Browse Hierarchy HST5395A: Race in the United States: Plantation Slavery to #BlackLivesMatter

This module interrogates the resilient power of racism in American history from the founding of the United States to the recent past. We will survey African American history from slavery through the Civil Rights era, broadly defined, and to more contemporary struggles. We will embed this history in the larger sweep of American history, covering topics such as plantation slavery, abolitionism and emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the ¿New Negro,¿ the long Civil Rights Movement, and the age of Trump/Obama. We will discuss the legacy of prominent African-American thinkers, activists, and political leaders, as well as the perspectives of ordinary black men and women. With the use of scholarly works and primary sources, we will reflect on the invention and re-invention of ¿race¿ and question what African-American history should mean for our understanding of American capitalism, empire, democracy, society, and culture.