Encyclopedia of African American History

Family Patterns  195

See also: Frazier, E. Franklin; Herskovits, Melville; Slave

Culture

Fernando A. Ortiz

Bibliography

Bennett, Lerone. Before the Mayfl ower: A History of Black Amer-

ica. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Billingsley, Andrew. Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: Th e Enduring Leg-

acy of African-American Families. New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1992.

Clark, Kenneth B. Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power. 1965.

Reprint, New York: Harper & Row and Wesleyan University

Press, 1989.

Frazier, E. Franklin. Th e Negro Family in the United States. Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1939.

Th e U.S. Census Bureau recently published some sta-
tistics that provide an insight into the contemporary struc-
tural reality and patterns of average African American
families. Th ere are currently 8.4 million African American
households in the United States, with 46 percent living
in owner-occupied homes, with a $31,969 annual median
income, an increase up from a $26,468 median income in

1986. Sixty-four percent of homes contain a family, and
      45 percent contain a married-couple family. Additionally,
      1.2 million African American grandparents are living with
      their own grandchildren younger than 10 years of age, and
      51 percent of these grandparents are also responsible for
      their care.

Five generations of a slave family in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1 862. (Library of Congress)