Abstract
This chapter largely deals with the contributions of enslaved Africans in building the American landscape—particularly in the Southern states, where the rural African-American population remains concentrated. It notes that Africans significantly contributed to the cultural landscape within the American South, including the introduction of certain crops from Africa. Many slaves and free persons of color came by way of various lands in the West Indies, resulting in distinct West Indian and Creole styles of architecture, particularly conspicuous in coastal cities along the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic. The African heritage shotgun house had similar origins and dispersed up the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. The post World War II development of African-American ghettos in Northern cities is described, resulting in several major cities having African-American majority populations. Development of middle class Black business districts and neighborhoods, such as Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, have shaped Southern cities. Recent developments of African-American settlements within the former plantation South are also reviewed. This chapter also notes the recent patterns of immigration of blacks into the United States, both directly from Africa (many of whom are refugees) and from the West Indies, and it describes how their cultural landscapes may reshape our definition of what comprises an African-American.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aiken, Charles S. 1985. New Settlement Pattern of Rural Blacks in the American South. The Geographical Review 75 (4): 383–404.
———. 1990. A New Type of Black Ghetto in the Plantation South. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80 (2): 222–246.
———. 1998. The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Alderman, Derek H., and E. Arnold Modlin Jr. 2014. The Historical Geography of Racialized Landscapes. In North American Odyssey: Historical Geographies for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Craig E. Colten and Geoffrey L. Buckley, 273–290. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Anthony, Carl. 1976a. The Big House and the Slave Quarters: Part I. Prelude to New World Architecture. Landscape 20 (3): 8–19.
———. 1976b. The Big House and the Slave Quarters: Part II. African Contributions to the New World. Landscape 21 (1): 9–15.
Banton, Michael. 2015. What We Now Know about Race and Ethnicity. New York: Berghahn.
Belcher, Max. 1988. A Land and Life Remembered: Americo-Liberian Folk Architecture. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Berlin, Ira. 2010. The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations. New York: Viking.
Boswell, Thomas D., and Terry-Ann Jones. 2007. Caribbean Hispanics: Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans. In Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America, ed. Ines M. Miyares and Christopher A. Airriess, 123–150. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Campanella, Richard. 2006. Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies.
Carney, George O. 1983. The Shotgun House in Oklahoma. Journal of Cultural Geography 4 (1): 57–71.
Chacko, Elizabeth. 2003a. Ethiopian Ethos and the Making of Ethnic Places in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Journal of Cultural Geography 20 (2): 21–42.
———. 2003b. Identity and Assimilation among Young Ethiopian Immigrants in Metropolitan Washington. The Geographical Review 93 (4): 491–506.
Cromartie, John, and Carol B. Stack. 1989. Reinterpretation of Black Return and Nonreturn Migration to the South. The Geographical Review 79 (3): 297–310.
Crutcher, Michael. 2006. Historical Geographies of Race in a New Orleans Afro-Creole Landscape. In Landscape and Race in the United States, ed. Richard H. Schein, 23–38. New York: Routledge.
Cutler, Irving. 1995. Ethnic Chicago. In Geographical Excursions in the Chicago Region, ed. Michael P. Conzen, 21–29. Washington: Association of American Geographers.
Davis, F. James. 1991. Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press.
Dennis, Samuel F. Jr. 2006. Seeing Hampton Plantation: Race and Gender in a South Carolina Heritage Landscape. In Landscape and Race in the United States, ed. Richard H. Schein, 73–94. New York: Routledge.
Ford, Larry, and Ernst Griffin. 1979. Ghettoization of Paradise. The Geographical Review 69 (2): 140–158.
Frazier, John W. 2016. Racial Geography vs. Ethnic Geography: A Distinction. In Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, ed. John W. Frazier, Eugene L. Tettey-Fio, and Norah F. Henry, 3rd ed., 25–45. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Frazier, John W., and Roger Anderson. 2006. People on the Move: African Americans Since the Great Migration. In Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, ed. John W. Frazier and Eugene L. Tettey-Fio, 83–96. Binghamton: Global Academic Publishing.
Friedman, Samantha, Audrey Singer, Marie Price, and Ivan Cheung. 2005. Race, Immigrants, and Residence: A New Racial Geography of Washington, D.C. The Geographical Review 95 (2): 210–230.
Hall, Robert L. 1991. Savoring Africa in the New World. In Seeds of Change: Five Hundred Years Since Columbus, ed. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis, 158–169. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hoelscher, Stephen. 2006. The White-pillared Past: Landscapes of Memory and Race in the American South. In Landscape and Race in the United States, ed. Richard H. Schein, 39–72. New York: Routledge.
