Slavery, Race & the Making of America

Catalog description

This course explores the histories of slavery and race and their influence on the development of the United States. The class begins with the seventeenth-century origins of North American slavery and end with the twentieth century struggle over Civil Rights and Black Power. Along the way – largely through the use of primary sources – students see how people of African descent resisted their oppression as slaves, how African-American slavery was defended by enslavers and fortified by the national government, how African Americans as slaves and free people helped destroy slavery and struggled over the meaning of freedom, how the Jim Crow system of segregation and disfranchisement came into being, and how twentieth century movements and leaders pressed for new forms of equality and justice.