African Americans

African Americans

Proportion of African Americans in each U.S. state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico as of the 2020 United States Census
Total population
46,936,733 (2020)[1] 14.2% of the total U.S. population (2020)[1] 41,104,200 (2020) (one race)[1] 12.4% of the total U.S. population (2020)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Texas	3,552,997[2]
Georgia (U.S. state)	3,320,513
Florida	3,246,381
New York	2,986,172
North Carolina	2,140,217
Maryland	1,820,472
Illinois	1,808,271
Virginia	1,607,581
Ohio	1,478,781
Louisiana	1,464,023
Pennsylvania	1,423,169
Michigan	1,376,579
Alabama	1,296,162
Languages
English (American English dialects, African-American English) Louisiana Creole French Gullah Creole English African languages
Religion
Predominantly Protestant (71 %) including Historically Black Protestant (53%), Evangelical Protestant (14%), and Mainline Protestant (4%); significant[nb 1] others include Catholic (5%), Jehovah's Witnesses (2%), Muslim (2%), and unaffiliated (18%)[3]
Related ethnic groups
Black Canadians, Louisiana Creole people, Gullah people

Part of a series on
African Americans
History Periods Timeline Atlantic slave trade Slavery in the colonial United States Revolutionary War Slavery in the United States Slavery and military history during the Civil War Reconstruction era Jim Crow era Civil Rights Movement Black Power movement Post–civil rights era Aspects Agriculture history Business history Military history Migrations Great Migration Second Great Migration New Great Migration
Culture Lifeways Family structure Soul food Music Dance Names Folktales Neighborhoods Black church Schools Black schools Historically black colleges and universities Greek and fraternal organizations Stepping Academic study Studies Literature Art Celebrations Martin Luther King Jr. Day Black History Month Juneteenth Kwanzaa Economic class Middle class Upper class Billionaires Symbols and ideas African American Beauty Black is beautiful Black pride African-American hair Good hair "Lift Every Voice and Sing" Pan-African flag Self-determination
Religion Institutions Black church Theologies Black theology Womanist theology Minorities and sects Black Hebrew Israelites African-American Muslims
Politics Organizations Congressional Black Caucus National Black Caucus of State Legislators National Conference of Black Mayors Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Ideologies Afrocentrism Black Power Anarchism Capitalism Conservatism Leftism Nationalism Populism Garveyism Pan-Africanism Back-to-Africa movement
Civic / economic groups Organizations National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Urban League (NUL) Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) United Negro College Fund (UNCF) National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) TransAfrica Forum Black conductors
Sports Negro league baseball Athletic associations and conferences Central (CIAA) Southern (SIAC) Mid-Eastern (MEAC) Southwestern (SWAC)
Sub-communities Multiethnic African-American Jews Black Indians Enslaved African-American ancestry Americo-Liberians Sierra Leone Creole Nova Scotia Gullah Sexual orientation LGBT community
Dialects and languages Dialects African-American English African-American Vernacular English Afro-Seminole Creole Language Gullah Louisiana Creole
Population U.S. states Tennessee Florida Alabama Georgia Mississippi South Carolina North Carolina Louisiana Maryland California U.S. cities Black mecca List of neighborhoods Omaha, Nebraska Davenport, Iowa Atlanta New York City San Francisco Historic places South Carolina Florida District of Columbia Texas Mississippi North Carolina Georgia Missouri West Virginia Omaha, Nebraska Population count U.S. states and territories U.S. metropolitan areas U.S. cities U.S. communities Places by plurality of population Diaspora Nova Scotia Liberia Sierra Leone Ghana Settlements in Africa France
Prejudice Racism Race and ethnicity in the United States Census Reparations for slavery School segregation in the United States Stereotypes and media depictions Hollywood Minstrel show Blackface Magical Negro Criminal stereotypes
Portal Category Index
v t e

An African American is a person who lives in the United States whose ancestors were from Africa. It could also mean a first generation African immigrant who has citizenship in the United States. Some African Americans are also of Caribbean or Afro-Latino ancestry.^[4][5]

The term is usually associated with black people. This is because of many African Americans' dark skin due to having Sub-Saharan African ancestors. Many Africans were brought to the United States in the slave trade. Many of the U.S. population (especially in many urban or city areas) are African American. Many others live in rural areas in the Southern United States. Detroit has the highest percent of blacks in the nation, and many live in other big cities. Cities with the highest percent of African Americans are Jackson, Mississippi; New Orleans; Memphis; Miami Gardens; and Savannah, Georgia.^[6] New York City and Chicago have the largest population of African Americans. Other cities with a high African American population are Baltimore, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, Washington, D.C. and Dallas. States with the highest percentage of African Americans are Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Alabama, Delaware, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. African Americans are third largest ethnic group in the United States after White Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans. African Americans are the second largest ancestral group in the United States after Germans.^[7] Many African Americans have European and Native American ancestry.^[8] The first African slaves were brought on a Dutch boat from Angola in 1619 to the British colony of Jamestown in Virginia.^[9][10] New York City has the largest African American population by city.^[11]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} https://census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-and-2020-census.html Archived 2021-10-07 at the Wayback Machine. 2020 U.S. Census
2. ↑ "Black Population by State".
3. ↑ "Religious tradition by race/ethnicity (2014)". The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
4. ↑ Magazine, Smithsonian. "The Changing Definition of African-American". Smithsonian Magazine.
5. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/how-us-census-ignores-afro-latinos/
6. ↑ "Top 10 Cities with Highest African American Population of 100,000 or more people". infoplease.com. Archived from the original on August 19, 2021. Retrieved August 6, 2021.
7. ↑ "Largest Ethnic Groups And Nationalities In The United States". WorldAtlas. July 18, 2019.
8. ↑ Zakharia, Fouad; Basu, Analabha; Absher, Devin; Assimes, Themistocles L.; Go, Alan S.; Hlatky, Mark A.; Iribarren, Carlos; Knowles, Joshua W.; Li, Jun; Narasimhan, Balasubramanian; Sidney, Steven; Southwick, Audrey; Myers, Richard M.; Quertermous, Thomas; Risch, Neil; Tang, Hua (December 22, 2009). "Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans". Genome Biology. 10 (12): R141. doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141. ISSN 1465-6906. PMC 2812948. PMID 20025784.
9. ↑ "How slavery flourished in the United States in charts and maps". Culture. August 23, 2019.
10. ↑ "In 1619 enslaved Africans first arrived in colonial Virginia. Here's the history". History. August 13, 2019.
11. ↑ Office, US Census Bureau Public Information. "Majority of African Americans Live in 10 States; New York City and Chicago Are Cities With Largest Black Populations - Census 2000 - Newsroom - U.S. Census Bureau". www.census.gov.