Hornsby, Stephen J. 2005. British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America. Hanover: University Press of New England.
Inwood, Joshua F.J. 2009. Contested Memory in the Birthplace of a King: A Case Study of Auburn Avenue and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Park. Cultural Geographies 16 (1): 87–109.
———. 2011. Constructing African American Urban Space in Atlanta, Georgia. The Geographical Review 101 (2): 147–163.
Johnson, Charles. 2008. The End of the Black American Narrative. American Scholar 77 (3): 32–42.
Kellogg, John. 1977. Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South. The Geographical Review 67 (3): 310–321.
Lee, David. 1992. Black Districts in Southeastern Florida. The Geographical Review 82 (4): 375–387.
McKinnon, Jesse. 2001. The Black Population: 2000. Census 2000 Brief. Washington: U.S. Census Bureau (C2KBR/01-5).
McHugh, Kevin E. 1987. Black Migration Reversal in the United States. The Geographical Review 77 (3): 279–292.
Morrill, Richard L. 1965. The Negro Ghetto: Problems and Alternatives. The Geographical Review 55 (3): 339–361.
National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). 2014a. 2012 Census of Agriculture: United States Summary and State Data, Volume 1, Geographic Area Series, Part 51. Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture. AC-12-A-51 http://agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/usv1.pdf. Accessed 28 November 2016.
———. 2014b. Number of Farms with Black or African American Operators: 2012. In 2012 Census of Agriculture: Agricultural Atlas. Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture. https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/Ag_Atlas_Maps/Operators/Characteristics/12-M129-RGBDot1-largetext.pdf. Accessed 28 November 2016.
Oszuscik, Phillipe. 1992. African-American in the American South. In To Build in a New Land: Ethnic Landscapes in North America, ed. Allen G. Noble, 157–176. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Pollitzer, William S. 2005. The Gullah: People and their African Heritage. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Rastogi, Sonya, Tallese D. Johnson, Elizabeth M. Hoeffel, and Malcolm P. Drewery, Jr. 2011. The Black Population: 2010. Census 2010 Brief. Washington: U.S. Census Bureau (C2010BR-06).
Savoy, Lauret Edith. 2015. Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape. Berkeley: Counterpoint.
Sluyter, Andrew. 2014. African Arrivals and Transformations. In North American Odyssey: Historical Geographies for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Craig E. Colten and Geoffrey L. Buckley, 49–66. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Sowell, Thomas. 1981. Ethnic America: A History. New York: Basic Books.
———. 1996. Migrations and Cultures: A World View. New York: Basic Books.
Strait, John Byron, and Gang Gong. 2015. The Impact of Increased Diversity on the Residential Landscape of a Sunbelt Metropolis: Racial and Ethnic Segregation Across the Atlanta Metropolitan Region, 1990–2010. Southeastern Geographer 55 (2): 119–142.
Tettey-Fio, Eugene L. 2006. Black American Geographies: A Perspective. In Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, ed. John W. Frazier and Eugene L. Tettey-Fio, 69–81. Binghamton: Global Academic Publishing.
———. 2016. Historical and Contemporary Black-American Geographies. In Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, ed. John W. Frazier, Eugene L. Tettey-Fio, and Norah F. Henry, 3rd ed., 153–168. Albany: State University of New York Press.
United States Department of Homeland Security. 2007. 2006 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Washington: U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Office of Immigration Statistics.
———. 2016. 2014 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Washington: U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Office of Immigration Statistics.
Upton, Dell. 1988. White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth Century Virginia. In Material Life in America, 1600–1860, ed. Robert B. St. George, 357–369. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Vlach, John M. 1976. The Shotgun House: An African American Architectural Legacy. Pioneer America 8 (1): 47–56 and 8 (2): 57–70.
———. 1986. Afro-Americans. In America’s Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups that Built America, ed. Dell Upton, 42–47. Washington: Preservation Press.
———. 1993. Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Walker, Lewis, and Benjamin C. Wilson. 2001. African Americans in Michigan. In African Americans in Michigan, ed. Lewis Walker, Benjamin C. Wilson, and Linwood H. Cousins, 3–30. East Lansing: Michigan University Press.
Wallace, Edie. 2007. Reclaiming the Forgotten History and Cultural Landscapes of African-Americans in Rural Washington County, Maryland. Material Culture 39 (1): 9–32.
Westmacott, Richard. 1992. African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Williams, Peter W. 1997. Houses of God: Region, Religion, and Architecture in the United States. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cross, J.A. (2017). African-American Landscapes. In: Ethnic Landscapes of America. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54009-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54009-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54008-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-54009-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)