan Bull |
| Alt | A picture of Dan Bull in Parliament Square, holding a handheld megaphone, standing on a raised platform and addressing protesters |
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Daniel Bull |
| Alias | Douglby, Dan Bull |
| Born | January 01, 1986 Bromsgrove, Worcestershire,England |
| Origin | Bromsgrove, Worcestershire,England |
| Genre | Hip hop |
| Occupation | Rapper, songwriter |
| Years active | 2006–present |
| Label | Unsigned |
| Website | }} |
Dan Bull is an English rapper and songwriter known for his politically orientated lyrics and specific addressing of high profile figures in his music. His music has been featured in the British press as part of attempts to save BBC Radio 6, campaign against the Digital Economy Bill, and protest in favour of filesharing.
Musical career
2006 - Present: ''Other Work''
Dan Bull has released songs on subjects such as digital rights, the music industry, and gaming. Bull's actions have gained attention, specifically from the company TalkTalk who requested to team up with him against the Digital Economy Bill.
2009: ''Safe''
Safe tells the story of a young man who attempts suicide at the same time as a global thermonuclear holocaust and awakens in a new, ambiguous nirvana. Along the way, Dan Bull covers such topics as summer sunshine, friendship, love and loss, alienation, politics, death, religion, suicide and insanity.
''2009 - Present: ''Upcoming Album''
Bull announced via his blog that the upcoming album would be available in early 2011. Stating that: "It’s going to be a continuation of the narrative of my first album, but will have a very different feel and mood overall."
Discography
Videos
References
External links
Category:1986 births Category:Living people Category:English rappers Category:Political music Category:People from Worcestershire
fr:Dan BullThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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