Affirmative Action Is Good

I was an Affirmative Action Baby. I was the beneficiary of a program designed to redress the effects of past discrimination. So were Jackie Robinson, Wilt Chamberlain, Constance Baker Motley, Spottswood Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Eric Holder, and President Barack Obama; and so are many Americans of African descent who were pioneers in their fields. Many of Americas "Black Firsts" were allowed to become "Firsts" because of Affirmative Action. By any other name, it would be the same. Some may call it a blessing from God; others may refer to it as a lucky break. Luck is when preparation and opportunity meet. Chance favors the prepared mind. However, ability without opportunity is wasted. It is futile and unproductive to have a talent and never get the opportunity to use it for the benefit of humanity. When many others are as qualified for a coveted position and a Black or other minority group person is chosen for the position, there is a strong possibility that Affirmative Action played a part in the selection. That is nothing to be ashamed of. Some may take umbrage or offense at my use of the term because it has become so politically charged and may not be politically correct; however, Affirmative Action works.
What is Affirmative Action? It is not a program of racial preference. It is a program designed to provide social justice for minority group members and the underprivileged of America. As a Federal Policy, Affirmative Action was born on March 6, 1961 when President Kennedy promulgated Executive Order 10925 requiring racial fairness in employment funded by the Federal Government. The Executive Order prohibited discrimination in federal employment based on race, creed, color, or national origin because it is contrary to the Constitutional principles and policies of the United States.
Affirmative action refers to concrete steps that are taken not only to eliminate discrimination-whether in employment, education, or contracting-but also to attempt to redress the effects of past discrimination. The underlying motive for affirmative action is the Constitutional principle of equal opportunity, which holds that all persons have the right to equal access to self-development. In other words, persons with equal abilities should have equal opportunities. It is the process of a business or governmental agency which gives special rights of hiring or advancement to ethnic minorities to make up for past discrimination against that minority.
Affirmative Action has been the subject of debate, with opponents claiming that it produces reverse discrimination against Caucasians. Affirmative action programs are governed by a number of overlapping laws. A common principle is that whether for admissions or employment, affirmative action programs such as targeted recruitment and goals are encouraged to remedy past effects of discrimination; quotas are disfavored.

President Kennedy's New Frontier was to push the envelop in areas of our national life that had not been reached during the terms of President Harry S. Truman or President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A Presidential Executive Order 9981 issued by President Truman had desegregated the armed forces on July 26, 1948, but the nation's military service academies were lagging far behind in officer recruiting. President Kennedy challenged the U. S. Coast Guard Academy to tender appointments to Black high school students.
The words "Black cadet" or "African American cadet" had not yet entered the Coast Guard's lexicon until President John F. Kennedy issued the directive to find and recruit Black high school students. London Steverson and Kenneth Boyd were the first Black students to be offered an appointment in response to the increased emphasis on minority cadet recruiting. They were sworn in on June 10, 1964 in front of Hamilton Hall at the Coast Guard Academy. They were the only Black cadets in the Academy Class of 1968.
The Academy would later learn that there was another African American cadet at the Academy. He had not been recruited as a "Black cadet"; nor, was he recognized as one by the Coast Guard Academy Admission's Office. He was Merle James Smith in the Class of 1966. He was not recognized as an African American because he did not physically resemble one. None of his school records labeled him as Black, and he had not been recruited as a minority candidate. His appointment had been tendered before President Kennedy issued the directive to find and appoint Black candidates for the Coast Guard Academy. His father, Colonel Merle Smith , Senior, was the Professor of Military Science at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland; and, he had formerly been an Army Staff officer at the Pentagon.
The only two Black cadets to have been recruited under the Kennedy Directive were London Steverson and Kenneth Boyd.
The exclusion of African Americans from the Coast Guard Academy is a tragic fact of American history. From 1876 until 1962 the Academy had not admitted any African-American cadets. One was admitted in 1962 and graduated in 1966. He was Merle J. Smith, Junior. Two entered in 1964 and graduated in 1968 They were London Steverson and Kenneth Boyd.

Attrition rates for entering cadets were high, and the Class of 1968 was no exception. Of the 400 cadets entering in July 1964 as the Class of 1968, only 152 graduated. Both Steverson and Boyd, the two Black Kennedy cadets in that class, completed the four years of indoctrination and graduated.
Because the orders to recruit the first Black cadets came down the Chain-Of-Command from President John F. Kennedy, the Commander-in-Chief, the first Black cadets were treated like sacred cows. There was zero attrition of Black cadets between 1962 and 1972. Every Black cadet who entered graduated. There was one Black cadet in the Class of 1970. He was Willie Pickrum, from Maryland. He went on to distinguish himself as a Coast Guard aviator.
Affirmative action policies vary. The following is an example of a university's Affirmative Action policy: "... is committed to ensuring that all educational programs and personnel actions including application, hiring, promotion, compensation, benefits, transfer, layoffs, training, tuition assistance, and social and recreational programs are administered without regard to race, color, sex (except where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification), sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin, age (except where age is a bona fide occupational qualification), disability, or status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam Era. The University's policy is applicable to faculty and other employees, applicants for faculty positions and other employment, and applicants to educational programs and activities. This policy is fundamental to the effective functioning of the University as an institution of teaching, scholarship, and public service.
Simple absence of discrimination is not sufficient. Our task is to work to eliminate all patterns of unequal treatment. The University's policies are dedicated to the full realization of equal opportunity for all through affirmative action predicated on the following tenets: (1) serious and imaginative recruitment methods; (2) ongoing administrative reviews of hiring practices; (3) frequent affirmative action analyses of faculty, staff, and student units to determine "challenge areas"; (4) direct and firm responses to units identified as having undesirable affirmative action practices; and (5) professional development training."

