Digital Glossary

Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery. This term can be used both formally and informally. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and set slaves free. King Charles I of Spain, usually known as Emperor Charles V, was following the example of Louis X of France, who had abolished slavery within the Kingdom of France in 1315. He passed a law which would have abolished colonial slavery in 1542, although this law was not passed in the largest colonial states, and it was not enforced as a result.

In the late 17th century, the Roman Catholic Church officially condemned the slave trade in response to a plea by Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça, and it was also vehemently condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839. The abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery.

Black people is a skin color-based classification for specific people with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all black people have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term 'black' is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is mostly used for people of Sub-Saharan African descent and the indigenous peoples of Oceania.

Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.

The term 'black' may also be capitalized; the AP Stylebook changed its guide to capitalize the 'b' in Black in 2020.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified 'black', and these social constructs have changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for 'blackness' vary.

In the United Kingdom, 'black' was historically equivalent with 'person of color', a general term for non-European peoples.

 

Black people is a skin group-based classification used for specific people with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all black people have dark skin; however, in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western World, the term black is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is mostly used for the people of Sub-Saharan African descent, those of Arab descent and the indigenous peoples of Oceania, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. (ΑΦΑ) is the first African-American, intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved into a fraternity with a founding date of December 4, 1906, at Cornell. It employs an icon from Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza, as its symbol. Its aims are 'Manly Deeds, Scholarship, and Love For All Mankind,' and its motto is 'First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All.' Its archives are preserved at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Chapters were chartered at Howard University and Virginia Union University in 1907. The fraternity has over 290,000 members and has been open to men of all races since 1945. Currently, there are more than 730 active chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia. It is the largest predominately African-American fraternity and one of the ten largest collegiate fraternities in the nation.Alpha Phi Alpha is a social organization with a service organization mission and provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World Wars, and Civil Rights Movement. The fraternity addresses social issues such as apartheid, AIDS, urban housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues of interest to people of color. National programs and initiatives of the fraternity include A Voteless People Is a Hopeless People, My Brother's Keeper, Go To High School, Go To College, Project Alpha, and the World Policy Council. It also conducts philanthropic programming initiatives with the March of Dimes, Head Start, the Boy Scouts of America, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Members of this fraternity include many historical civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Bois, John Mack (civic leader) and Dick Gregory. Other world renowned-members include political activist Cornel West, musicians Duke Ellington and Lionel Richie, NBA legend Walt Frazier, Jamaican Prime Minister Norman Manley, Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Investor and founder of Vista Equity Partners Robert F. Smith, United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, Academy Award-winning director Barry Jenkins, six time MTV Video Music Awards - winning director/choreographer Frank Gatson Jr., hero of the Nashville Waffle House shooting, James Shaw Jr., and ESPN sportscasters Stuart Scott, Stan Verrett and Jay Harris. Alpha Phi Alpha was directly responsible for the conception, funding, and construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial next to the National Mall in Washington D.C.

The American Civil War (also known by other names) was a civil war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North (Union) and the South (Confederacy). The most studied and written about episode in U.S. history, the Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North, which also included some geographically western and southern states, proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery. Of the 34 U.S. states in February 1861, seven Southern slave states were declared by partisans to have seceded from the country, and a Confederate States of America was organized in rebellion against the U.S. Constitutional government. The Confederacy grew to control at least a majority of territory in eleven states, and it claimed the additional states of Kentucky and Missouri by assertions from native secessionists fleeing Union authority, but without territory or population therein; these states were given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. The two remaining slave states, Delaware and Maryland, were invited to join the Confederacy, but nothing substantial developed due to intervention by federal troops. The Confederate States was never diplomatically recognized by the government of the United States or by that of any foreign country. The states that remained loyal to the U.S. were known as the Union. The Union and the Confederacy quickly raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought mostly in the South over the course of four years. Intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 people dead, more than the number of U.S. military deaths in all other wars combined.The war effectively ended April 9, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate generals throughout the southern states followed suit, the last surrender on land occurring June 23. Much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially the transportation systems. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million black slaves were freed. During the Reconstruction era that followed the war, national unity was slowly restored, the national government expanded its power, and civil and political rights were granted to freed black slaves through amendments to the Constitution and federal legislation.

