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Hampton, Virginia

Hampton, Virginia

, Mrs. Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes to African American children on the grounds of what is now Hampton University at Hampton Roads in Virginia under the shade of the Emancipation Oak.]] Hampton is an independent city located in Virginia. It is on the southern end of the Virginia Peninsula, bordering on Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 146,437; but a 2004 census shows that the city's population is at 159,983.

History

The current independent city of Hampton became much larger after a municipal consolidation with the incorporated town of Phoebus and Elizabeth City County, Virginia in 1952. It essentially incorporates the boundaries of Elizabeth City County which was created in 1643 from Elizabeth River Shire, one of the eight original shires of 1634 in Colonial Virginia. The former town of Kecoughtan settled in 1610 in the Virginia Colony forms the basis for Hampton's claim to the oldest continuously occupied English settlement in North America.

Geography

North America Hampton is located at 37°2'5" North, 76°21'36" West (37.034946, -76.360126). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 352.8 km² (136.2 mi²). 134.1 km² (51.8 mi²) of it is land and 218.7 km² (84.4 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 61.99% water.

Adjacent counties and cities

- York County, Virginia (north)
- Poquoson, Virginia (northeast)
- Norfolk, Virginia (south; border within the waters of Hampton Roads)
- Newport News, Virginia (west)

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there are 146,437 people, 53,887 households, and 35,888 families residing in the city. The population density is 1,091.9/km² (2,828.0/mi²). There are 57,311 housing units at an average density of 427.3/km² (1,106.8/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 49.55% White, 44.68% Black or African American, 0.42% Native American, 1.84% Asian, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 1.03% from other races, and 2.39% from two or more races. 2.84% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 53,887 households out of which 32.5% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.2% are married couples living together, 16.4% have a female householder with no husband present, and 33.4% are non-families. 26.6% of all households are made up of individuals and 7.9% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.49 and the average family size is 3.02. The age distribution is 24.2% under the age of 18, 12.6% from 18 to 24, 32.5% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 10.3% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 34 years. For every 100 females there are 98.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 96.6 males. Population Update: Est. population in July 2002: 145,921 (-0.4% change) Males: 72,579 (49.6%), Females: 73,858 (50.4%) Source: http://www.city-data.com/city/Hampton-Virginia.html The median income for a household in the city is $39,532, and the median income for a family is $46,110. Males have a median income of $31,666 versus $24,578 for females. The per capita income for the city is $19,774. 11.3% of the population and 8.8% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 15.9% of those under the age of 18 and 8.6% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. Hampton is served by two airports. The primary airport for the Hampton Roads area is Norfolk International Airport, on the opposite side of Hampton Roads in Norfolk. The region's secondary airport, Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport, is located on the Virginia Peninsula in Newport News. Hampton is home to NASA's Langley Research Center, Langley Air Force Base, and Hampton University.

Points of Interest

- Air Power Park
- Buckroe Beach
- Coliseum Mall
- Fort Monroe
- Grand View Fishing Pier
- Hampton Coliseum
- Hampton National Cemetery
- Langley Speedway
- Virginia Air and Space Center

External links

Old Point Comfort and Norfolk, Virginia from space, July 1996]]
- [http://www.hampton.va.us/ City of Hampton] Category:All-America City Category:Cities in Virginia
-

Mary Smith Peake

, Mrs. Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes to African American children on the grounds of what is now Hampton University at Hampton Roads in Virginia under the shade of the Emancipation Oak.]] Mary Smith (née Kelsey) Peake (1823-February 22, 1862), a teacher and humanitarian, is best known for having taught children of former slaves under the Emancipation Oak tree in 1861, the first educational effort from which grew Hampton University. Mary Smith Peake was a free citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia. She was born Mary Smith Kelsey in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father was white and her mother, a free mulatto. When she was six years old, her mother sent her to Alexandria (then part of the District of Columbia) for the purpose of attending school. She remained there in school about ten years until a law of Congress was enacted to the effect that the law of Virginia in relation to free African American people should prevail in the District of Columbia. (This was several years before Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia in 1846). The new law closed all schools for African Americans in that city, as in Virginia (and other Southern states), after the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, and prior to Reconstruction after the Civil War, it was unlawful to educate non-whites. Thus, Mary was compelled to leave the school as she was from Virginia. When sixteen years old, having finished her education, she returned to her mother, at Norfolk, where Mary secretly taught slaves for years. She founded an organization called the Daughters of Zion. The focus of this organization was to give assistance to the poor and the sick. She was a member of the First Baptist Church of Norfolk. She supported herself by making clothes and teaching. In 1851, she married Thomas Peake a free African American. They had a daughter named Hattie whom they called "Daisy". During the American Civil War (1861-1865), nearby Fort Monroe remained in Union hands, and became a place of refuge for escaped African American slaves seeking asylum, who were commonly refereed to as "contraband." Mrs. Peake was asked to help teach, and began doing so on September 17, 1861 under the famous tree, which was located several miles outside of the protective safety of Fort Monroe in Phoebus, a small town in Elizabeth City County. Soon, sponsored by the American Missionary Association, she was teaching in the Brown Cottage, the seed from which Hampton Institute (and later Hampton University) would grow. Mary Peake's school included more than fifty children during the day and twenty adults at night. She became seriously ill but would not rest. On Washington's birthday in 1862 she died of tuberculosis. In 1863, the Virginia Peninsula's black community gathered under this tree to hear the first Southern reading of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In modern times, the historic Emancipation Oak (at least 140 years old now) is located on the campus of Hampton University in what is now the City of Hampton, Virginia. It is designated one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society and is a National Historic Landmark. The Mary Peake Center of Hampton Public Schools is named in her honor. According to its website, it is a "center for gifted children dedicated to providing a comprehensive set of experiences for those children who by nature of their complex processing abilities, require a fully differentiated educational environment." Mary Peake Boulevard in Hampton was also named in her honor. A book about her, Mary S. Peake, the Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe was written shortly after her death by Reverend Lewis C. Lockwood.

External links

- [http://mpc.sbo.hampton.k12.va.us/ Mary Peake Center, Hampton Public Schools]
- [http://www.hamptonu.edu/ Hampton University official website] Peake, Mary Peake, Mary

African American

An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black), is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. Many African Americans have European and/or Native American ancestry as well. The term refers specifically to black African ancestry; not, for example, to white or Arab African ancestry, such as Moroccan or white South African ancestry. Blacks from non-African countries such as Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Great Britain, or Australia are theoretically referred to by their nation of origin and not African American, but in general the assumption is that if you are black, you are "African American".