In 1997, however, California's Proposition 209 banned affirmative action in that state. In 2003 a group of affirmative action opponents began a campaign to challenge its use in Michigan. Ward Connerly, a California businessman and national leader in the campaign to end affirmative action, pushed for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which would bar the use of race and gender in government hiring, contracting, and university admissions. The legal battles over affirmative action and how it may and may not be used continue. On a state-by-state basis, challenges to affirmative action programs are being made.
Affirmative Action has its roots in the civil rights movement. In March of 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which established the President's Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity. The order stated that contractors doing business with the government "will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during their employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
The order did not advocate preferential treatment of affected groups but rather sought to eliminate discrimination in the traditional sense.
The Civil Rights Act did not provide criminal penalties for employers that discriminated, nor did the civil remedies established by the act include compensation for pain and suffering or punitive damages. Rather, the Act sought to establish a conciliation process by which victims would be restored to the situation they would have had in the absence of discrimination.

To carry out the conciliation process, the Act created a new federal agency as a branch of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC acts as a facilitator between plaintiffs and private employers and also pressures violating employers to provide compensation, whether in the form of back pay or restitution. The EEOC also provides legal support for plaintiffs should the plaintiffs pursue their grievances in court.

A significant Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action came in a 1978 case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Under the University of California at Davis's admission policies, 16 of 100 places were set aside for minority applicants. Allan Bakke was a white applicant who was denied enrollment to Davis's medical school, even though his test scores were higher than the minority students who were admitted. Casting the deciding vote, Justice Lewis Powell held that Bakke should be admitted to the program since Davis's policies constituted a rigid quota, but that, nonetheless, Davis could continue to favor minorities in its admission practices and that it had a "compelling state interest" to attain a diversified educational environment.

The tide favoring affirmative action began to turn in the 1980s during the Reagan and Bush administrations. In his 1980 campaign, Reagan stated, "We must not allow the noble concept of equal opportunity to be distorted into federal guidelines or quotas which require race, ethnicity, or sex-rather than ability and qualifications-to be the principal factor in hiring or education." Through court appointments, hiring and firing decisions, and budget cuts, the Reagan administration sought to end Affirmative Action as it had evolved since the Johnson administration. Between 1981 and 1983, the budget of the EEOC was cut by 10 percent and the staff by 12 percent.

Appendix 01 Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Law & Legal Definition

Affirmative action is the process of a business or governmental agency in which it gives special rights of hiring or advancement to ethnic minorities to make up for past discrimination against that minority. Affirmative action has been the subject of debate, with opponents claiming that it produces reverse discrimination against Caucasians. Affirmative action programs are governed by a number of overlapping laws. A common principle is that whether for admissions or employment, affirmative action programs such as targeted recruitment and goals are encouraged to remedy past effects of discrimination; quotas are disfavored. Affirmative action in American employment law has evolved through a series of governmental proclamations, court decrees, and voluntary programs instigated by employers in the private sector. Private employers who receive no public funding are not required to adopt affirmative action policies. Affirmative action policies are enforced by the entities adopting them if they are voluntary, while affirmative action policies required by government mandates can be enforced through the legal system.
For federal contractors and subcontractors, affirmative action must be taken by covered employers to recruit and advance qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and covered veterans. Affirmative actions include training programs, outreach efforts, and other positive steps. These procedures should be incorporated into the company’s written personnel policies. Employers with written affirmative action programs must implement them, keep them on file and update them annually.
The contents of both voluntary and mandatory affirmative action plans are essentially the same. The Office of Federal Compliance Programs (OFCCP) oversees the administration of plans for private entities which are government contractors under either a construction or non-construction contract.
Affirmative action policies vary. The following is an example of a university's affirmative action policy: "... is committed to ensuring that all educational programs and personnel actions including application, hiring, promotion, compensation, benefits, transfer, layoffs, training, tuition assistance, and social and recreational programs are administered without regard to race, color, sex (except where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification), sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin, age (except where age is a bona fide occupational qualification), disability, or status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam Era. The University's policy is applicable to faculty and other employees, applicants for faculty positions and other employment, and applicants to educational programs and activities. This policy is fundamental to the effective functioning of the University as an institution of teaching, scholarship, and public service.
Simple absence of discrimination is not sufficient. Our task is to work to eliminate all patterns of unequal treatment. The University's policies are dedicated to the full realization of equal opportunity for all through affirmative action predicated on the following tenets: (1) serious and imaginative recruitment methods; (2) ongoing administrative reviews of hiring practices; (3) frequent affirmative action analyses of faculty, staff, and student units to determine "challenge areas"; (4) direct and firm responses to units identified as having undesirable affirmative action practices; and (5) professional development training."

