AFR 160
After the Civil Rights Movement Spring 2024
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed HIST 160
This is not the current course catalog

This course examines African American politics, life, and culture from the period following the end of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s to today’s Black Lives Matter movement. In examining this time period, we will pay particular attention to a number of key questions: What organizations, activists, and campaigns dominated Black politics in the post-civil rights movement era? How did organizers build on the issues and tactics of the movement in the years that followed? In what ways were structures of racial inequality reconfigured in the post-movement era? How did the popular culture of the era reflect the changing social, economic, and political lives of African Americans? How were the gains of the civil rights movement preserved or threatened in the post-movement era? In considering these questions, we will explore the ways that struggles for racial equality continued to shape American life in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. Using scholarly works, film, music, oral history, and other primary and secondary sources, we will look at topics including: debates over the legacy of the civil rights movement; the impact of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs on Black communities; HIV/AIDS activism; Black conservatism in the age of Ronald Reagan; anti-police brutality activism in the years before the Black Lives Matter Movement; urban disinvestment and the rise of hip hop culture; electoral politics, Black political power, and the Obama presidency.