Nomenclature

The term "African American" has been in common usage in the United States since the late 1980s, when greater numbers of African Americans began to adopt the term self-referentially. Malcolm X favored the term "African American" over "Negro" and used the term at an OAAU (Organization of Afro American Unity) meeting in the early 1960s, saying, "Twenty-two million African-Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America." Former NBA player/coach Lenny Wilkens is another who used the term as a teenager when filling a job application. Many Blacks began to abandon the term "Afro-American", which had become popular in the 1960s and '70s, for "African-American," because they desired an unabbreviated expression of their African heritage that could not be mistaken or derided as an allusion to the afro hairstyle. The term became increasingly popular, and by the 1980s, Jesse Jackson and others pressed for its adoption and acceptance. Users of the term argued that "African-American" was more in keeping with the nation's immigrant tradition of so-called "hyphenated Americans", who were known by terms like "Irish-American", or "Chinese-American", "Polish-American"), which link people with their, or their ancestors', geographic points of origin. Terms used at various points in American history include Negroes, colored, Blacks and Afro-Americans. Negro and colored were common until the late 1960s, but are now less commonly used and considered derogatory. African American, Black and, to a lesser extent, Afro-American are used interchangeably today, but their precise meanings and connotations are in dispute. The term African American is sometimes problematic because of its imprecise cultural and geographic meaning. The term as originally applied refers to only those descended from a small number of colonial indentured servants and the estimated 500,000 Africans taken to British North America or the U.S. as slaves (of approximately 11 million Africans taken to the western hemisphere in general). In slightly broader usage, the term can include West Indian and Afro-Latino immigrants whose African ancestors also survived the Middle Passage or recent African immigrants/children of immigrants with American citizenship, but these groups tend to use the ethnic terms Latino or Hispanic, or identify themselves by their countries of origin (i.e., as Dominican or Jamaican instead of African American). The term does not include white, Indian or Arab immigrants from the African continent, as they are not generally considered 'Africans' by English-speaking people. The common interpretation of the term 'African American' is frequently, and controversially, challenged; including an infamous incident at a [http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/22/king.controversy.ap/ Nebraska High School] where a white South African student campaigned for a "Distinguished African American Student Award."

Current Demographics

Jamaican According to 2003 U.S. Census figures, some 37.1 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 12.9 percent of the total population. At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8 percent of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6 percent of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7 percent in the Midwest, while only 8.9 percent lived in the western states. Almost 88 percent of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000. Among cities of 100,000 or more, Gary, Indiana, had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with 85 percent, followed closely by Detroit, Michigan, with 83 percent. Atlanta, Georgia, has a large African-American population of about 65 percent. The nation's capital, Washington, D.C., had a 60 percent Black population.

African American history

Main article: African American history Blacks in America, like their White counterparts, are composed of many diverse ethnic groups. Over 40 identifiable ethnic groups from 25 different kingdoms were sold to the United States during the Atlantic Slave trade. These people came from an area spanning from present day Senegal all the way to Democratic Republic of Congo. Over time, Africans in America formed a new and common identity focused on their mutual condition in America as opposed to cultural and historic ties to Africa. Africans were sold and traded into bondage and shipped to the American South from 1619. In 1662 Virginia, the following law mentioned hereditary slavery and tied it to being born of a slave mother; its wording suggests that "negroes" but not "Englishmen" could be enslaved, and it was apparently clarifying an existing legal status, rather than establishing a new one.

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by the present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.

The 1662 law brought Virginia into line with Iberian laws that had been in effect since 1265. Over the next few decades, identical laws would be adopted throughout the British colonies. They would remain in effect until U.S. slavery ended over two centuries later. The new partus sequitur ventrem law had three long-term consequences. First, it set a psychological basis for popular culture's seeing slaves as less than fully human. Prior British common law had held that social status passed through the father; only livestock ownership had been matrilineal. Second, since biracial children of free mothers were free, it enabled the emergence of a population of legitimately freeborn Americans of mixed Afro-European ancestry who had no connection to slavery within living memory. Third, it meant that tens of thousands of future slaves would be genetically European, due to European alleles from free fathers gradually replacing African alleles from slave mothers, through random DNA mixing (meiosis) at each generation. Within two centuries, this would lead to such runaway slave advertisements as, "A beautiful girl, about twenty years of age, perfectly white, with straight light hair and blue eyes. — 1847 Hannibal MO," creating the never-to-be-resolved conflict in U.S. society between a dichotomous color line and the obvious fact of mixed heritage. In 1807, the importation of slaves by U.S. citizens became illegal, yet the practice continued. By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved Africans in the Southern United States, and another 500,000 Africans lived free across the country. Slavery was a controversial issue in American society and politics. The growth of abolitionism, which opposed the institution of slavery, culminated in the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, and was one reason for the secession of the Confederate States of America, which lead to the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederacy free under U.S. law. It included exceptions for those held in all territories that had not seceded, however, and thus did not immediately free a single slave, since U.S. law held no sway over the Confederacy at the time. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, freed all slaves, including those in states that had not seceded. During Reconstruction, African Americans in the South obtained the right to vote and to hold public office, as well as a number of other civil rights they previously had been denied. However, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern, white landowners reinstituted a regime of disenfranchisement and racial segregation, and with it a wave of terrorism and repression, including lynchings and other vigilante violence. The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American intellectual and cultural elite in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. One of the most prominent of these groups, the NAACP, galvanized by outspoken journalist and activist Ida B. Wells Barnett, led an anti-lynching crusade. In the 1950s, the organization mounted a series of calculated legal challenges to overturn Jim Crow segregation, culminating in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board was one of defining moments of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. It was part of a long-term strategy to strike down Jim Crow segregation in public education, the hospitality industry, public transportation, employment and housing, granting equal access to African Americans and ensuring their right to vote. The movement reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, Sr. At the same time, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and, later, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa called for African Americans to embrace black nationalism and black self-empowerment, propounding ideas of African (black) unity and solidarity and pan-Africanism.

Contemporary issues

Main article: African American contemporary issues Many African Americans significantly have improved their social and economic standing since the Civil Rights Movement, and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. However, due in part to a legacy of racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage relative to whites. Economically, the median income of African Americans is roughly 55 percent of that of European Americans. Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime; poverty; and substance abuse. African Americans are frequently the targets of racial profiling. They are also more likely to be incarcerated. African Americans also have higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions and out-of-wedlock births relative to the general population. These problems and potential remedies have been the subject of intense public policy debate in the United States in general, and within the African American community in particular.