Additional Definitions

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action refers to concrete steps that are taken not only to eliminate discrimination—whether in employment, education, or contracting—but also to attempt to redress the effects of past discrimination. The underlying motive for affirmative action is the Constitutional principle of equal opportunity, which holds that all persons have the right to equal access to self-development. In other words, persons with equal abilities should have equal opportunities.
The extent to which affirmative action programs attempt to overturn discrimination differs widely. Some programs simply institute reviews of the hiring process for women, minorities, and other affected groups. Other affirmative action programs explicitly prefer members of affected groups. In such programs, minimum job requirements are used to create a pool of qualified applicants from which members of affected groups are given preference.
Affirmative action affects small businesses in two main ways. First, it prevents businesses with 15 or more employees from discriminating on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, and physical capability in practices relating to hiring, compensating, promoting, training, and firing employees. Second, it allows the state and federal governments to favor women-owned and minority-owned businesses when awarding contracts, and to reject bids from businesses that do not make good faith efforts to include minority-owned businesses among their subcontractors.
The interpretation and implementation of affirmative action have been contested since their origins in the 1960s. A central issue of contention was the definition of discriminatory employment practices. As the interpretation of affirmative action evolved, employment practices that were not intentionally discriminatory but that nevertheless had a "disparate impact" on affected groups were considered a violation of affirmative action regulations.
Another central issue of contention is whether members of affected groups may receive preferential treatment and, if so, the means by which they are to be preferred. This issue is sometimes referred to as the debate over quotas. Though affirmative action programs came under heavy attack during the Reagan and Bush administrations, the principles of affirmative action were reaffirmed by the Civil Rights Act of 1991. In 1997, however, California's Proposition 209 banned affirmative action in that state. In 2003 a group of affirmative action opponents began a campaign to challenge its use in Michigan. Ward Connerly, a California businessman and national leader in the campaign to end affirmative action, has pushed for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which would bar the use of race and gender in government hiring, contracting, and university admissions. As of early 2006, and barring legal appeals to the contrary, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative will be on the November 2006 Michigan ballot. The legal battles over affirmative action and how it may and may not be used continue. On a state-by-state basis, challenges to affirmative action programs are being made.

