DMITRY BONDARENKO Doctor of Historical Sciences Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences Keywords: African-Americans, African migrants, civil rights movement, fall of the apartheid regime, historical memory, cross-cultural interaction In the 17th and 19th centuries, as a result of the European slave trade, large communities of descendants of people forcibly removed from Africa were formed in most countries of the New World. In particular, in the United States of America, African-Americans have long been an integral part of the country's historical, ethno-cultural, and socio-economic landscape, making up 12.6% of its population today (38.9 million out of 308.7 million people, according to the 2010 general Census). Voluntary migration of Africans to the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, began around the same time as the end of the era of slavery - in the middle of the XIX century. However, it remained insignificant for a long time: a sharp increase in its scale did not even occur immediately after the adoption of the Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1965, which abolished immigration quotas for natives of non-European countries In the 1980s and especially in the 1990s alone, 1 By 2013, the number of African migrants reached 1.5 million, although even today they represent only 4% of the country's population born outside its borders.2 Migration to the United States is carried out from almost all countries in Africa. However, the main "donors" are still English-speaking countries and countries affected by civil wars - now or in the recent past. Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Somalia, South Africa, and Liberia are home to 70% of African Americans.3 "AFRICAN DIASPORAS" In the United States, there is not an "African diaspora", but separate diasporas - Nigerian, Ethiopian, etc. They are extremely heterogeneous and internally fragmented-ethnically, religiously, socially, and politically. At the same time, they partially overlap with each other (fo ... Read more