Prof. Shannon King
HIST 410/510
Office: McKenzie 313
Spring 2007
African American Social Movements during the Long Twentieth Century
Course Description : This course examines the varied local and national struggles that constitute the “Black Freedom Movement” from the Civil War to the Post-Civil Rights era. Throughout this quarter, we will interrogate the shibboleth that the modern Civil Rights movement and the Black Freedom Movement are synonymous. This interpretation of the Black Freedom Movement is a form of presentist, a myopia the result of understanding history backward, that is, from the present to the past. In order to get at the origins and the internal dynamics of the Black Freedom Movement, it is useful to analyze the twentieth century as a long duree . To conceptualize the twentieth century as a long duree is to periodize the century according to the ways in which social forces—political, economic, and cultural—advanced and limited Black freedom struggles. Along this line of thinking, we begin looking at black political struggle in the mid-nineteenth century instead of the turn of twentieth century, and end this long duree in the 1970s instead of the late 1990s. By examining the long duree of the Black Freedom Movement, we will identify the Working-class, Internationalist, and the Womanist dimensions of African American social movements and engage the inter-related of and the tensions among these differing dimensions, as African Americans generally sought First-class citizenship.
Format : Attendance and class participation in weekly meetings are mandatory. Each week students submit a brief précis, at least a page and an half but no more than two pages, of that week's required reading [graduate students much treat at least three articles or book chapters of that week's readings]. Each week one or more students will lead class discussion on the assigned readings. Each student will also prepare a 12-15-page paper on a theme or topic selected in consultation with the instructor [Graduate students 15-20-page paper]. Students must submit an outline and a draft at designated dates during the semester; the paper will be due the final week of class. Final grades will be based on the long essay (50 percent); class participation including the oral reports (25 percent); and weekly written summaries (25 percent).
Required texts : Charles Payne and Adam Green, Time Longer Than Rope ; Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, Freedom North ; Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement ; Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice ; Peniel Joseph, Black Power Movement.
A tentative list of articles and book chapters other than those in the required texts :
Steven Hahn, ‘Extravagant Expectations' of Freedom: Rumour, Political Struggle, and the Christmas Insurrection Scare of 1865 in the American South
Past and Present, No. 157 (Nove., 1997), 122-158.
Jeff Kerr-Ritchie, “Black Republicans in the Virginia Tobacco Fields” J. of Negro History (JNH)
Jane Dailey, “Deference and Violence in the Postbellum Urban South” J. of Southern History (JSH)
Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, “A Warlike Demonstration”: Legalism, Violent Self-Help, and Electoral Politics in Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898 JNH vol. 83 no.1
Glenda E. Gilmore, “Diplomatic Women” in Gender and Jim Crow: Women and The Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina , 1896-1920.
Victoria Wolcott, “Reform and Public Displays of Respectability in Great Migration Detroit ” Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit .
Paul Gordon Lauren, Seen from the Outside, The International Perspective on America 's Dilemma in Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988 .
Carol Anderson, Bleached Souls and Red Negroes: The NAACP and Black Communists in the Early Cold War, 1948-1952 in Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988 .
Mary Dudziak, Birmingham , Addis Ababa , and the Image of America : International Influence on U.S. Civil Rights Politics in the Kennedy Administration in Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988 .
Peter B. Levy, Gloria Richardson and the Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge , Maryland in Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America .
Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Organizing for More Than the Vote: The Political Radicalization of Local People in Lowndes County, Alabama, 1965-1966 in Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America .