HISTORY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Affirmative action has its roots in the civil rights movement. In March of 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which established the President's Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity. The order stated that contractors doing business with the government "will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during their employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." The order did not advocate preferential treatment of affected groups but rather sought to eliminate discrimination in the traditional sense.
The legal status of affirmative action was solidified by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This landmark legislation prohibited discrimination in voting, public education and accommodations, and employment in firms with more than fifteen employees. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act offered a similar understanding of affirmative action as Executive Order 10925, stating that the act was not designed "to grant preferential treatment to any group because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The act's sponsors, Senators Joseph Clark and Clifford Case, emphasized this non-preferential interpretation of affirmative action when they wrote: "There is no requirement in Title VII that an employer maintain a racial balance in his workforce. On the contrary, any deliberate attempt to maintain a racial balance, whatever such a balance may be, would involve a violation of Title VII, because maintaining such a balance would require an employer to hire or refuse to hire on the basis of race."
The Civil Rights Act did not provide criminal penalties for employers that discriminated, nor did the civil remedies established by the act include compensation for pain and suffering or punitive damages. Rather, the act sought to establish a conciliation process by which victims would be restored to the situation they would have had in the absence of discrimination. To carry out the conciliation process, the act created a new federal agency as a branch of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC acts as a facilitator between plaintiffs and private employers and also pressures violating employers to provide compensation, whether in the form of back pay or restitution. The EEOC also provides legal support for plaintiffs should the plaintiffs pursue their grievances in court.
Two important issues were contested in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: whether unintentional or structural discrimination constituted violation of the principle of equal opportunity; and the extent to which preferential treatment should be given to affected groups. These issues came to the forefront during the Johnson administration. In a 1965 commencement speech, President Johnson argued that equality of opportunity required more than simply ending discrimination. Rather, he argued for a more active interpretation of affirmative action that would assure "equality as a result."
In 1966, the U.S. Department of Labor began collecting employment records with breakdowns by race in order to evaluate hiring practices, overturning earlier policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. In 1968, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance issued regulations which required, for the first time, that specific targets be set by which the effects of affirmative action programs could be evaluated. The regulations stated that "the contractor's program shall provide in detail for specific steps to guarantee equal employment opportunity keyed to the problems and needs of minority groups, including, when there are deficiencies, the development of specific goals and timetables for the prompt achievement of full and equal employment opportunity." It was in these regulations and analogous measures by the EEOC that the debate over affirmative action quotas had its origins.
Goals and timetables were established by the U.S. Department of Labor using "utilization analysis," which statistically compared the proportion of employed women and minorities in a firm with the proportion of women and minorities in the regional workforce, deriving a measure of what the department called "disparate impact." In the absence of discrimination, it was assumed that these proportions would and should be roughly equal. Since these regulations focused on results and not intent, the structural nature of discrimination was officially recognized. In addition, these regulations provided an official and measurable basis for the preferential treatment of affected groups.
In the landmark Griggs v. Duke Power Co. case of 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Duke's requirement of high school diplomas or IQ tests for those applying for unskilled jobs. The decision held that "Title VII forbids not only practices adopted with a discriminatory motive, but also practices which, though adopted without discriminatory intent, have a discriminatory effect on minorities and women." The ruling provided a legal foundation for cases of "disparate impact," asserting that employers may not use job requirements that adversely affect women and minorities unless required by what it termed "business necessity." (For example, in the case of serious health or safety threats to co-workers or customers.)
The EEOC was strengthened by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, which enabled the Commission to file class action suits. Under the Carter administration, the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection established the "four-fifths rule." This rule was significant in that it provided an explicit benchmark to determine disparate impact, which had been left vague in earlier U.S. Department of Labor regulations. The four-fifths rule held that firms contracting with the federal government should not be allowed to hire any race, sex, or ethnic group at a rate below four-fifths that of any other group.
Another significant Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action came in a 1978 case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Under the University of California at Davis's admission policies, 16 of 100 places were set aside for minority applicants. Allan Bakke was a white applicant who was denied enrollment to Davis's medical school, even though his test scores were higher than the minority students who were admitted. Casting the deciding vote, Justice Lewis Powell held that Bakke should be admitted to the program since Davis's policies constituted a rigid quota, but that, nonetheless, Davis could continue to favor minorities in its admission practices and that it had a "compelling state interest" to attain a diversified educational environment.
The tide favoring affirmative action began to turn in the 1980s during the Reagan and Bush administrations. In his 1980 campaign, Reagan stated, "We must not allow the noble concept of equal opportunity to be distorted into federal guidelines or quotas which require race, ethnicity, or sex—rather than ability and qualifica-tions—to be the principal factor in hiring or education." Through court appointments, hiring and firing decisions, and budget cuts, the Reagan administration sought to end affirmative action as it had evolved since the Johnson administration. Between 1981 and 1983, the budget of the EEOC was cut by 10 percent and the staff by 12 percent. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance was hit harder yet, with budget cuts of 24 percent and staff cuts of 34 percent during these same years.
Two important Supreme Court rulings in the late-1980s also acted to substantially weaken affirmative action. The 1988 case, Watson v. Fort Worth Bank and Trust overturned the landmark 1971 case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., shifting the burden of proof in employment discrimination cases from employers to plaintiffs. In the 1989 case Wards Cove Packing Company v. Antonio, the Court ruled that a plaintiff could not simply show disparate impact to prove discrimination, but must demonstrate that a specific employment practice created the existing disparity.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE 1990S AND 2000S

In an effort to fight the dramatic rollback of affirmative action, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The Act returned the burden of proof to employers in disparate impact cases, requiring employers to prove that employment practices that resulted in disparate impact were "job related" and "consistent with business necessity." The act thus overturned the Supreme Court's rulings in Watson v. Fort Worth Bank and Trust and Wards Cove Packing Company v. Antonio. In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 addressed issues of unlawful harassment and intentional discrimination, allowing minority and female victims of intentional discrimination to be awarded up to $300,000 in compensatory damages in addition to back pay and restitution.
In 1994, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) initiated one of the largest affirmative action programs ever. The FCC voted unanimously to earmark 1,000 of 2,000 new radio licenses for small businesses owned by women and minorities. These licenses are for businesses serving the rapidly growing number of users of pocket-sized telephones, fax machines, pagers, and handheld computers. Small companies owned by women or minorities could receive up to a 60 percent discount on the cost of these licenses, which federal officials estimated have a total market value of $10 billion. One of the concerns expressed about the FCC ruling is that it would enable the rise of companies that were only nominally headed by women or minorities. This could occur as a result of the acquisition provisions of the ruling, which allow up to 75 percent of the equity and 49.9 percent of the voting stock of a small firm to be acquired by a larger firm, and yet the small firm still qualifies for licensing discounts.
Despite such efforts, the mid-1990s saw affirmative action programs continue to be rolled back by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, as well as by state legislatures and court decisions. Critics charged that affirmative action was a form of "reverse discrimination," meaning that by favoring minorities and women it discriminated against white males. In addition, they argued that affirmative action sometimes prevented companies from hiring the best available worker, and in so doing caused resentment toward minority workers on the job.
In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, which banned preferential treatment on the basis of gender or race in public employment, education, and contracting in the state. In effect, the measure eliminated affirmative action programs in California, except as necessary to comply with federal law. Although civil rights groups quickly blocked the measure with a court injunction, it took effect in August 1997 when the injunction was overturned on appeal. It was widely believed that if the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Proposition 209, many states would follow California's lead and make dramatic changes to their affirmative action programs.
Two important cases were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003—Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. In the latter case, the Court upheld the right of the University of Michigan Law School to consider race and ethnicity in admissions. The Court ruled that although affirmative action was no longer justified as a way to redress past oppression and injustice, it promoted a "compelling state interest" in diversity at all levels of society. In the former case, the Court invalidated a particular admissions policy used by the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. In this case the race-conscious admissions policy was deemed to be rigid and to fail to provide for individual consideration of applicants. This decision is seen as a rejection of the use of quotas in admission policies at public institutions of higher education.
Although recent court cases have addressed state use of affirmative action policies, and not their use in the private sector, they demonstrate the direction in which this wide and ongoing social debate is tending. Lisa Chang, in an article she wrote for Employee Relations Law Journal discusses how corporate America can learn from recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the subject of affirmative action. "American companies recognize the need for and benefits from tapping into [the strengths of] that diversity, and the Supreme Court has cast an approving eye on those efforts, at least for the moment."