Culture

Main article: African American culture African American culture is an amalgam of influences, including African, Caribbean, European, and Latino cultures. From its music and dance, to speech, demeanor, and foodways, African American culture bears the strong imprint of West Africa, particularly in rural portions of the Deep South and Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina. African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today. Hip hop, rock, R&B, funk, and other contemporary American musical forms evolved from blues, jazz, and gospel music. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English spoken by many African Americans to varying degrees. African American authors have written many stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans, and African American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.

The term African American

Political overtones

The term African American carries important political overtones. Previous terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by whites and were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which became tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of their own choosing. With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Negro fell into disfavor among many African Americans. It had taken on a moderate, accommodationist, even Uncle Tomish, connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the U.S., particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced black as a group identifier—a term they themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier—a term often associated in English with things negative and undesirable, proclaiming, "Black is beautiful." In this same period, others favored the term Afro-American; this particular term never gained much traction, but by the 1990s, the term African American had emerged as the leading choice of self-referential term. Just as other ethnic groups in American society historically had adopted names descriptive of their families' geographical points of origin (such as Italian-American, Irish-American, Polish-American), many blacks in America expressed a preference for a similar term. Because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the U.S. under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker. For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses African pride and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embracing of the notion of pan-Africanism earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois and, later, George Padmore. A discussion of the term African American and related terms can be found in the journal article "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self Reference Among American Slave Descendants" in American Speech v 66 is 2 Summer 1991 p. 133-46.

Who is African American?

To be considered African American in the United States of America nowadays, not even half of one's ancestry need be black African. Since the early 20th century, the nation's answer to the question "Who is black?" has been that a "black" is any person with any known African ancestry. This definition reflects the experience with racism, white supremacy, slavery, and, later, with Jim Crow laws. But this definition was not always the case.

Antebellum Social Customs¹

Before 1690 or so, colonial social divisions reflected class (planters, craftsmen, forced laborers) and religion (Christians, "heathens") but did not emphasize ethnic origin. Afro-European intermarriage was common. The endogamous color line was invented in 1691 Virginia, when intermarriage was legislated to be a crime. Over the next 30 years, Afro-European intermarriage was outlawed throughout 12 of the 13 colonies (SC being the exception) and the terms Black and White took on today's meaning. For the next century and a half, as reflected in U.S. literature, popular culture, and court cases, Americans defined which side of the color line you were on by three rules: appearance, association, and blood fraction. Appearance meant that you would not be accepted as White if you looked African. Association meant that if your all friends were Black, then you would not be accepted as White even if you looked European. Blood fraction meant that if you had more than a statutory fraction of Black ancestry, then you could not become legally White even if you looked European and associated only with Whites. Although the three rules were formally documented and enforced by the courts, each rule’s details varied from state to state. For example, the same biracial person of mostly European ancestry might be seen as a light-skinned Black in Virginia, but White-looking in Spanish Florida and the French Gulf Coast. In Barbadian South Carolina, the rule of association was heavily influenced by wealth; money whitened as in today's Brazil. And the legal blood fraction limit ranged from 1/8 (as in North Carolina) to 1/2 (Ohio). During this period, hundreds of individuals, including famous ones like Jefferson's son Eston Hemmings, painter John James Audubon, and Florida's first U.S. senator David Levy Yulee, were socially accepted as White despite acknowledging slight Black ancestry (rather like Carol Channing today).

The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule²

The one-drop rule of invisible Blackness arose in the mid-1830s in the Ohio Valley and spread to the south after the Civil War. Those who advocated the notion that you could look completely European and self-identify as White, but still be involuntarily Black due to an undetectable trace of Black ancestry, were a minority at first, and the idea was rejected both by popular culture and the law. But as 19th century was ending, the one-drop rule became increasingly accepted in the South. By 1900 it had become the law of the land in court cases. In the 1910-1930 period its acceptance spread throughout the nation, and it was made statutory and enforced in most states. Incidentally, not everyone uses the term one-drop rule thus. To some, the term is synonymous with Marvin Harris’s “hypodescent,” meaning that Americans who look slightly African are considered Black, even if their African admixture is less than 50 percent. This differs from the Caribbean, where you are White if you look preponderantly European. To others, one-drop rule refers to the U.S. folkloric belief that anyone who has even one drop of African blood in his veins is marked by some subtle physical trait, a clue that reveals the African ancestry. Some say that it is revealed in the color of the half-moons at the base of the thumbnails, or in the shape of the heels, or in blue or purple marks at specific locations on the body. To them, one-drop rule is the belief that no matter how diluted African blood may be, a residue of visible evidence will always remain, generation after generation. This is nonsense, of course, since about one-third of White Americans have detectable recent African genetic admixture in their DNA from ancestors who passed through the color line. The one-drop rule, on the other hand, is the idea that you can look completely European and self-identify as White, but still be involuntarily Black due to an undetectable trace of Black ancestry. Why were Americans the only society to adopt such a strange rule of group membership (undetectable and intangible by definition)? The question has interested anthropologists and historians. The four most popular theories are: that it maintained and expanded the agricultural labor force, that it was embraced by Black leadership to enhance ethnic solidarity, that it was used by White supremacists to support the notion of White racial purity, and that it was wielded as a threat to keep compassionate White families in line by exiling them to Blackness if they defended or befriended Blacks during the Jim Crow period of White-on-Black terror and oppression. Of course, these explanations are not mutually exclusive, and may have operated in combination. The first theory is that the one-drop rule maintained or expanded the labor force by subjecting those of mixed ancestry to forced labor. Its strength lies in explaining why the one-drop rule triumphed in the early 20th century. This was the very period when much of the South's Black agricultural labor force fled to the North in the Great Migration. The one-drop rule shifted the color line pale-wards, trapping many who had been previously seen as White. The theory's weakness is that it is sometimes erroneously applied to slavery. This is an error because no court case ever ruled that someone was a slave merely because of his or her "race." Slavery was matrilineal. Hundreds of people of sub-Saharan phenotype were routinely freed following case law set by Higgins v. Allen, 1796 Maryland by proving that a matrilineal ancestor was free. Indeed, having mixed ancestry was useful because, ever since Gobu v. Gobu, 1802 North Carolina; Hudgins v. Wrights, 1806 Virginia; and Adelle v. Beauregard, 1810 Louisiana, the law of the land (subsequently followed in hundreds of cases) was that biracial individuals were presumed to be free unless proven otherwise. But most importantly, the one-drop rule was not adopted—indeed, it was virtually unknown—in the South until long after slavery was dead. (See Race.) The explanation that the one-drop rule was embraced by Black leadership in order to enhance ethnic solidarity matches the timing and direction of the rule's spread. The rule was advocated by both Martin R. Delany (1812-1885) and Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) before the Civil War. It was carried south after the war by the Black Yankees who built the schools, printed the newspapers, and opened the businesses that taught the newly freed to flourish as Americans. It was defended and supported by Black political leadership throughout the Jim Crow terror. The one-drop system of racial designation was a significant factor in African-American ethnic solidarity since antebellum times. African Americans generally shared a common lot in society and, therefore, common cause—regardless of their ethnic admixture and social and economic stratification. This theory's weakness is that it cannot stand alone. It seems unlikely that a minority population (Black) could somehow cause mainstream society (White) to adopt and impose a law that helped only Blacks. After all, one-drop rule was enforced by White elites through the judicial system. The theory that the one-drop rule was used by White supremacists in order to support the notion of White racial purity has the advantage that it reflects the excuses given by the very legislators who wrote the laws and the judges who enforced them. They claimed that they wanted to preserve the "purity of the white race" from being "polluted" by Black blood. White supremacists, whose motivation was racist, considered anyone with African ancestry tainted, inherently inferior morally and intellectually and, thus, subordinate. The theory's drawback is that articulate public figures, such as lawmakers and judges, do not always tell the truth, even to themselves. The theory that the one-drop rule was used to keep compassionate White families in line is psychologically compelling and matches court evidence of how the rule was enforced. Between 1900 and 1920, over a hundred court cases were held to decide whether an accused family was truly White or unknowingly Black. About forty of those cases were then appealed to state supreme courts. In not one of those forty cases was any genealogical evidence produced. In no case did an accuser reveal an ancient birth certificate, marriage license, school record, or the like. Instead, the testimony was that: An aunt was seen laughing at a joke told by a Black maid. An uncle was seen shaking hands with a Black carpenter who had been hired to build a chicken-coop. A 15-year-old niece was seen flirting with a Black boy of the same age. The testimony that banished families to Blackness was always about establishing one-on-one family-to-family relationships across the color line. The theory is compelling because it is a well-known law of group psychology that when a powerful group bullies a weak group, any member of the bullying group who befriends and tries to defend a victim will be expelled to the bullied group and become a victim himself. During the Jim Crow wave of terror, the White community bullied the Black community. And so, any White family that befriended a Black family was expelled from Whiteness and made legally Black.

