AFR 280
Emancipation to BlackLivesMatter Spring 2023
Division II
Cross-listed LEAD 280 / HIST 280
This is not the current course catalog

This introductory course surveys the cultural, political, and social history of African Americans from Reconstruction to the present. It offers a balance between a “top-down” and “bottom-up” approach and focuses primarily on African Americans’ quest for citizenship, equality, justice, and opportunity. In addition to examining major historical developments and popular figures within the modern black past, we will explore the lesser-known histories of everyday people who helped shaped the black freedom struggle. In so doing, we will interrogate conventional narratives of progressive movements since emancipation. Some of the main topics include: the transition from slavery to freedom; the rise of Jim Crow and the politics of racial uplift; the Great Migration and the emergence of the New Negro; the Great Depression and the New Deal; World War II and the struggle for economic and racial inclusion; the postwar period and the intersecting movements of Civil Rights and Black Power; and the impacts of deindustrialization and mass incarceration on the black community. We will end with a discussion of the Obama years and Black Lives Matter.