SEE ALSO Racial Discrimination; Employee Hiring

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, Dawson. "Court Orders Affirmative Action Put on 2006 Ballot." Detroit Free Press. 21 December 2005.
Chang, Lisa E. "Grutter v. Bollinger, et al.: Affirmative Action Lessons for the Private Employer." Employee Relations Law Journal. Summer 2004.
Chung, Kim-Sau. "Role Models and Arguments for Affirmative Action." American Economic Review. June 2000.
Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action was White. W. W. Norton & Company, August 2005.
Nye, David. "Affirmative Action and the Stigma of Incompetence." Academy of Management Executives. February 1998.
Rundles, Jeff. "Affirm Affirmative Action." Colorado Business Magazine. April 1998.
Sowell, Thomas. Affirmative Action Around the World. Yale University Press, 2005.

Original American Art Forms. Born of Struggle and Played In Celebration

Black History is American History.
Dr Carter G Woodson, the Father of Black History Month, looked forward to a time when general American History would incorporate Black History.
But, as it is, we get one month a year to reflect upon and to teach the history of the contributions of African Americans to American History, World History and to civilization.
Black History is much more than a few extraordinary individuals, or a few practices; such as, slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement.
A lot of Black History is painful, but a lot of it is inspiring.
As Dr MLK has said "We have been able to hew out of the Mountain of Despair a Stone of hope."
Black History did not begin at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown, VA.
Granted, it took the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and a lot of struggles in between to secure for African Americans the basic right to citizenship that other Americans take for granted.
I will not try to paint with such a broad brush today.
Some where between Centuries of existence in Africa, the trans-Alantic Slave Trade, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and today... a new Culture was born..
That Culture includes the Religion of the Black Church, Music, Literature, Sports, Dance, language, television, and film.
Some of these are Authentic Original American Art Forms.
They were born in struggle, but they are played in celebration.
Music is the most widely acknowledged African American contribution to American and World Culture.
Black American Music is recognized and cherished all over the world.
Enslaved Africans mixed their traditional musical styles and influences with the harsh realities of their new surroundings and created Blues, Jazz, Gospel, Rythm & Blues, Hip-hop and many variations of these genres.

The origins of the Blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals.
 The origins of the so called Negro Spirituals go back much further than the Blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns.
 Before the Blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of the, so called, Negro Spirituals.
It was the low-down and dirty music played by the rural Blacks.
Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered as a sin to play this low-down music: 
Blues were the devil's music.  
Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel and Blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters.
Rural Black music began to get recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used very similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars.
Gospel music was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by the Blues form than its secular counterpart.

The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908: Antonio Maggio's "I Got the Blues" is the first published song to use the word blues.
 W. C. Handy's "The Memphis Blues" followed in1912.
 Handy, said he first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1903.
 The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith's 1920 rendition of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues".
But the origins of the Blues date back to  around 1890. 
They are very poorly documented, due in part to racial discrimination within American society, including academic circles, and to the low literacy rate of the rural African American community at the time.


Chroniclers began to report about Blues music in Southern Texas and Deep South at the dawn of the 20th century.

Jazz as America’s Premier Art Form

Jazz music and culture experienced a surge in popularity after the passage of the Jazz Preservation Act (JPA) in 1987. 
This Resolution defined Jazz as a Black American art form, thus using race, national identity, and cultural value as key aspects in making Jazz one of the nation’s most subsidized arts.

Millions of Americans and people the world over have embraced Jazz. 

The preservation of Jazz has not always been a simple process, especially in identifying Jazz with Black culture and with America as a whole. 
This has required a careful balancing of social and musical aspects of jazz.