U.S. Social Customs Today³

In 1896, the United States Supreme Court missed an opportunity to stifle the one-drop rule before it became the law of the land two decades later. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court affirmed the legality of racial segregation and upheld the State of Louisiana's ruling that, despite being 7/8 white, Homer Plessy's one black great-grandparent rendered him legally non-white and, therefore, subject to being barred from whites-only railway carriages. Ironically, the Justices wanted to consider the issue of Plessy's "race" and encouraged Plessy's lawyers to argue the point. But Plessy's legal strategy was to stipulate that he was Black in order to focus on refuting the public benefit of segregation. Like Walter White a generation later, his goal was not to redefine himself as White (he could easily have done that without court permission); it was to kill segregation. With the advent of Affirmative Action and other entitlement programs, some have seen it advantageous to be accepted as African-American. The claims to Blackness by individuals who look White and were raised as White, have been rejected by some courts but upheld by others. It apparently depends upon community acceptance. The firefighter Malone brothers of 1985 Boston were convicted of "racial fraud" for acquiring Affirmative Action points added to test scores by claiming that a great-grandmother was Black—a claim that was violently opposed by the local Black community. On the other hand, the employers of Mary Walker of 1988 Denver, a schoolteacher of fair complexion, green eyes, light brown hair, and no documented Black ancestry, were court-ordered to accept her as Black because she was supported by the local Black community. Conversely, Mostafa Hefny of 1997 Detroit, a Black-looking immigrant from Africa (Egypt), was denied benefits because he was not "ethnically" African-American. And yet Mark Stebbins, an Afro-sporting Stockton California councilman who claimed to be of African heritage and raised in the African-American ethnicity lost his seat due to a recall vote paid for by an equally African-American (but Black separatist) opponent on the grounds that Stebbins's integrationist political agenda had made him no longer African-American enough. Again, whether you can benefit from entitlement programs meant for African Americans seems to depend on the support of the local African-American community. Some recent evidence suggests that the one-drop rule may be waning in America's popular culture. One way of measuring the tenacity of the one-drop-rule is by examining how Black/White interracial parents identify their children on the census “race” question. Such couples are not typical of most Americans. Nevertheless, if interracial parents accept the legitimacy of African-American ethnic self-identity while simultaneously rejecting the one-drop rule, you would expect half of their children to be identified as White and half as Black. That the children of Black/White interracial parents have been more often identified as Black than as White since 1880 demonstrates that the one-drop rule has been accepted for many decades. In fact, the fraction of such children labeled as unmixed White has fallen steadily from 50 percent in 1940 to 13 percent in 2000. This suggests that the one-drop rule continues to grow stronger among Black/White interracial parents. On the other hand, the fraction of such children labeled as unmixed Black dropped abruptly from 62 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2000. This suggests that it has recently become unfashionable to make first-generation biracial children deny their European ancestry. Whether this portends a crack in the one-drop rule remains to be seen. On the other hand, other recent evidence suggests that the one-drop rule is still invoked by Americans whenever it seems useful. As recently as 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the one-drop rule by refusing to hear a case against Louisiana’s “racial” classification criteria as applied to Susie Phipps (479 U.S. 1002). And authors have found it very profitable to "out" as Black famous historical Americans who looked White, were accepted as White in their society, and self-identified as White, merely because they acknowledged having slight African ancestry (Patrick Francis Healy, Michael Morris Healy, Jr., Calvin Clark Davis, John James Audubon, Mother Henriette Delille—a biracial Louisiana Creole). In the 1980s, parents of mixed-race children began to organize and lobby for the addition of a more inclusive term of racial designation that would reflect the heritage of their offspring. As a result, the term biracial has become more widely used and accepted to classify people of mixed race. In sum, how Americans have determined whether a person is African American (that is, a member of the U.S. Black endogamous community) or White (that is, a suitable marriage partner for Whites) has changed dramatically over the centuries and may be changing still.

