Course Schedule

Thursday, January 22

• Cornel West, “Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience” (2003)
• Walker’s “Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World” (1829)
  • Preamble & Article 1. Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery
  • Slides

Unit 1: Slavery

Tuesday, January 27

• Henry Louis Gates, “Introduction” to Classic Slave Narratives (2014)
• Frederick Douglass, “Chapter 1,” Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
• Harriet Jacobs, “Chapter 1,” Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
• Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar”(1987)

Thursday, January 29

• Harriet Jacobs, “Chapters 5, 6, 7, 10,” Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
  • Angela Y. Davis, “The Legacy of Slavery: Standards for a New Womanhood” (1983)
• Frederick Douglass, “Chapters 10, 11, 12,” My Bondage, My Freedom (1855)
  • Nolan Bennett, “To Narrate and Denounce: Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Personal Narrative” (2014) pg. 240-245

Tuesday, February 3

• Harriet Jacobs, “Chapters 15, 17, 19, 21,” Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
  • Tina M. Campt, “The Loophole of Retreat—An Invitation” (2019)
• Frederick Douglass, “Chapters 15, 16, 17,” My Bondage, My Freedom (1855)

Thursday, February 5

• Sarah Hopkins Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (1886), p. 13–33
  • Tiya Miles, “Preface: The Storm” and “Chapter 5: The Flight,” in Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (2024)
  • Kellie Carter Jackson, “Protection,” in We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (2018)

Unit 1 Checkpoint

• Sunday, February 8 at 11:59 PM: Prep Memo due
• Tuesday, February 10: In-class discussion assessment

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Unit 2: The Emergence of “a People” (1865-1919)

Thursday, February 12

• Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (2014)
  • Chapter 3: The Meaning of Freedom
  • Epilogue: “The River Has Its Bend”
• Frederick Douglass, “The Negro Problem” (1890)
• Angela Y. Davis, “The Meaning of Emanicipation According to Black Women” (1981)
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Introduction,” in We Were Eight Years in Power (2017)

Tuesday, February 17

• Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases (1892)
  • “The Offense”
  • “The New Cry”
  • “The South’s Position”
  • “Self-Help” Librivox Audiobook: https://librivox.org/southern-horrors-by-ida-b-wells/
• Michelle Duster, “Excerpts,” from Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells (2021)

Midsemester Eval Results

Thursday, February 19

• Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (1901)
  • “Chapter II: Boyhood Days”
  • “Chapter V: The Reconstruction Period”
  • “Chapter VI: Black Race and Red Race”
  • “Chapter X: A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw”
  • “Chapter XIV: The Atlanta Exposition Address”

Librivox Audiobookbook: https://librivox.org/up-from-slavery-from-booker-t-washington/

Tuesday, February 24

Provost’s Distinguished Visitor Book Talk with Brandon M. Terry (No regular readings)

Thursday, February 26

• W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
  • “Chapter 1. Of Our Spiritual Strivings”)
  • “Chapter. 2 Of the Dawn of Freedom”
  • “Chapter 3. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington”

Librivox Audiobook edition

Tuesday, March 3

• W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
  • “Chapter 4. Of The Meaning of Progress”
  • “Chapter 5. Of the Wings of Atlanta”
  • “Chapter 6. Of the Training of Black Men”
• Barack Obama, “Morehouse College Commencement Address” (2013)

Optional: Souls“Chapter 14. Of the Sorrow Songs”

In-class activity: Souls Translation

Thursday, March 5

• Marcus Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Volume 2(1923)
  • “An Appeal to the Soul of White America”
  • “What We Believe”
  • “An Appeal to the Conscience of the Black Race to See Itself”
  • “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World”
• Adom Getachew, “A “Common Spectacle” of the Race: Garveyism’s Visual Politics of Founding” (2021)

Unit 2 Checkpoint

• Monday, March 16: Genealogy paper due

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Unit 3: The Dawn of Mass Struggle (1919-1965)

Tuesday, March 17

• Isabelle Wilkerson, “the Great Migration 1915-1970,” in The Warmth of Other Suns(2010)
• Richard Wright, “Chapter 2. Death on City Pavement” in 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (1940)
• Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past” (2005) excerpts

Thursday, March 19

• W.E.B. Du Bois, “Marxism and the Negro Problem” in The Crisis (1933)
• Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” (1949)

Tuesday, March 24

• Barbara Ransby, “The Empowerment of Indigenous Southern Black Leadership,” Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (2003)

• Alicia Garza, “New Movements, New Leadership,” in The Purpose of Power (2020)

Thursday, March 26

No class

Tuesday, March 31

• Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope (1986)
  • “Nonviolence and Racial Justice”
• Brandon M. Terry & Tommie Shelby, “Martin Luther King Jr. and Political Philosophy,” excerpts (2018)

Thursday, April 2

• Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots”
  • Audio version of “Message to the Grassroots”
• Audre Lorde, “What We Learned from the 60s,” in Sister Outsider (1984)

Tuesday, April 7

• Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope (1986)
• “The Ethical Demands for Integration”
• Stokley Carmichael “Black Power and the Third World” (1967)

Unit 3 Checkpoint

• Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics” (1964)
• Martin Luther King, “Where Do We Go From Here?” (1967)
• Wednesday, April 8 at 11:59 PM: Prep memo due
• Thursday, April 9: In-class discussion assessment

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Unit 4: Black Power & Its Afterlives (1966-Present)

Tuesday, April 14

• Franz Fanon, “Concerning Violence,” in Wretched of the Earth (1961), excerpts
• The Black Panther’s “Ten Point Program”
• Huey P. Newton
  • “In Defense of Self Defense”
  • “Functional Definition of Politics”

Thursday, April 16

• Michelle Wallace, “Anger in Isolation: A Black Feminst Search for Sisterhood” (1974)
• The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” (1979)

Tuesday, April 21

• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1984)
  • “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
  • “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House”
  • “Uses of the Erotic”

Thursday, April 23

• Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
  • “Introduction: Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?”
  • “Chapter 2: Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist Perspectives Toward Prison”

Tuesday, April 28

TBD