Another important aspect of the JPA is the definition of jazz as a ‘‘high’’ art. 

 On 13 June 1993, President Bill Clinton addressed a crowd at the White House that included, among the usual dignitaries, some of the most famous names in Jazz. 
Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Illinois Jacquet, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Williams were among the guests invited to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Newport Jazz Festival. 
President Clinton, himself, a jazz saxophone player, eulogized the role of jazz in American culture, alluding both to the contributions of Black musicians and to the international position of jazz:
"It’s especially important that we should be together here in America’s house (The White House) to celebrate that most American of all forms of musical expression, jazz. Jazz is really America’s classical music. Like the country itself, and especially like the people who created it, jazz is a music born of struggle but played in celebration." 
What was different about this occasion was that the White House crowd was also celebrating what one newspaper reviewer called ‘‘America’s recently rekindled love affair with its own music, Jazz.  
’’The renewed affections resulted from the passage of the Jazz Preservation Act (JPA). 

 Jazz and Blues: America’s Original Art Forms

Louis Armstrong sparked jazz, a fusion of sounds popular in New Orleans

Jazz stars have become national icons, even depicted on postage stamps.

(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)

Jazz music was the anthem for the first well-defined American youth culture. 
Rebelling against the horrors of mechanized warfare and the straitlaced morality of the 19th century, millions of college-age Americans adopted jazz as a way to mark their difference from their parents’ generation.

  Jazz’s attraction as a symbol of sensuality, freedom, and fun appear's to have transcended the boundaries of race, religion, and class, creating a precedent for phenomena such as the Swing Era, Rhythm 'n Blues, and Rock ’n’ Roll.

“America’s classical music”, Jazz, is inextricably linked to the African American experience.

Jazz, one of America’s original art forms, emerged in New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1900.
New Orleans’s position as a gateway between the United States and the Caribbean, its socially stratified population, and its strong residues of colonial French culture, encouraged the formation of a hybrid musical culture unlike that in any other American city.
Jazz emerged from the confluence of New Orleans’s diverse musical traditions, including ragtime, marching bands, the rhythms used in Mardi Gras and funerary processions, and African-American song traditions, both sacred (the Spirituals) and secular (the Blues).
The New Orleans-born cornetist and singer Louis Armstrong is commonly credited with establishing certain core features of jazz – particularly its rhythmic drive or swing and its emphasis on solo instrumental virtuosity.
 Armstrong also profoundly influenced the development of mainstream popular singing during the 1920s and 1930s.  
Armstrong emerged as an influential musician on the local scene in the years following World War I, and subsequently migrated to Chicago to join the band of his mentor King (Joe) Oliver, playing on what are regarded by many critics as the first real jazz records.
In 1924 Armstrong joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in New York City, pushing the band in the direction of a hotter, more improvisatory style that helped to create the synthesis of jazz and ballroom dance music that would later be called Swing.
 By the 1930s Armstrong was the best–known Black musician in the world, as a result of his recordings and film and radio appearances.
Throughout his career Armstrong often spoke of the importance of maintaining a balance between improvisation (or “routining,” as he called it) and straightforward treatment of the melody.
“Ain’t no sense in playing a hundred notes if one will do,” Armstrong is reported to have said on his 70th birthday.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]

Who generally began to say, JAZZ is “America’s Premier Art Form”?

This question was posted to a jazz research message board on April 19, 2008.
 U S Representative John Conyers, authored a Congressional Bill (HR 57) in 1987 which designated Jazz “a rare and valuable national American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated.”
It became  the Jazz Preservation Act.
Rep. John Conyers’s good friend, Dr. Billy Taylor, called Jazz “America’s classical music” long before the Jazz Preservation Act .
 Dizzy Gillespie said jazz is “our native art form” in 1957,
 And an unnamed contributor to Harper‘s described “talk of jazz as a native art-form” in 1950,
and
A 1946 issue of the New Republic called jazz “the only original American art form.”
 The Jazz Record, insisted that jazz is “America’s first wholly native art form” (ca. 1943) and
In 1944 RCA Victor issued a set of records claiming to be “presenting Jazz music as an American art form worthy of study.”
 Earlier citations  included:
“Naturally, there have clustered together little groups of serious European thinkers to make the same discovery that Americans have made, that Jazz is a great art form” (Paul Whiteman, Time, 1926); “as far as America is concerned it (jazz) is actually our characteristic expression” (Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924);

The quotes from the earlier dates are significant in that this was a minority opinion among the cultural elite at the time.
 There was much heated debate about whether or not Jazz was even music, much less art. 
Mostly classical conductors, saw jazz as having artistic merit, but most saw it as an abomination that would lead to the corruption of society, probably because of its purported origins in African American culture.


