The golden age of hip-hop culture and rap music
is commonly dated from about 1988 to the late
1990’s. The subgenre of “gangsta rap,” as in the
works of Ice-T and Tupac Shakur, was particularly
controversial because of its preoccupation with po-
lice violence and graphic sex. Hip-hop inspired
gritty films that glamorized tough black men in the
inner city, such as John Singleton’sBoyz ’N the Hood
(1991) and Allen and Albert Hughes’sMenace II Soci-
ety(1993). However, much of hip-hop culture was
mainstream and respectable. Russell Simmons,
founder of Def Jam Recordings, became well known
for his television and Broadway shows. In 1999,
Lauryn Hill appeared on the cover ofTimemagazine
after winning five Grammy Awards.
The body of ideas labeled Afrocentrism became
increasingly popular among many African Ameri-
can intellectuals. Molefi Kete Asante, author ofThe
Afrocentric Idea(1987), argued that the African way of
thinking is oriented toward spirituality and commu-
nity, in contrast to the Eurocentric approach, which
attempts to predict and control. He also insisted that
the ancient Egyptians belonged to the same race as
sub-Saharan Africans, and that they provided the
foundation for the development of Greek and Ro-
man philosophy. Other prominent Afrocentric the-
orists included Maulana Karenga, the founder of
Kwanzaa, and Leonard Jeffries, who proposed a con-
troversial theory of race based on melanin.
Leadership African American politicians made a
number of gains during the decade. In the elections
of 1992, a record of thirty-nine blacks won seats in
the House of Representatives. Carol Moseley-Braun
became the second African American of the century
to win a Senate seat—the first black woman in U.S.
history to do so. L. Douglas Wilder served as gover-
nor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. The controversial
Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C., was ar-
rested on drug charges in 1990; after serving six
months in jail, he served a second term from 1995 to
1999.
In the early 1990’s, the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
faced major financial problems. The Reverend
Benjamin Chavis was chosen over Jesse Jackson as
the executive director, but within eighteenth months
Chavis was ousted for using NAACP funds in a sexual
harassment lawsuit. Contributions and membership
plummeted. The new leaders, Myrlie Evers-Williams
and Kweisi Mfume, were forced to reduce the staff
from 250 to 50. Before the end of the decade, the or-
ganization had successfully regained financial stabil-
ity, allowing it to launch a large-scale “get out the
vote” campaign in the 2000 elections.
Louis Farrakhan, the dynamic leader of the Na-
tion of Islam, sponsored the so-called Million Man
March, a huge African American demonstration in
the nation’s capital on October 16, 1995. In addition
to denouncing white supremacy, Farrakhan and
other speakers called on African American men to
be responsible fathers and to take an active role in
community affairs. In the months following the
march, it was reported that one and a half million
black men registered to vote. In addition, the Na-
tional Association of Black Social Workers reported
a flood of applications to adopt black children.Social Problems African Americans had among
the nation’s highest rates of many diseases. They
were twice as likely as whites to suffer from diabetes,
and their life expectancy was about five years less. In
1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion (CDC) estimated that they represented 43 per-
cent of the reported cases of acquired immunodefi-
ciency syndrome (AIDS). The National Black Gay
and Lesbian Conference as well as two outstanding
black athletes, Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Arthur
Ashe, helped promote AIDS education and raised fi-
nancial support to help fight the dreadful disease.
Most authorities agreed that the criminal justice
system was biased against persons of color, and the
“war on drugs” caused a dramatic rise in incarcera-
tion rates. The criminal penalties for crack cocaine,
which was primarily used by blacks, were signifi-
cantly harsher than those for powder cocaine, more
commonly consumed by whites. In 2000, blacks
comprised approximately 50 percent of the persons
in U.S. prisons and jails. About 12 percent of black
men in their twenties and thirties were incarcer-
ated—more were in prison than in college. Accord-
ing to the Department of Justice, African Americans’
offender rate for homicide decreased about 50 per-
cent during the 1990’s, from fifty to twenty-five per
1,000,000. Still, homicide victimization rates for
blacks were more than five times higher than for
whites, and offending rates were more than six times
higher.
In 1993, the poverty rate for African Americans
stood at 33 percent. By 2000, the rate had declined10 African Americans The Nineties in America