Description

This graduate-level course examines important ideas and events in African-American history as well as debates among historians about how to interpret these ideas and events. We will examine slavery and its demise, the labor system that emerged after slavery, violence against and intimidation of blacks, the relocation of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, and the struggle for civil rights, among other topics. A theme that runs through the course is how African Americans were able to build a rich and vibrant culture as well as strong networks of kinship even as masters, landlords, and others sought to control their labor and deny then political and other rights.