History 313
Seabury 34F
Spring 2006
Cheryl Greenberg 297-2371
This course examines the history of the African American civil rights movement in the United States. Through lectures, discussions, documentary videos, and readings of memoirs, ethnographies, and historical analyses, we will explore various facets of the movement, its historical context, and contemporary civil rights issues. We begin in the early twentieth century and move through the many phases of the movement into the present to address the following questions (among others): What progress has been made? How were those struggles won, and who won them? What remains to be done? How do civil rights issues or strategies vary by class, gender, region, generation? Community learning is a central part of the course; to explore the state of race relations today we will be conducting our own investigation of race relations in Hartford and the surrounding towns, and writing up our experiences for local newspapers.
The components of the course:
– Readings and epigraph papers: An epigraph is a brief portion of text which exemplifies a theme of the book as a whole. After reading the assignment, identify a brief phrase or sentence (or so) that you think illustrates, explains or embodies a key theme. The paper itself should then explain your selection. What argument or theme have you identified (be explicit)? What evidence does the author use? How does the author develop that theme? That is, what conclusions does the author draw? How does that theme intersect with other themes of the book or the course?
There is no single right answer; any epigraph can be used successfully if you can tie it clearly to a major theme of the work and your supporting discussion is thoughtful and well supported. The more explicit and specific you are in articulating the theme you’ve identified, the epigraph’s links to it, and the way it intersects other themes, the more successful your endeavor. But remember that this is a brief paper – no more than two pages – and there is much to cover. You must be thorough in just a few words, so organize your thoughts and write with clarity and precision.
These papers are due in class on Thursdays and count (cumulatively) for 30 percent of your grade.
– Class discussions: Some days are allocated exclusively to discussion, some combine lectures with discussions. Your participation is crucial if the class is to be interesting and provocative. The readings and lectures should ground you in the necessary information, and your epigraph papers should help sharpen your views. So come prepared to talk, argue, change your mind, defend your position. To encourage you, class participation is 20 percent of your grade and more than two absences will affect your final grade.
– Community Learning: urban anthropology.
You will be forming small groups of between two and four. Each group will go to several public spots (a park, mall, playground, town center, etc) and observe the people there. Think about where you might go, and what sorts of groups you might form (e.g. consider whether you want to go as individuals, as a mixed racial group, to a place where you are the majority race, or minority race, what you will do while you watch).
What are you looking for? Hints about contemporary race relations. Your task will be to describe and analyze what you see. You might consider any or all of the following:
Are social groupings primarily racially homogeneous or heterogeneous? Does that vary with age, gender, location or other factors?
When strangers of different races encounter one another (passing, e.g.) do they behave differently than when they pass strangers of their own race? Does this vary with age, gender, location or other factors?
Do African Americans and whites (or other racial groups) behave and/or dress similarly or differently? For example, do whites travel in groups while African Americans more often walk alone? Is one group generally more gender mixed than the other? Is one group generally louder? Does one group walk more slowly? Window shop (or whatever) more? (Remember we are talking patterns here, not one or two cases). This is important because one question we will try to answer is what accounts for these differences (for example, presumed comfort level, cultural norms, reason for being there).
How do they react to you (if at all)? Does that vary by age, gender, location, race (of them, of you), size of group, or other factors?
After the observations are completed, each group will write up its findings for an op-ed piece I will then send to the Hartford Courant or the Advocate. The general question to address is: What can we learn about race relations by watching how people act in their everyday lives? (If a different question might apply better to your findings, that’s also fine but be sure to be clear about what question you are asking.)
This piece will be jointly written by the group, although you may hand in your own version for a grade if you prefer. (In other words, I will grade the joint piece and you will share the grade. If you prefer, while you must still help edit the joint piece, you may hand in your own version, for your own grade).
With this assignment (which I really will send out, so please write carefully, grammatically, and responsibly) please submit a careful log of locations, dates, times, your own activity, and brief summaries of what you saw. This log must also include who did what, and for how long, including all meetings for planning and writing, as well as who went where for observations. The op-ed piece should be 1,000 words (four pages) and (along with the log that documents each person’s contributions) is worth 25 percent of your grade.
– Final paper: There have been a number of recent studies on racial disparities in home mortgage lending, car loan rates, morbidity (illness) and mortality rates, performance on educational tests, wealth (as opposed to income) levels, home ownership, and so on. Find an article (it should have some depth to it, some detail, statistics, an attempt at an explanation or analysis) on one (or two or three) of these from a REPUTABLE source like a national newspaper, political or news magazine, or an academic or government study. Also read LeBlanc, pp. 33-43.
