ABSTRACT

African people have been on earth longer than any other people. The oldest human remains were found in Ethiopia, with estimates dating between 130,000 and 195,000 years old. This chapter describes some of the experiences of African Americans during various periods and the impact that they have had on their relationships, marriages, and families and then brings these experiences to contemporary times. The enslavement of people of African descent was a tremendous experience that lasted in the United States for approximately 250 years. Chancellor Williams explains in The Destruction of Black Civilization that for every 2 million that made it, another million died. The emancipation of more than 4 million African American people created a crisis of astronomical proportions for their families. Because of social and economic conditions, emerging from rising segregation and disenfranchisement, terrorization, and violence, including lynchings in rural areas in the South, African Americans began to migrate to urban areas.