What % of "African American" people currently living in the United States are actual descendants of slaves?

Question

I was wondering if any studies have been done that show how many Black ("African American") people living in the United States today are actual descendants of slaves (that is, slaves in the US during the pre-Civil War era). I was hoping more for direct lineage rather than just ancestry (in other words, an actual link due to offspring (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, etc.) rather than offshoots of the family tree (cousins, aunts, uncles, etc)). Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

Short Answer:  Except for first or second generation descendants of African immigrants to the United States who arrived during the 1960s to the present, including the Democratic Presidental Candidate, Barack Obama, almost 100 percent of all Americans of African descent would have been the descendants of slaves.

Explanation:  In 1750, nearly everyone of African descent on the North American continent was enslaved. By 1829,  ninety percent remained enslaved. The slave trade ended in 1808, but an overwhelming majority of free African Americans before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865 descended from the children of freed slaves and indentured servants of European descent in colonial Virginia and Maryland.  Most of these slaves would have been freed before 1723 when a Virginia law required legislative approval for manumissions.

Until the 1960s, very few African-born immigrants came to the United States.  However, between 1960 and 1990,  the number of newly arrived immigrants of African descent quadrupled; even so, they now make up only 0.2 percent of the US population. For the most part, these immigrants are far better educated and wealthier than the descendants of Africans brought to the US by the slave trade mostly during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Answer 2

0%

Answer 3

"Most" is the best answer you're going to get.

Tracing them is tough because there are very few records.

You should define your terms, too; do you mean all of their 64 gggg grandparents were slaves, or at least one, or 33 out of the 64?

The chance that someone's uncle would be a slave and his father would not, back in 1860, is minimal. 95% of the Black people in the USA in 1850 were slaves. The free Blacks had slave ancestors, or had been slaves themselves. People in Kenya (Ghana, Senegal, Congo . . .) didn't hop the boat yearning to be free in 1854, the way people in Ireland and Germany did.

Answer 4

Analyze your criteria.

The 1850 census is the FIRST census which gives the place of birth for any person.  Using ancestry, I find that there were 372 persons listed there, stating that they were born in Africa.  These are not slaves.. slaves were not listed individually on the census.  There are free persons of color prior to the Civil War.. 1850 again shows 300,395 who are "black".. if slaves, they would not usually be listed, in the same schedules as the white population.  I did not run mulatto, although that is available. This shows that persons born in the US were not always slaves, although most will descend from one.

Assuming my ancestry was directly from a slave (ie grandmother).. then cousins are NOT offshoots. The fact that they are a cousin defines that they descend from a same ancestor.  You cannot separate them, based on the end result that you are trying to determine.

It is possible that someone has made some effort to determine what you want.. what has to be recognized is that explicit records are not always going to be available on a broad scale.  What I used above, won't include persons who were not included in the census.. trust me on this, MANY people figured the census taker had no business with them in the first place.  You also might use ancestry and the 1870 census (the first one after emancipation) to get some estimates of the number of black or mulatto persons, but it won't be completely accurate.

Ted's answer of "most" is pretty on the nose.