PSCI 249
Black and Brown Jacobins Spring 2024
Division II Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed AMST 218 / PSCI 249

What does it take to be free in the free world? In this class we explore the dark side of democracy. The title is inspired by C.L.R. James’ famous book, Black Jacobins, about the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). This revolution was the most successful revolt of the enslaved in recorded history. But the irony is that their oppressors were the leaders of the French Revolution across the Atlantic. Those who proclaimed “liberty, egality, fraternity” for themselves violently denied them to others. There is a similar dismal irony to the American Revolution, as captured by the title of Frederick Douglass’ famous 1852 speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Not even the Civil War could resolve this issue, as demonstrated by the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. To revisit this history, we will read W.E.B. Du Bois’ great book, Black Reconstruction in America. Alongside a selection of readings by canonical postcolonial writers and current political theorists, James and Du Bois provoke us to ask what it would take for the democratic world to be truly free.