African American History

Catalog description

This course surveys African-American history from the 1500s to the present day. It addresses the history of African societies on the eve of the Atlantic slave trade, the Atlantic slave trade, the emergence of racism and the notion of race in colonial America, slavery in the colonies and the U.S., abolitionist movements, African Americans in the Civil War, Reconstruction and its end, the era of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, the persistence of systems of inequality into the present day. The course explores in detail the history of systemic racism while paying particular attention to the actions of African Americans to arrest and overcome it. It emphasizes the history of African American impact on the social, economic, political, and cultural development of the United States.