Ken Burns took jazz away from the improvisers and performing musicians and put it into the hands of corporate-friendly composers and academicians.
When James Reese Europe brought his African American military ragtime band to France in 1918, the local musicians couldn’t believe the sounds that the Harlem Hell-fighters were producing with their instruments.
  Trumpets growled and wah-ed, 
            Trombones slided and belched,
                          Saxophones bent notes and played without vibrato.
 The first “official” jazz recording in 1917 of the Original Dixieland Jass Band included “Livery Stable Blues,” where the instruments imitated the sounds of barnyard animals.
 Over the decades, an indispensable aspect of the artistry of jazz performance was mastery of a set of extended techniques that could become part of one’s “voice.”
Johnny Hodges’s swooping melodies,  
Roy Eldridge’s growls,  Walter Page’s slap bass.
Listen to John Coltrane and ask yourself if his sound and technique would have any place in the classical saxophone world.
One thing is clear, Coltrane was original—and he was original in a field of original saxophonists.
It doesn’t take a very discerning ear to hear the difference between Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Dewey Redman, Warne Marsh, Stan Getz, or Dexter Gordon.
 Each took an unorthodox way of playing and milked it into a personal voice.

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads.

 
The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The origins of spirituals go back much further than the blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns, in particular those of Isaac Watts, which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. It was the low-down music played by the rural Blacks.
Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered as a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, at the time rural Black music began to get recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used very similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by the blues form than its secular counterpart.

Etymology

One explanation for the origin of the "blues" is that it derived from mysticism involving blue indigo, which was used by many West African cultures in death and mourning ceremonies where all the mourner's garments would have been dyed blue to indicate suffering.
This mystical association towards the indigo plant, grown in many southern U.S. slave plantations, combined with the West African slaves who sang of their suffering as they worked on the cotton that the indigo dyed eventually resulted in these expressed songs being known as "the Blues."

Lyrics

The lyrics of early traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times.
The lines are often sung following a pattern closer to a rhythmic talk than to a melody.
 Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative.
The singer voiced his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times."

The lyrics often relate troubles experienced within African American society.
For instance Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Rising High Water Blues" (1927) tells about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927:

"Backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time

I said, backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time

And I can't get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine."

However, although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the lyrics could also be humorous and raunchy as well:

"Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,

Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,

It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me."

From Big Joe Turner's "Rebecca", a compilation of traditional blues lyrics

Form

Main article: Origins of the blues

The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908: Antonio Maggio's "I Got the Blues" is the first published song to use the word blues. Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" followed in 1912; W. C. Handy's "The Memphis Blues" followed in the same year. The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith's 1920 rendition of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues". But the origins of the blues date back to some decades earlier, probably around 1890. They are very poorly documented, due in part to racial discrimination within American society, including academic circles, and to the low literacy rate of the rural African American community at the time.

The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known.
The first appearance of the blues is often dated after the Emancipation Act of 1863, between 1870 and 1900,
A period that coincides with post emancipation and, later, the development of juke joints as places where Blacks went to listen to music, dance, or gamble after a hard day's work.
This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping,, and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States.
Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style.
They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people.
According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues."
Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, African-Americans were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."
There are few characteristics common to all blues music, because the genre took its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances.
Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa
 no specific African musical form can be identified as the single direct ancestor of the blues. However many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa.

The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the 19th century in the southern United States.
Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by Blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively.
At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country," except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies.
 "Blues" became a code word for a record designed to sell to Black listeners.
 
The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The origins of spirituals go back much further than the blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns, in particular those of Isaac Watts, which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. It was the low-down music played by the rural Blacks.
Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered as a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, at the time rural Black music began to get recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used very similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by the blues form than its secular counterpart.

1960s and 1970s

By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers had brought African-American music to new audiences, both within the U.S. and abroad. However, the blues wave that brought artists such as Muddy Waters to the foreground had stopped.
Bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and Willie Dixon started looking for new markets in Europe. Dick Waterman and the blues festivals he organized in Europe played a major role in propagating blues music abroad. In the UK, bands emulated U.S. blues legends, and UK blues-rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s.

Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York–born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie.
B. B. King's virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues".


The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the U.S. prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music.
The Jimmi Bass Music festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis.
Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs, originally distributed in Europe only, commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His Alabama Blues recording had a song that stated:

I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x)
You know they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world let them peoples go down there free

White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the British blues movement. 

1980s to the 2000s

Since at least the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, Mississippi and other deep South regions.
ften termed "soul blues" or "Southern soul", the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984).
 Contemporary African-American performers who work this vein of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease, Peggy Scott-Adams, Mel Waiters, Clarence Carter, Dr. "Feelgood" Potts, O.B. Buchana, Ms. Jody, Shirley Brown, and dozens of others.
During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1986, the album Strong Persuader revealed Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording, Texas Flood, was released in 1983, and the Texas-based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. 1989 saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity with the album The Healer. Eric Clapton, known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar. However, beginning in the 1990s, digital multitrack recording and other technological advances and new marketing strategies that include video clip production have increased costs, and challenge the spontaneity and improvisation that are an important component of blues music.
In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged.