Terms no longer in common use

The term Negro, which was widely used until the 1960s, today increasingly is considered passé and inappropriate or derogatory. It is still fairly commonly used by older individuals and in the Deep South. Once widely considered acceptable, Negro fell into disfavor for reasons already herein stated. The self-referential term of preference for Negro became black. Negroid is a term used by European anthropologists first in the 18th century to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on inconsistent, unscientific phenotypical standards, the term is controversial and imprecise. Because of its similarity to Negro, growing numbers of blacks have substituted the term Africoid which, unlike Negroid, encompasses the phenotypes of all indigenous African peoples. Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African Americans are mulatto and colored. Even so, the use of the word "colored" can still be found today in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. The American use of the term mulatto originally was used to mean the offspring of a "pure African black" and a "pure European white". The Latin root of the word is mulo, as in "mule", implying incorrectly that, like mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids, mulattoes are sterile crosses of two different species. For example, in the early 20th century, African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, who had slaves as mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. While not as common as "mixed" or "biracial," or even "multiracial," mulatto is still sometimes used to refer to people of mixed parentage and, despite its origin, is not considered inherently derogatory. The term quadroon referred to a person of one-fourth African descent, for example, someone born to a Caucasian father and a mulatto mother. Someone of one-eighth African descent technically was an octoroon, although the term often was used to refer to any white person with even a hint of black ancestry. Mulatto and terms with the -roon suffix persisted in a social context for a number of decades, but by the mid twentieth century, they no longer were in common use. With the end of slavery, there was no longer a strong commercial incentive to classify blacks by their African-European ancestral admixture. The occasional use of these terms, however, does still persist in electronic media, literature and in some social settings.

Black American population

The following gives the black population in the U.S. over time, based on U.S. Census figures. (Numbers from years 1920 to 2000 are based on U.S. Census figures as given on page 377 of the Time Almanac of 2005. note: The CIA World Factbook gives the current 2005 figure as 12.9% [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/us.html]

External links

- [http://www.saxakali.com/caribbean/shamil.htm African Americans in the Caribbean and Latin America]
- [http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmcensus1.html African Americans by the numbers]
- [http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhm1.html Black History Month]
- [http://www.sonofthesouth.net/Slavery_Pictures_.htm Slavery Pictures], Original 1860s
- [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=38705 Definition of African American] from MedicineNet
- [http://www.radioblack.com/ African American Music] Black American Radio Stations

Footnotes

#This section was adapted from chapters 6-13 of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230, which contains the detailed citations and references. Summaries of these chapters, with endnotes, are also available online at [http://backintyme.com/Essay040811.htm How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s]. #This section was adapted from chapters 20-21 of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230, which contains the detailed citations and references. Summaries of these chapters, with endnotes, are also available online at [http://backintyme.com/Essay050501.htm Jim Crow Triumph of the One-Drop Rule]. #This section was adapted from chapter 14 of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230, which contains the detailed citations and references. A summary of this chapters, with endnotes, is also available online at [http://backintyme.com/Essay050301.htm Features of Today’s One-Drop Rule]. Category:African Americans Category:Ethnic groups ja:アフリカン・アメリカン

Hampton University

Hampton University is a historically black university located in Hampton, Virginia. Hampton was founded in 1868 (and chartered in 1870) by Samuel C. Armstrong as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a land grant school in Elizabeth City County. It became Hampton Institute in 1930 and gained university status in 1984. Hampton's colors are blue and white and their nickname is the Pirates. Hampton sports teams participate in NCAA Division I (I-AA for football) in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC). In 2001, the Hampton basketball team won its first NCAA Tournament game, when they beat Iowa State 58-57, in one of the largest upsets of all time. Among the school's famous alumni is Dr. Booker T. Washington. The historic Emancipation Oak tree, under which Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes on September 17, 1861, is located on the campus. Typical of traditionally black colleges and universities, Hampton received much of its financial support in the years following the Civil War from former officers and soldiers in the Union Army. One of those Civil War veterans who gave substantial sums to Hampton University was General William Jackson Palmer, a Union cavalry commander from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who later built the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, and founded Colorado Springs, Colorado. As the Civil War began in 1861, although his Quaker upbringing made Palmer abhor violence, his passion to see the slaves free compelled him to enter the war. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in 1894. Palmer Hall on the campus is named in his honor.

External link

- [http://www.hamptonu.edu/ Official website] Category:Historically black universities and colleges in the U.S. Category:Space-grant universities Category:Universities and colleges in Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia is one of the original thirteen states of the United States that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution, and is part of the South. It is one of four states that use the name commonwealth. Virginia was the first part of the Americas to be colonized permanently by England. Virginia's U.S. postal abbreviation is VA, and its Associated Press abbreviation is Va. Kentucky and West Virginia were part of Virginia at the time of the founding of the United States; but the former was admitted to the Union as a separate state in 1792, while the latter broke away from Virginia during the American Civil War. Virginia is known as the "Mother of Presidents", because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents, more than any other state. Five of them were re-elected to a second term: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Woodrow Wilson. William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Zachary Taylor round out the list of American Presidents from the Commonwealth of Virginia. (Harrison and Taylor died while in office.)

History

Native Americans

At the time of the English colonization of Virginia, among Native American people living in what now is Virginia were the Cherokee, Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Meherrin, Monacan, Nansemond, Nottaway, Pamunkey, Pohick, Powhatan, Rappahannock, Saponi, and Tuscarora. The natives are often divided into three groups. The largest group are known as the Algonquian who numbered over 10,000. The other groups are the Iroquoian (numbering 2,500) and the Siouan. [http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/education/projects/webunits/vahistory/tribes.html]

Virginia Colony: 1607–1776

At the end of the 16th century, when Great Britain began to colonize North America, Virginia was the name that Queen Elizabeth I of England (who was known as the "Virgin Queen" because she never married) gave to the whole area explored by the 1584 expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh along the coast of North America, eventually applying to the whole coast from South Carolina to Maine. The London Virginia Company became incorporated as a joint stock company by a proprietary charter drawn up on April 10, 1606. It swiftly financed the first permanent English settlement in the New World, which was at Jamestown, named in honor of King James I, in the Virginia Colony, in 1607, which settlement was founded by Captian Christopher Newport and Captain John Smith. Its Second Charter was officially ratified on May 23, 1609. Jamestown was the original capital of the Virginia Colony, and remained so until the State House burned (not the first time) in 1698. After the fire, the colonial capital was moved to nearby Middle Plantation, which was renamed Williamsburg in honor of William of Orange, King William III. Virginia was given its nickname, "The Old Dominion", by King Charles II of England at the time of the Restoration, because it had remained loyal to the crown during the English Civil War.

A new state

In 1780, during the American Revolutionary War, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of then-Governor Thomas Jefferson, who was afraid that Williamsburg's location made it vulnerable to a British attack. In the autumn of 1781, American troops trapped the British on the Yorktown peninsula in the famous Battle of Yorktown. This prompted a British surrender on October 19, 1781, formally ending the war and securing the former colonies' independence, even though sporadic fighting continued for two years. Patrick Henry served as the first Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779, and again from 1784 to 1786. On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a document that influenced the Bill of Rights added later to the United States Constitution. On June 29, 1776, the convention adopted a constitution that established Virginia as a commonwealth independent of the British Empire. In 1790 both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to form the new District of Columbia, but in an Act of the U.S. Congress dated July 9, 1846, the area south of the Potomac that had been ceded by Virginia was retroceded to Virginia effective 1847, and is now Arlington County and part of the City of Alexandria.

