Map of U.S. counties with majority black populations: Although the African American population remains predominantly in the South, the Great Migration spawned several black populations in Chicago, Detroit, Harlem, Indianapolis, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

Several waves of migration to the Americas, as well as migrations within the Americas, brought people of African descent to North America. According to the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture. Schomburg, the first African peoples came to North America in the 16th century through Mexico and the Caribbean to the Spanish colonies of Florida, Texas, and other parts of the South. Of the 12 million people from Africa who were sent to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade, 645,000 were sent to the British colonies in mainland North America and to the United States. The fortunes. In 2000, African Americans made up 12.1 percent of the total U.S. population, constituting the largest racial minority group. The African American population is concentrated in the southern states and urban areas.

In the formation of the African diaspora, the transatlantic slave trade is often seen as a defining element, but people of African descent participated in eleven other migratory movements involving North America since the 16th century, many of which were voluntary, although undertaken in an aggressive and exploitative environment.

In the 1860s, people from sub-Saharan Africa, mostly from West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands, began arriving in a wave of voluntary immigration in search of work as whalers in Massachusetts. This migration continued until restrictive laws were passed in 1921, which effectively closed the door to non-Europeans. By then men of African descent were already a majority in the New England whaling industry, and African Americans worked as sailors, blacksmiths, shipbuilders, officers, and owners. The internationalism of the whaling crews, including the character of Dugga, the African harpooner, is recorded in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Eventually they moved to California.

Today, 1.7 million people in the United States are descendants of voluntary immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, most of whom arrived in the late twentieth century. African immigrants make up 6 percent of all immigrants to the United States and nearly 5 percent of the African-American community nationwide. About 57 percent immigrated between 1990 and 2000. African-born immigrants make up 1.6 percent of the black population. Members of the African immigrant diaspora are the most educated group in the United States, with 50 percent holding a bachelor’s degree or degree, compared to 23 percent of Native Americans. The largest African immigrant communities in the United States are in New York City, followed by California, Texas, and Maryland.