Course Title: African-American Lives, History, and Social Change
Weeks 2-5
T, Th: 1-4
Texts:
Takaki, A Different Mirror
Griffin, Who Set You Flowin
Kelley, Race Rebels, 1-102
Stuckey, Going Through the Storm, Chapters 1, 13, 14.
DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6
Litwack, Trouble in Mind, Chapters 3,6.
Dittmer, Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
Transcripts:
Delta Oral History Project
American Mosaic Steelton, 1996
Films:
Eyes on the Prize
The Great Depression
Freedom on My Mind
Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues
The Good Fight
Seeing Red
Week 2: American Slavery and Freedom
Stuckey, Ch 13, Toward A History of Blacks in North America, 239-264.
Ch 1, Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery, p 3-18
Takaki, Chapters 2, 3, 5, & 6
Litwack, Chapter 6
(Plus Fulop & Raboteau chapter on The Creation of an African-American Culture, by Levine)
Films:
Family Across the Sea
The Irish in America
Topics:
The Origins of American Slavery
The Slave Trade and the growth of staple-crop production (tobacco, indigo, rice, cotton)
The Creation of an African-American Culture & Religion
The American Revolution and the Civil War: Possibilities of Liberty?
Reconstruction and Athe Nadir@: 1877-1930: Lynching as Social Control
Week 3: African American Movements: 1880-1945
Litwack, Chapter 3
Takaki, CH 13, 14
Griffin, Entire book
Kelley, Chapter 1, 2, 6
Films:
Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues
The Good Fight (Spanish Civil WarBclips)
The Great Depression, Mean Things Happening in the Land
Topics:
Hard Times in the South: Poverty, Sharecropping, White Violence
Migration North and the Nationalization of Black Culture
World War I and the Red Summer of 1919
The Harlem Renaissance & Black Popular Culture
Organizing for Protest: the NAACP, Urban League, Garveyism, and Communism
World War II and the renewed promise of Democracy; the contradictory lessons of military service
Week 4: The Cold War, McCarthyism, and the emergence of a Southern Civil Rights Movement, 1946-1960
Dittmer, Ch 1-5
Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Entire book)
Transcripts: Bob Love, Jack Harper, Juanita Scott
Films:
Seeing Red (segment)
Eyes on the Prize
Beginnings: 1950s, Emmett Till lynching, Montgomery Bus Boycott,
Topics:
The Cold War & McCarthyism: A New National Security Mandate
The Brown Decision, and Southern Reaction
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the Desegregation of Central High School
The Emmett Till Lynching
Black communities in the North: Baldwin’s Cities of Destruction and the Nation of Islam
Week 5: The Southern Student and Community Movements, 1960-1968
Stuckey, Going Through the Storm: The Great Singing Movements of the 1960s
Dittmer, Ch. 6, 10, 11-12
Film:
Freedom on My Mind
Eyes on the Prize, 1967-1968
Transcripts: Delta and Steelton: Reading, Distilling, Performing
Topics:
The Movement in the South, 1960-1968
The War on Poverty and Rebellions in the north
Change and Resistance
African Americans, White kids and Vietnam
1968: The Dream Explodes
Paper I: Analysis and comparison of transcripts and voices: African American lives, work, & politics, South and North