American Civil War

Virginia is one of the states that seceded from the Union to become the Confederacy during the Civil War. When it did, some counties were separated as Kanawha (later renamed West Virginia), an act which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1870. More battles were fought on Virginia soil than anywhere else in America during the Civil War. Virginia formally rejoined the Union on January 26, 1870, after a period of post-war military rule.

20th century

When Douglas Wilder was elected Governor of Virginia on January 13, 1990, he became the first African-American to serve as Governor of a U.S. state since Reconstruction.

Law and government

The capital is Richmond: the current Governor is Mark Warner, a Democrat. Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, is the governor-elect. Previous capitals included Jamestown (1609–1699) and Williamsburg (1699–1780). The Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond was designed by Thomas Jefferson and the cornerstone was laid by Governor Patrick Henry in 1785. In colonial Virginia, the lower house of the legislature was called the House of Burgesses. Together with the Governor's Council, the House of Burgesses made up the General Assembly. The Governor's Council was composed of 12 men appointed by the British Monarch to advise the Governor. The Council also served as the General Court of the colony, a colonial equivalent of a Supreme Court. Members of the House of Burgesses were chosen by all those who could vote in the colony. Each county chose two people or burgesses to represent it, while the College of William and Mary and the cities of Norfolk, Williamsburg, and Jamestown each chose one burgess. The Burgesses met to make laws for the colony and set the direction for its future growth; the Council would then review the laws and either approve or disapprove them. The approval of the Burgesses, the Council, and the Governor was needed to pass a law. The idea of electing burgesses was important and new. It gave Virginians a chance to control their own government for the first time. At first the burgesses were elected by all free men in the colony. Women, indentured servants, and Native Americans could not vote. Later the rules for voting changed, making it necessary for men to own at least fifty acres (200,000 m²) of land in order to vote. Founded in 1619, the Virginia General Assembly is still in existence as the oldest legislature in the Western Hemisphere. Today, the General Assembly is made up of the Senate and the House of Delegates. Like many other states, by the 1850s Virginia featured a state legislature, several executive officers, and an independent judiciary. By the time of the Constitution of 1901, which lasted longer than any other state constitution, the General Assembly continued as the legislature, the Supreme Court of Appeals acted as the judiciary, and the eight elected executive officers were the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of the Commonwealth, State Treasurer, Auditor of Public Accounts, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Commissioner of Agriculture and Immigration. The Constitution of 1901 was amended many times, notably in the 1930s and 1950s, before it was abandoned in favour of more modern government, with fewer elected officials, reformed local governments and a more streamlined judiciary. Virginia currently functions under the 1970 Constitution of Virginia. It is the state's ninth constitution. Under the Constitution, the State Government is composed of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative branch or state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly, a bicameral body whose 140 members make all state laws. Members of the Virginia House of Delegates serve two-year terms, while members of the Virginia Senate serve four-year terms. The General Assembly also selects the state's Auditor of Public Accounts. The statutory law enacted by the General Assembly is codified in the Code of Virginia. The executive branch comprises the Governor of Virginia, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, and the Attorney General of Virginia. All three officers are separately elected to four-year terms in years following Presidential elections (1997, 2001, 2005, etc) and take office in January of the following year. The Governor serves as chief executive officer of the Commonwealth and as Commander-in-Chief of the State Militia. State law forbids any Governor from serving consecutive terms. The Lieutenant Governor serves as President of the Senate of Virginia and is first in the line of succession to the Governor. The Attorney General is chief legal advisor to the Governor and the General Assembly, chief lawyer of the state and the head of the Department of Law. The Attorney General is second in the line of succession to the Governor. Whenever there is a vacancy in all three executive offices of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General, then the Speaker of the House of the Virginia House of Delegates becomes Governor. The Office of the Governor's Secretaries helps manage the Governor's Cabinet, comprised of the following individuals, all appointed by the Governor:
- Governor's Chief of Staff
- Secretary of Administration
- Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry
- Secretary of Commerce and Trade
- Secretary of the Commonwealth
- Secretary of Education
- Secretary of Finance
- Secretary of Health and Human Resources
- Secretary of Natural Resources
- Secretary of Public Safety
- Secretary of Technology
- Secretary of Transportation
- Assistant to the Governor for Commonwealth Preparedness The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Virginia Court of Appeals, the General District Courts and the Circuit Courts. The Virginia Supreme Court, composed of the chief justice and six other judges is the highest court in the Commonwealth (although, as with all the states, the U.S. Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction over decisions by the Virginia Supreme Court involving substantial questions of U.S. Constitution law or constitutional rights). The Chief Justice and the Virginia Supreme Court also serve as the administrative body for the entire Virginia court system. The 95 counties and the 39 independent cities all have their own governments, usually a county board of supervisors or city council which choose a city manager or county administrator to serve as a professional, non-political chief administrator under the council-manager form of government. There are exceptions, notably Richmond, Virginia, which has a popularly-elected Mayor who serves as chief executive separate from the city council.

Political control

After William Mahone and the Readjuster Party lost control of Virginia politics around 1883, the Democratic Party held a strong majority position of state and federal offices for over 85 years. In 1970, Republican A. Linwood Holton Jr. became the first Republican governor in the 20th century. In the years thereafter, Republicans made substantial gains, and for a time, controlled both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, as well as the Governorship from 1994 until 2002.
- Republicans hold both seats in the U.S. Senate, 8 of 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, hold a majority in the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate, and a Republican is Virginia's Lieutenant Governor-Elect. A republican is also temporarily serving as attorney general having been appointed to fill the seat left by Jerry Kilgore. However, the recent election for attorney general to fill the open seat has not been decided and a recount will occur to determine the election.
- Democrats control the remaining 3 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Governor and Governor-Elect are both Democrats. The Democrats have steadily been gaining seats in the Virginia House of Delegates and may soon take control, however the State Senate will likely remain under Republican Leadership. Incumbent Virginia governors cannot run for re-election under the state constitution and In the November 2005 election, the race to succeed Democratic Governor Mark Warner, Democrat Timothy M. Kaine beat Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (Scott County), and State Senator Russ Potts (Winchester) (longtime Republican) running as an independent. Kaine will become governor of the state at his inauguration on January 14, 2006.

