History 220/Black American Studies 220, The American Civil Rights Movement, Fall 2000

This course will be a team-taught, interdisciplinary lecture course on the history of the American civil rights movement.  One professor is a member of the History Department, and the other is from Black American Studies.  In addition to dealing with the crucial years from about 1954 to 1970, the course will also cover a larger span of race relations.  It will go back to discuss the activities of black leaders earlier in the twentieth century, and it will move forward to discuss "second generation" civil rights issues that involve various sorts of affirmative action.

Students in Section 010 must attend lectures and take three one-hour examinations.  Students in Section 011 should do the same and will also receive an extra credit (four credits in all) for their work as part of a team that makes a "problem-based" presentation to the entire class.  The presentation will be either a moot court re-enactment of a landmark civil rights lawsuit or a re-enactment of one of the key debates in civil rights history.

Required Reading

1. For the first examination:


a.  Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
b.  Sarah and A. Elizabeth Delany, Having Our Say

2. For the second examination:


a.  Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality
b.  Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

3. For the third examination:


a.  Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character
b.  Nathan McCall, Makes We Wanna Holler
 

Grades will be based on three 100-point examinations, with 90% the bottom A, 80% the bottom B, 70% the bottom C, and 60% the bottom D.  The presentations by students in Section 011 will also be graded according to the 90-80-70-60 system.

Tentative Schedule of Classes

Part One: The Forgotten Years of the Civil Rights Movement

1.  August 29, Antecedents of the Civil Rights Movement
2.  August 31, Disfranchisement and Segregation
3.  September 5, Booker T. Washington
4.  September 7, W.E.B. DuBois
5.  September 12, The Great Migration
6.  September 14, Marcus Garvey
7.  September 19, The Harlem Renaissance
8.  September 21, Philip Randolph and the March on Washington
9.  September 26, Presentation
10.  September 28, Examination

Part Two: The Civil Rights Movement at High Tide

1.  October 3, Background Forces
2.  October 5, Charles H. Houston and Thurgood Marshall
3.  October 10, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education
4.  October 12, Martin Luther King
5.  October 17, The Movement Spreads
6.  October 19, Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965
7.  October 24, Black Power, Presentation
8.  October 26, Race Riots
9.  October 31, From Brown to Busing
10.  November 2, Examination

Part Three: Civil Rights in Recent American History

1.  November 9, The War on Poverty
2.  November 14, The Underclass
3.  November 16, Affirmative Action
4.  November 21, The Black Middle Class
5.  November 28, The Voting Rights Act of 1982
6.  November 30, Presentation
7.  December 5, Presentation and Conclusion
8.  December 8-15, Final Exam Week

Study Questions for Exam One:

1. Some scholars say the civil rights movement revolves around an "oppositional consciousness." What were some examples of this consciousness in the nineteenth century?

2. One scholar has written that "American Negro history is basically a history of the conflict between integrationist and nationalist forces in politics, economics, and culture." Identify the following leaders, and place them on the continuum of integration and nationalism: Paul Cuffee, Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and Walter White.

3. Describe the methods by which blacks were disfranchised, and discuss the reasons why different groups of whites (poor white Populists and more well-to-do Bourbon Democrats, for example) pushed for disfranchisement.

4. Describe the difference between de facto and de jure segregation, and explain why the latter became more widespread around the turn of the twentieth century.

5. What were the main points in Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition address? Also, put Washington in context. To what extent was his strategy for the advancement of African Americans tailored to the requirements of his time? To what extent was it designed to further his own career? To what extent was it influenced by his own personal history? Then ask the same questions with respect to W.E.B. DuBois.

6. What were the major points of difference between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois?

7. What were the "push" factors that disposed blacks to leave the rural South and to participate in the Great Migration to the "Promised Land"? What were the "pull" factors that also contributed to the Migration? How did the Migration set the stage for the race riots of 1919, the development of black civil rights organizations, the development of black politics and the growth of class divisions within the black community?

8. What about Marcus Garvey? How did his approach to race relations differ from that of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois? What factors combined to provide a receptive background for Garvey in the United States? What considerations ultimately undermined Garvey's movement and led to Garvey's deportation?

9. Discuss the Jamaican and American context that may have given rise to Garvey's distrust of light-skinned Negroes.

10. What was the significance of the Harlem literary renaissance and of the black college rebellions of the 1920s?

11. Who was A. Philip Randolph, and why did he propose to lead a "march on Washington" in 1941? How did Franklin D. Roosevelt respond to the proposed march?

12. According to Bessie and Sadie Delany, what were the two principal reasons for the Jim Crow segregation laws?

13. How did Bessie come to have a "daughter" named Bessie?

14. Who were the "rebby boys"?

15. What light does Having Our Say shed on the matter of color consciousness among black Americans?

16. Discuss the following statements from Having Our Say: a) "All of the values that made us strong came from the church. it was religious faith that formed the backbone of the Delany family."; b) "I am the kind of Negro that most white people don't know about -- colored folks who have never done nothin' except contribute to America."