Spring Term 1999, History 253

Professor Quintard Taylor

African Americans in the West

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09:30-10:50 UH  133 GIL

Office Hours

COURSE DESCRIPTION

African American history in the American West represents a paradox for historians.  Most scholars who study the African American experience limit their focus to the Old South and the cities of the East and Midwest, only occasionally describing Los Angeles as an example of national trends in black history.  Scholars of the American West usually focus on Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans if they discuss people of color at all in the region. Yet black history in the West is as old, complex, and compelling as Western or African American history.  This course will examine black western history tracing its origins from the era when Spain controlled much of the region through the Civil Rights era of the 1970s.  The course will present the diverse array of women and men who helped shape the history of the region, of black America, and of the entire nation. 

COURSE POLICIES

Examinations/Grading:

Your course grade is based on three exercises: a midterm exam, a book review (which is explained later in this manual), and a final.  The midterm is scheduled for the end of the fifth week.  Some students will be unable to take the midterm exam with the rest of the class.  In that case I ask them to take a makeup exam scheduled for 5:00‑6:00 pm on the last Friday of the quarter (DEAD WEEK).  The room will be announced later.  Since the makeup exam will be penalized 10 points on a 100 point exercise, all students should make every effort to take the exam at its scheduled time. 

Those students who perform poorly on the midterm exam (69 or below) have the option to write a research paper to offset that grade.  Should you choose to write the paper, the outline is due by the seventh Friday of the quarter and the completed paper should be handed in by the last regularly scheduled class meeting of the quarter.  Both the outline and the completed paper should be submitted to the GTF for the course.  The GTF will not accept papers after the day listed above.

My grading procedures are simple.  Since each exam and book review is worth up to 100 points I will average your numerical score.  I will also assign a numerical score for your research paper, "C"=75, "C+"=78, etc.  Your numerical scores will then be averaged to determine your course grade.  Thus if your overall average is 76 your course grade will be "C".

I do not issue "incompletes" to students who by the end of the quarter have not taken an exam, handed in an assigned paper or otherwise met the course requirements.  If you have not completed all of the course requirements by the end of exam week, and you have not, by that point, explained why, your grade will be lowered accordingly.

COURSE TEXTS

Required Textbooks:

Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West

Quintard Taylor, The African American Experience in The American West: A Manual for the History of Black Americans from 1528 to the Present

Supplemental Readings:

I have placed some articles on reserve to help explain the black West.  As the need arises I may add other articles and books to the reserve room holdings.

 

COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1: Spanish Origins

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 1

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 1

 Week 2: Slavery in the Antebellum West

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 2

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 2

 Week 3: Free African American Communities in the Antebellum West

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 3 

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 3

 Week 4: Reconstruction in the West

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 4

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 4

 Week 5: Post Civil War Migration and Settlement 

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 5

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 5

MIDTERM EXAM

 Week 6: Buffalo Soldiers and the Defense of the West

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 6

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 6

 Week 7: The Black Urban West, 1880-1940

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 7

Taylor, In Search, Chapters 7-8

 Week 8: World War II and the Black West

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 8

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 9

 Week 9: The Civil Rights Movement in the West

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 9

Taylor, In Search, Chapter 10

 Week 10: The Black West in the 1990s

Taylor, Manual, Chapter 10

Taylor, In Search, Conclusion