system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When and why did black American names diverge from white American names to the extent they are different today?

I graduated from high school in the early 2000s from a school that was approximately 20% black and 70% white (rest were Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, or mixed race).  The school was in the lower midwest, approximately 10 miles from the Mississippi River and 100 miles down river from the closest city, St. Louis.  The following is a sampling of some of the names of my black classmates and kids a few years older and younger:  

* Benisha and Venisha (sisters)
* Shacairy
* DeAndre
* Lashonda 
* Juwan
* LaWonda
* Clatrice
* Patrice
* Iyesha 
* LaQuansa

There were kids with typical white names, but they were the exception.  Boys tended to have more typically "white" names, but often had what I think to as retro-names . . . Fred, Marvin, Carl, Maurice.

I always figured this was how black American naming had always been until I met their parents who had what would be considered standard white American names (Emma, Michael, Martin, Gary).  I have read that the civil rights movement and black nationalism helped to spark this change, but I am interested in knowing more, and want to know exactly why and how this change happened so quickly (within 10 years or so).

Now that I have moved from my hometown to a much more affluent part of the country, I notice much less of a distinction, maybe geography and economics plays a role.

Disclaimer: I know that any question about race is always a difficult one to put forward and to answer.  I do not mean any offense.  I was able to pull the sampling by looking at my town's facebook page and do not in anyway mean to convey that I think those names are "wrong".
gpt
Black Nationalism in the 1950s sought to reconstruct African culture in the African American community. One of the core concepts of the reconstruction was the adoption of Arabic names (many Black Nationalists associated Islam with "being African") to distance themselves from the white population. The educated elites in the Black Nationalist movement tried to spread the ideology among a mostly uneducated population. Thus, the Arabic-root names started having non-standard spelling. Because the movement was mostly grassroots with relatively few educated elites in charge, the ideas spread through word of mouth and you end up with a lot of names that really don't have an Arabic root, but "sound Arabic". There is also an element of French influence in African-American names due to the history of French Creole influence on American Black culture (the La-/Le-. Sha-, and De-). This likewise went through a transformation due to word-of-mouth.

This kind of behavior is common among Nationalist movements. British Nationalism advocated Hebrew and Latin names over Celtic and Germanic names in the 1600s. German Nationalism advocated a strict spelling code on approved German names in the 1800s. French Nationalists did the same as the Germans a century earlier.