Geography

2006 2006 Virginia is bordered by West Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia (across the Potomac River) to the north, by Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, by North Carolina and Tennessee to the south, and by Kentucky and West Virginia to the west. The Chesapeake Bay divides the state, with the eastern portion (called 'the Eastern Shore of Virginia'), a part of the Delmarva Peninsula, completely separate (an exclave) from the rest of the state. Geographically, Virginia is divided into the following 5 regions:
- Tidewater - Stretching from the Atlantic coast to the fall line
- Piedmont - East of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Tidewater Region
- Blue Ridge Mountains - East of the Appalachian Mountains to the Blue Ridge Mountain Region
- Valley and Ridge - Appalachian Mountains and Shenandoah Valley Region
- Appalachian Plateau - West of the Appalachian Mountains Virginia's long east-west axis means that metropolitan northern Virginia lies much closer to New York and New England than to the rural western panhandle of its own state. Conversely, Lee County, at the tip of the panhandle, is closer to 8 state capitals than it is to Richmond.

Demographics

As of 2004, Virginia's population was estimated to be 7,459,827. The state had a foreign-born population of 679,500 (9.1% of the state population), of which an estimated 100,000 were illegal aliens (15% of the foreign-born). The state's population increased by 1.3 million between 1990 and 2004, a growth of 21% Race and Ancestry
The racial makeup of the state:
- 70.2% White non-Hispanic
- 19.6% Black
- 4.7% Hispanic
- 3.7% Asian
- 0.3% Native American
- 2% Mixed race The five largest reported ancestry groups in Virginia are: African American (19.6%), German (11.7%), American (11.2%), English (11.1%), Irish (9.8%). Historically, as the largest and wealthiest colony and state and the birthplace of Southern and American culture, a large proportion (about half) of Virginia's population was made up of black slaves who worked the state's tobacco, cotton, and hemp plantations. The twentieth century Great Migration of blacks from the rural South to the urban North reduced Virginia's black population to about 20 percent. Today Blacks are concentrated in the eastern and southern tidewater and piedmont regions where plantation agriculture was most dominant. The western mountains are populated primarily by people of British and American ancestry. People of German descent are present in sizable numbers in the northwestern mountains and Shenandoah Valley. And due to recent immigration, there is a rapidly growing population of Hispanics (particularly Central Americans) and Asians in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. 6.5% of Virginia's population were reported as under 5, 24.6% under 18, and 11.2% were 65 or older. Females made up approximately 51% of the population.

Religion

The religious affiliations of the people of Virginia are:
- Christian – 84%
- Protestant – 69%
- Baptist – 32%
- Methodist – 8%
- Episcopal – 3%
- Presbyterian – 3%
- Other Protestant or general Protestant – 23%
- Roman Catholic – 14%
- Other Christian – 1%
- Other Religions – 2%
- Non-Religious – 12%

Economy

Virginia's economy has long been regarded as one of the better-balanced in the United States with diverse sources of income, including military installations concentrated in the Hampton Roads area, tobacco and peanut farming all through Southside Virginia, manufacturing and transportation, and the location of Northern Virginia as a bedroom community for the federal government and its vendors. Virginia, arguably the wealthiest southern state before the Civil War, recovered from the civil war and the Great Depression much faster than the rest of the south. Today it is still significantly wealthier than the rest of the south, although much of that is from the northern influence around Washington D.C.

Transportation

Northern Virginia Virginia is served by a network of Interstate Highways, arterial highways, several limited access tollways, bridges, tunnels, and three bridge-tunnel complexes. The [http://www.springfieldinterchange.com/ Springfield Interchange Project] (also known as "The Mixing Bowl") and the replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, two of the country's largest highway improvement projects, are taking place in the state ten miles apart. Major airports are located in these areas: Northern Virginia (Reagan-National and Dulles), Richmond-Petersburg (Richmond), Virginia Peninsula (Newport News), South Hampton Roads (Norfolk), and the Roanoke Valley (Roanoke). Virginia has extensive waterways. In addition to the lower portion of the Chesapeake Bay, navigable rivers include the Elizabeth River at Hampton Roads, the James River, the York River, the Rappahannock River, and the Potomac River. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway passes through eastern Virginia. Virginia has Amtrak passenger rail service along several corridors and Virginia Railway Express (VRE) maintains two commuter lines into Washington, D.C. The Washington Metro serves Northern Virginia as far west as Fairfax County.

Sports

Virginia is by far the most populous U.S. state without a major professional sports league franchise. The reasons for this include the close proximity of Washington, D.C. which has franchises in all four major sports, and the lack of any dominant city or market within the state. An attempt to bring a National Hockey League expansion franchise to Hampton Roads in the 1990s was rejected by the NHL. A proposal to relocate the Montreal Expos to Northern Virginia was considered by Major League Baseball, but MLB eventually settled on the national capital as the Expos' new home. Virginia is home to many minor league clubs, especially in baseball and soccer.

Important cities and towns

Under the laws in effect in Virginia, all municipalities incorporated as cities are independent of any county. Of the 43 independent cities in the United States, 39 are in Virginia. The complete list of Virginia independent cities follows: Some other municipalities are incorporated towns, which are not independent of a county, but rather, located within one of the 95 counties in Virginia. These incorporated towns include: Finally, Arlington County, which lies across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is a completely urbanized community, much like a city, but remains organized as a county, and has no towns within its borders. There are also hundreds of other unincorporated communities (sometimes informally called villages or towns) in Virginia.

Colleges and universities

Miscellaneous information

- State motto: "Sic semper tyrannis." (Thus always to tyrants.)
- State bird: Cardinal
- State dog: American Foxhound
- State flower: Dogwood
- State tree: Dogwood
- State insect: Tiger swallowtail
- State bat: Virginia Big-Eared Bat
- State song: none; the former state song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," was retired in 1997 because some found its lyrics to be racially offensive
- State dance: Square dance
- State boat: Chesapeake Bay deadrise
- State fish: Brook trout
- State shell: Oyster
- State fossil: Chesapecten Jeffersonius
- State beverage: Milk USS Virginia was named in honor of this state.

Other places

There are also places named Virginia in the States of Illinois and Minnesota: see
- Virginia, Illinois.
- Virginia, Minnesota.

External links

- [http://www.virginia.gov State Government website]
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/raleigh.htm Charter to Sir Walter Raleigh : 1584]
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/va01.htm The First Charter of Virginia; April 10, 1606]
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/va02.htm The Second Charter of Virginia; May 23, 1609]
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/va03.htm The Third Charter of Virginia; March 12, 1611]
- [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51000.html U.S. Census Bureau]
- [http://www.vahistorical.org Virginia Historical Society]
- [http://www.historical-markers.org Virginia's Historical Markers]
- [http://www.virginiaplaces.org/ Geography of Virginia]
- [http://www.fathersforvirginia.org/ Fathers for Virginia]
- Category:States of the United States ko:버지니아 주 ja:バージニア州

Independent city

An independent city is a city that does not form part of another local government entity. As a formal term it is mainly used in the U.S. state of Virginia, however there are equivalent entities in a number of other jurisdictions throughout the world. Independent cities should not be confused with city-states (such as Singapore), which are fully sovereign cities that are not part of any other nation-state.

