African Americans or Black Americans, also formerly called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group. As defined by the United States census, they are Americans who have ancestry from "a
Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia, illustration from 1670
The first slave auction at New Amsterdam in 1655; illustration from 1895 by Howard Pyle
Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769
Crispus Attucks, the first "martyr" of the American Revolution. He was of Native American and African American descent.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American former politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American to
African Americans
…surpassed the peak number who were involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic slave trade. On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama—the son of a White American mother and a Kenyan father—defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected…
Obama (right) with grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham, mother Ann Dunham, and half-sister Maya Soetoro, mid-1970s in Honolulu
Obama's Indonesian school record in St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Elementary School. He was enrolled as "Barry Soetoro" (no. 1), and wrongly recorded as an Indonesian citizen (no. 3) and a Muslim (no. 4).
Obama poses in the Green Room of the White House with wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia in September 2009