African American History: Advanced Research ((4 Credits))

Catalog description

The student will explore the history of Americans of African descent over the last four centuries. Through reading Franklin and other works the student will develop a solid understanding of slavery, both its origins as well as the course and ideology of slavery through the Civil War, the period of Reconstruction and the development of the Jim Crow segregationist system, the impact of industrialization and black migration from the South to the North in the early twentieth century, the movement for equality for African Americans starting with Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Dubois, and Booker T. Washington through the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, including an understanding of the ideas of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (before and after his visit to Mecca) among others, as well as issues of the past thirty years including the question of ethnic/racial and civic/national identity for black Americans.