An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). Ancestor is 'any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited.'

Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-miscegenation laws were first introduced in North America from the late seventeenth century onwards by several of the Thirteen Colonies, and subsequently by many US states and US territories and remained in force in many US states until 1967.

After the Second World War, an increasing number of states repealed their anti-miscegenation laws. In 1967, in landmark case Loving v. Virginia, the remaining anti-miscegenation laws were held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren.

A parent is a caregiver of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is the caretaker of a child (where 'child' refers to offspring, not necessarily age). A biological parent is a person whose gamete resulted in a child, a male through the sperm, and a female through the ovum. Biological parents are first-degree relatives and have 50% genetic meet. A female can also become a parent through surrogacy. Some parents may be adoptive parents, who nurture and raise an offspring, but are not biologically related to the child. Orphans without adoptive parents can be raised by their grandparents or other family members.

The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.

[Black Consciousness'] origins were deeply rooted in Christianity. In 1966, the Anglican Church under the incumbent, Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor, convened a meeting which later on led to the foundation of the University Christian Movement (UCM). This was to become the vehicle for Black Consciousness.

Black is beautiful is a cultural movement that was started in the United States in the 1960s by African Americans. It later spread beyond the United States, most prominently in the writings of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko in South Africa. Black is beautiful got its roots from the Négritude movement of the 1930s. Negritude argued for the importance of a Pan-African racial identity among people of African descent worldwide.

It aims to dispel the racist notion that black people's natural features such as skin color, facial features and hair are inherently ugly. John Rock was long thought to be the first person to coin the phrase 'black is beautiful' — during a speech in 1858—but historical records indicate that he never actually used the specific phrase on that day.

Black nationalism (BN) advocates a racial definition (or redefinition) of national identity. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all Black nationalist ideologies are unity and self-determination—that is, separation, or independence, from European society. Martin Delany (1812-1885), an African-American abolitionist, is considered to be the grandfather of Black nationalism.

The Black Wall Street may refer to: Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma, a neighborhood containing many African-American businesses in the early 20th century Tulsa race riot of 1921, in which a white mob destroyed much of Greenwood Jackson Ward, a thriving African-American business community in Richmond, Virginia Black Wall Street (Durham, North Carolina) Parrish Street, in Durham, North Carolina, an area of successful black-owned businesses

The black-and-tan faction was a faction in the History of the United States Republican Party in the South from the 1870s to the 1960s. It replaced the Negro Republican Party faction's name after the 1890s. Southern Republicans were divided into two factions: the lily-white faction, which was practically all-white, and the biracial black-and-tan faction. The former was strongest in heavily white counties. The final victory of its opponent the lily-white faction came in 1964.

The Blue Dog Coalition, commonly known as the Blue Dogs or Blue Dog Democrats, is a caucus of United States Congressional Representatives from the Democratic Party who identify as fiscally-responsible, centrist Democrats. The caucus professes a pragmatic approach to governance, an independence from leadership of both parties, and a mission of fiscal responsibility and promoting national defense. As of February 2019, the Blue Dog Coalition consisted of 27 members. The co-chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition for the 116th Congress are U.S. Representatives Anthony Brindisi (NY-22), Lou Correa (CA-46), Stephanie Murphy (FL-07), and Tom O'Halleran (AZ-01). The chair of the Blue Dog PAC, the Coalition's political organization, is Rep. Kurt Schrader. Rep. Murphy is the first woman of color to lead the Blue Dog Coalition in its history.

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states (the Eastern Bloc), and the United States with its allies (the Western Bloc) after World War II. The historiography of the conflict began between 1946 (the year U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan's 'Long Telegram' from Moscow cemented a U.S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism) and 1947 (the introduction of the Truman Doctrine). The ensuing Cold War period began to de-escalate after the Revolutions of 1989.

The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy. It is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage (notably the internationally successful James Bond book and film franchise) and the threat of nuclear warfare. Meanwhile, a renewed state of tension between the Soviet Union's successor state, Russia, and the United States in the 2010s (including its Western allies) and growing tension between an increasingly powerful China and the U.S. and its Western Allies have each been referred to as the Second Cold War.