In the 2000s to the 2010s blues-rock gained a cultural following especially as popularity of the internet increased and artists started creating YouTube channels, forums, and Facebook pages. Many notable blues-rock musicians in this time period are Beth Hart, Warren Haynes, Gary Clark Jr., Derek Trucks, Jason Ricci and the New Blood, Susan Tedeschi, Joe Bonamassa, and Shemekia Copeland. Alternative rock groups still combined strong elements of blues in their music especially Awolnation, Cage the Elephant, The White Stripes, and The Black Keys.

Musical impact

Before World War II, the boundaries between blues and jazz were not so clear.
  After WWII, blues had a substantial influence on jazz. Bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time", used the blues form with the pentatonic scale and blue notes.
Bebop marked a major shift in the role of jazz, from a popular style of music for dancing, to a "high-art," less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music". The audience for both blues and jazz split, and the border between blues and jazz became more defined.

In popular culture

Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal music, hip hop music, reggae, country music, and pop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior.

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s.
In the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy was the first to popularize blues-influenced music among non-black Americans.
During the blues revival of the 1960s and '70s, acoustic blues artist Taj Mahal and legendary Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins wrote and performed music that figured prominently in the popularly and critically acclaimed film Sounder (1972). The film earned Mahal a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a BAFTA nomination.

Perhaps the most visible example of the blues style of music in the late 20th century came in 1980, when Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi released the film The Blues Brothers. The film drew many of the biggest living influencers of the Rhythm and blues genre together, such as Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee Hooker.
The band formed also began a successful tour under the Blues Brothers marquee. 1998 brought a sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 that, while not holding as great a critical and financial success, featured a much larger number of blues artists, such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Musselwhite, Blues Traveler, Jimmie Vaughan, Jeff Baxter.
In 2003, Martin Scorsese made significant efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of documentary films for PBS called The Blues. He also participated in the rendition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high-quality CDs. Blues guitarist and vocalist Keb' Mo' performed his blues rendition of "America, the Beautiful" in 2006 to close out the final season of the television series The West Wing.

John Lomax, pioneering musicologist and folklorist.

Charley Patton, one of the originators of the Delta blues style, playing with a pick or a bottleneck slide.

Bessie Smith, an early blues singer, was known for her powerful voice.

Muddy Waters, described as "the guiding light of the modern blues school"^[84]

John Lee Hooker

Otis Rush, a pioneer of the 'West Side Sound'

Blues legend B.B. King with his guitar, "Lucille".

Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York–born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie. B. B. King's virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues".

Duke Ellington straddled the big band and bebop genres. Ellington extensively used the blues form

The music of Taj Mahal for the 1972 movie Sounder marked a revival of interest in acoustic blues.

Black Like Me!

 Pretending To Be Black a Texan, Dave Wilson, Wins Election 

A white electrician in Houston, known for mailing out homophobic fliers to Houston voters against the city’s lesbian mayor, recently won a seat on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees after misleading voters in his overwhelming African American district into thinking he was Black.
Dave Wilson defeated the 24-year incumbent, Bruce Austin, who actually is Black, by circulating campaign materials featuring stock images of Black people he found on the internet with captions like “Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.”
Some fliers faked an endorsement from a former state representative and African American Ron Wilson.
Wilson says the fine print on the materials “Endorsed by Ron Wilson” explains that Rob Wilson is his cousin, who lives in Iowa.
"He's a nice cousin," Wilson told KHOU, while trying not to laugh. "We played baseball in high school together. And he's endorsed me."
Republican Wilson beat Democrat Austin by a margin of only 26 votes.
Wilson previously lost a mayoral election as a fringe candidate. He ran on an anti-gay marriage, anti-civil union platform.
He has no qualms with pretending to be Black.
“Every time a politician talks, he’s out there deceiving voters,” he said.
He said he was fed up with the “shenanigans” of the Houston Community College System.
Wilson’s campaign took Austin by surprise. The Democratic incumbent tried to counter the fliers. He called Wilson a "right-wing hate monger" who "advocated bringing back chain gangs to clean highways." But his efforts were unsuccessful.
"I'd always said it was a long shot," Wilson admitted. "No, I didn't expect to win."
 (By Sarah Rae Fruchtnicht)
NOTE!!
Black Like Me is a nonfiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin first published in 1961. Griffin was a white native of Dallas, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience traveling on Greyhound buses (occasionally hitchhiking) throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia passing as a Black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles.
Griffin kept a journal of his experiences; the 188-page diary was the genesis of the book.
In 1959, at the time of the book's writing, race relations were particularly strained in America; Griffin's aim was to explain the difficulties facing Black people in certain areas. Under the care of a doctor, Griffin artificially darkened his skin to pass as a Black man.
In 1964, a film version of Black Like Me starring James Whitmore was produced.
Robert Bonazzi subsequently published the book Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me.
The title of the book is taken from the last line of the Langston Hughes poem "Dream Variations".

Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

(By Langston Hughes)