United States

In the United States, an independent city is a city that does not belong to any particular county. Because counties have historically been a strong institution in local government in most of the United States, independent cities are relatively rare outside of Virginia (see below), whose state constitution makes them a special case. The U.S. Census Bureau uses counties as its base unit for presentation of statistical information, and treats independent cities as county equivalents for those purposes.

Virginia

Of the 43 or so independent cities in the United States, 39 are in Virginia. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, all municipalities incorporated as "cities" have also been "independent cities" since 1871. Other municipalities, even though they may be more populous than some existing independent cities, are incorporated as "towns", and as such form part of a county. An independent city in Virginia may serve as the county seat of an adjacent county, even though the city by definition is not part of that county. Several Virginia counties, whose origins go back to the original eight shires of the colony formed in 1634, have the word city in their names; however, politically they are counties. Examples are Charles City County and James City County.

List of Virginia's independent cities

The independent cities in Virginia are (as of December, 2004):
- Alexandria
- Bedford (also the seat of Bedford County)
- Bristol
- Buena Vista
- Charlottesville (also the seat of Albemarle County)
- Chesapeake (formed through the merger of the City of South Norfolk and Norfolk County)
- Colonial Heights
- Covington (also the seat of Alleghany County)
- Danville
- Emporia (also the seat of Greensville County)
- Fairfax (also the seat of Fairfax County)
- Falls Church
- Franklin
- Fredericksburg
- Galax
- Hampton (formed through the merger of the Town of Phoebus and Elizabeth City County)
- Harrisonburg (also the seat of Rockingham County)
- Hopewell
- Lexington (also the seat of Rockbridge County)
- Lynchburg
- Manassas
- Manassas Park
- Martinsville
- Newport News (consolidated with the City of Warwick, itself formerly Warwick County)
- Norfolk
- Norton
- Petersburg
- Poquoson
- Portsmouth
- Radford
- Richmond
- Roanoke
- Salem (also the seat of Roanoke County)
- Staunton (also the seat of Augusta County)
- Suffolk (formed by the merger of the Towns of Suffolk, Holland, and Whaleyville, with the City of Nansemond)
- Virginia Beach (formed by the merger of the Town of Virginia Beach and Princess Anne County)
- Waynesboro
- Williamsburg (also the seat of James City County)
- Winchester (also the seat of Frederick County) Note that while most counties and cities in Virginia with similar names are contiguous, the independent city of Richmond is located nowhere near Richmond County. The latter is located in the state's Northern Neck region, about 50 miles distant from the city.

Arlington County

Arlington County, commonly referred to as just "Arlington", is not an independent city. However, it is often thought of as a city because it is fully urbanized, is close in size to other independent cities in the state, and includes no municipalities within its borders.

Former cities

See also: Lost Counties, Cities and Towns of Virginia. Former independent cities that were long extant in Virginia include:
- Clifton Forge, which gave up its city charter in 2001, and is now an incorporated town in Alleghany County.
- Manchester, which was consolidated by mutual agreement with the City of Richmond in 1910.
- South Boston, which gave up its city charter in 1994, and is now an incorporated town in Halifax County.
- South Norfolk, which merged with Norfolk County in 1963 to form the City of Chesapeake. Two other independent cities existed for a short time:
- Nansemond, created from the former Nansemond County in 1972, was merged in 1974 with the then-City of Suffolk and three unincorporated towns within the county's former boundaries to form today's City of Suffolk.
- Warwick, which was formed from the former Warwick County in 1952, was in 1958 consolidated by mutual agreement with the newly-expanded City of Newport News.

Other states

Some states have created independent cities in order to cater for the special requirements of governing their largest cities and/or capitals:
- The City of Baltimore, Maryland, has been separate from Baltimore County since 1851.
- The City of St. Louis, Missouri, was separated from St. Louis County in 1876.
- The Consolidated Municipality of Carson City, Nevada, absorbed all of the former Ormsby County in 1969.

Other entities similar to independent cities

An independent city should not be confused with
- A consolidated city-county (such as San Francisco or Philadelphia), in which both city and county government has been merged.
- A completely urbanized county such as Arlington, Virginia
- The City of New York, which is a sui generis jurisdiction: the city is made up of five boroughs, each of which is territorially contiguous with a county.
- Cities and towns in New England, which traditionally have very strong governments, with counties having correspondingly lesser importance. Today, most New England counties have almost no governmental institutions or roles associated with them (aside from serving as a basis for court districts). However, somewhat like the ceremonial counties of England, counties in New England still have a nominal existence, and so no city or town in New England is truly separate from a county. The U.S. Census Bureau still uses counties, and not cities or towns, as its base unit of statistical measurement in New England.
- Washington, D.C., which, like the capitals of many other countries (see below), has a special status. It is not part of any state; instead, it comprises the entirety of the District of Columbia, which, in accordance with Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. When founded, the District was in fact divided into two counties and two independent cities. Alexandria County (now Arlington County and the independent city of Alexandria) was given back to Virginia in 1846, while the three remaining entities (the City of Washington, Georgetown City and Washington County) were merged into a consolidated government by an act of Congress in 1871 and Georgetown w

Hampton, Virginia

History

Geography

Adjacent counties and cities

Demographics

Points of Interest

See also

External links

Mary Smith Peake

External links

African American

Nomenclature

Current Demographics

African American history

Contemporary issues

Culture

The term African American

Political overtones

Who is African American?

Antebellum Social Customs1

The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule2

U.S. Social Customs Today3

Terms no longer in common use

Black American population

Further Reading

See also

Other groups

External links

Footnotes

Hampton University

External link

Virginia

History

Native Americans

Virginia Colony: 1607–1776

A new state

American Civil War

20th century

Law and government

Political control

Geography

Demographics

Religion

Economy

Transportation

Sports

Baseball

Basketball

Ice hockey

Indoor football

Soccer

Important cities and towns

Colleges and universities

Miscellaneous information

See also

Other places

External links

Independent city

United States

Virginia

List of Virginia's independent cities

Arlington County

Former cities

Other states

Other entities similar to independent cities

Antebellum Social Customs¹

The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule²

U.S. Social Customs Today³