African-American History, 1619 to 1865

Catalog description

This course examines the role that Africans played in the building of America after their forced migration to these shores. It emphasizes the rise of the plantation system, the cultural transformation of Africans into African-Americans, and the essential roles that slaves and slavery played in the emergence of the United States as an independent nation and its political and economic consolidation into a modern nation-state. Slaves and free blacks figure in this history, not just as tools and backdrop, but as social and political actors, rebels, and major builders of American civilization.