Then please write a paper reflecting on these racial disparities and on the observations of everyday life you (and others in the class) did; tie them into the ongoing themes of the course, and the struggle for civil rights broadly speaking.
You might consider some or all of the following questions:
Are there points to compare and contrast between the behavioral observations you saw and the more structural findings of the studies? If they seem to be contradictory, how can you make sense of what is going on?
Can you explain why the racial disparities/inequities/differences occurred (or did not occur) in each case? What do they tell you about the successes, limits, and failures of the civil rights movement?
Did these findings illuminate particular issues in the history of the struggle for civil rights? Do they offer a new perspective on the movement, its goals, its strategies, or the barriers it was up against?
What do they tell you about the state of civil rights today? What movement strategies would be most effective in dealing with these issues, and why?
This paper must be done by each of you individually, not by the group, although you may discuss your ideas together (but do not do any writing together). Be sure to be specific both about your findings and about those elements of the course you are relating the findings to. A liberal use of facts, detail, will help your grade immensely. This paper is 25 percent of your grade and is due when our final exam is scheduled. It should be approximately ten thoughtful pages long.
Please note that in all written work, grammar, spelling, organization and structure are important and will affect your grade. If I can’t understand you, I can’t appreciate the genius of your argument. Write and proofread carefully. And, as ever, do your own work, and footnote every idea that is not your own. Plagiarism is a serious offense. No work (including reading epigraphs) will be accepted past its due date unless prior arrangements have been made with me.
Required books (all are in the bookstore and on reserve in the library):
Melba Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry
Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto
Ellis Cose, Rage of a Privileged Class
Paul LeBlanc, ed., Black Liberation and the American Dream
John Lewis, Walking with the Wind
Assata Shakur, Assata
William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears
Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children
Classes and Assignments:
Jan. 24: Introduction:14th amendment workshop
Jan. 26: “Race: the Power of an Illusion,” part 3
Jan. 31: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line”
Feb. 2 Washington, Du Bois, Garvey: What is to be done?
Reading:
W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, chaps. 1, 3, 6, 11 on line: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html
Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition speech on line: http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/booker_atlanta.html
Marcus Garvey, “African Fundamentalism,” in LeBlanc pp. 132-35
Ida B. Wells, “Southern Horrors” (excerpt), in LeBlanc pp. 123-128
(Choose one for epigraph paper although you should contrast this person’s ideas on your chosen theme with those of the others)
Feb. 7, 9 : Jim Crow from the Great Depression to the Double V Campaign
Reading:
Uncle Tom’s Children
Feb. 14: The NAACP: from Plessy to Brown
Feb. 16: Discussion: desegregation on the ground
Reading:
Warriors Don’t Cry
Feb. 21, 23: Nonviolent civil disobedience from CORE to SNCC
Reading:
Walking with the Wind, first third (no paper)
Ella Baker, in LeBlanc pp. 147-50, 172-76
Trinity Days: no class
March 2: Music of the Movement
Reading:
Walking with the Wind, second third (no paper)
March 7, 9: Liberalism and its limits: MFDP, Selma, Malcolm X
Reading:
Walking with the Wind (final third, paper on entire book)
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” on line: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/malcolmxballot.htm
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” on line: http://www.thekingcenter.org/prog/non/Letter.html
and “Where Do We Go from Here?” in LeBlanc, pp. 161-69
March 14, 16: Black Power and COINTELPRO
Reading:
Assata
Black Panther Party, Manifesto, in LeBlanc pp. 252-54
Spring Break
March 28:“Eyes on the Prize”: A Nation of Law?
March 30: Segregation northern style
Reading:
Dark Ghetto
A. Philip Randolph Institute, Freedom Budget, in LeBlanc pp. 237-42
April 4: The new face of discrimination: “20/20 Prime Time”
Also: brainstorming the community learning project
April 6: Contemporary discrimination: how do we know it when we see it?
Reading:
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
David Roediger, “From the Social Construction of Race to the Abolition of Whiteness,” in LeBlanc pp. 273-88 (no paper)
April 11: Race and popular culture: “Color Adjustment”
April 13: The black middle class
Reading:
Rage of a Privileged Class
April 18, 20: Race and Economics: the “underclass” debate
Reading:
When Work Disappears
Adolph Reed, Jr., “Why is there no Black Political Movement?” in LeBlanc pp. 185-89
April 25: Race on campus
April 27: Community learning: findings
Op-Ed piece due
May 2: Discussion: How far have we come?