SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMRNT OF HISTORY
HISTORY 234-01
ASSIGNMENTS AND COURSE OUTLINE
AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE SINCE 1876
Spring Semester, 2007-08 Chiseko "Mike" Matambanadzo
Period: B [9:30-10:45] Office: 212N SWC Bldg.
Days: TR Phone: [Instructor's] Office-ext.-2411
Room 206 Phone: Hist. Dept. ext.-2053
Office Hours:
MW 11:00-11:50 am
TR 11:00[am]-12:15pm
R 2:00[pm]–3:00 pm
(and by appointment)
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:
When W.E.B. DuBois said [in 1903] that “The problem of the twentieth
Century is the problem of the color line…” the status of African peoples, at home and abroad, had hit rock bottom. If the colonized Africans going through bloody days of the era of “pacification” were being negatively defined and integrated into the 20th Century World between the 1850’s and 1914 through naked massacres, mutilations and massive economic dispossessions the African Americans and other people of color were equally being negatively defined and violently absorbed into the American socio-economic system in the post-Civil War era through lynchings, pogroms, and massive economic deprivations, among other deprivations. The status of the African Americans then had, to paraphrase Louis R. Harlan and James W. Loewen, reached its “nadir” in the history of race relations since the crisis of racial slavery.
With racial slavery behind them African Americans could only hope to improve their status because nothing in their experiences could be worse than the culture of the "peculiar institution". But if the emancipation proclamation, the Civil War, and the Thirteenth Amendment had legally consigned racial slavery to the compost heap of history the ruling class among the white southerners did their best to revive it, albeit, illegally and in disguise. European Americans in other regions of the United States were only ready and eager to let white southerners define their “proper” relationships with the African Americans. The southerners took their newly won autonomy to new extremes.
After 1876, the Republican Party, which hitherto, had championed African American political rights, decided to abandon the African Americans and their cause and left to the whim of their arch-enemies the Southern white zealots. Through their giving way to the “let alone policy”, the historical party of Lincoln gave the green light to the southerners to hatch their plans and carry out their polices of racial hatred and abuse. Not only were African Americans greeted with Jim Crow Laws but these repressive laws which furthered material and political deprivation and social isolation and abuse were accompanied by a reign of terror in the shape of extra-legal violence through pogroms and lynching. None of the authorities, local, State, or Federal did anything to stop this spate of extra-legal violence.
Thus when DuBois made that oft-quoted statement in 1903, he was reacting not only to the ignominious collapse of the Reconstruction. He was also reacting to the development at home and abroad of something at once more sinister and more unsettling-the revival of virulent bloody-drenched imperius racism. If the late 1800's and early 1900's in Africa and Asia witnessed colonial consolidation through the rise of the violence (of unrecorded holocausts and genocide) against the indigenous peoples in the [African]era of “Pacification” campaigns, in the United States the same period marked the resurgence of American genocidal violence directed against the indigenous peoples and the terroristic violence against the African Americans. The restoration of the ex-Confederates to political power and leadership in both federal and southern state governments spelled out disaster for African Americans. Through legislation and through terror white supremacists intensified their efforts to negate gains African Americans had made since 1865. Although racial slavery had long been abolished and African Americans were eager and ready to start a new life too many white southerners and some of their northern collaborators were not yet disabused of the mentality and culture of the discredited institution of racial slavery and white supremacy. And the liberal and “radical” Republicans obliged.
Thus the invalidation of Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the repeal of the 1875 Civil Rights Act through the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Plessy decision of 1896 and the Williams v. Mississippi ruling in 1898 legalized the rise and enactment of Jim Crow Laws and practices. The [Supreme Court] majority opinion in Plessy was, in the words of Robert Harris, “a compound of bad logic, bad history, bad sociology, and bad constitutional law”. These Supreme Court rulings gave their imprimatur to Jim Crow laws for the next half a century. These laws and practices were enforced not only through legal mandates but more ominously through illegal and extra-legal means. The extra-legal means involved increased incidences of lynching augmented by a spate of pogrom -like race riots-directed against African Americans. Lynching, which hitherto had been a punishment principally reserved for alleged white criminals began in the 1880’s increasingly to victimize African America more than any other group. Thus while about 1,119 people had reportedly been lynched between 1884 and 1891 the figures after 1891 were not only significantly higher than previously recorded but most of the victims were now African Americans. According to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 73 percent of the 1, 989 people lynched between 1891 and 1903 were African Americans. Thus in that relatively short period more than 1,447 African Americans were viciously executed through lynching.
While the number of Americans lynched between 1904 and 1914 declined to about 788 persons, African Americans accounted for about ninety-one per cent. of those people thus victimized. Lynching had became a weapon of choice to enforce on African American conformity to the racial laws and etiquette de jour. Lynching which had originated as a means of enforcing loyalty and street justice in earlier times entered a new phase after the 1880’s.It now targeted largely African American victims and this time it had nothing to do with loyalty or justice.
Exposed and subjected to official and unofficial terrorism, condemned to penury, crushed by abusive economic policies and practices and stripped of all political rights in the American south, Dixieland became to African Americans what Henry M. Turner called "a Hell on earth for the Black[people]". Apart from economic enslavement, social isolation, and legal and political oppression, African Americans and other disadvantaged peoples had to endure extra-legal violent actions. A partial listing of African Americans lynched between 1859 and the 1960’s comes to approximately 5000 persons. Of the 5000 African Americans lynched between 1859 and 1960, about sixty-eight per cent. or 3,386 persons were lynched between 1882 and 1930-the era of very intense and virulent racism since the days of slavery.
In addition to these incidents of lynching, pogroms-American style- exacted their toll on the African American communities. White mobs attacked and run-sacked African American communities in New Orleans and Memphis in 1866, in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1875, Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, New Orleans in 1900, New York in 1900, Akron, Ohio, in 1900, and in Washington Parrish, in Louisiana, in 1901. This is a partial list of the pogroms which occurred before DuBois made his prophetic pronouncement in 1903. After 1903 pogroms became a more frequent, common, and deadly experience in African communities.
Aggressive racial hatred was as pervasive as it was intense. C. Vann
Woodward maintains that the victimization and isolation of African Americans were so pervasive, total, uncontrolled and devastating that it seemed like the “permission-to-hate[and abuse African Americans]had been granted by institutions and people at the very apex [of power]", the very top, of the American society. This racially directed violence it seems, happened with the tacit approval of those in Federal, State, and local authority. If racial lynching was regional racial pogroms spilled out of the south into other regions. But this was only the domestic aspect of the crisis of “the problem of the color line”.
Internationally, the world was just waking up to the unfathomable horrors of Euro-Americo-Australian "pacification" programs and pogroms in their colonial and neo-colonial activities in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. While the United States carried out its murderous campaigns in the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere the European powers were variously decimating indigenous peoples in places like the Congo [Brazzaville], "Congo Free State", “German” East Africa, Angola, “German” Southwest Africa[Namibia], [Southern]Rhodesia[Zimbabwe], and Tripoli[Libya], to mention some of the most egregious cases. If comparisons can be made, King Leopold II surpassed all others in what Adam Hochschild called “the first holocaust of the 20th century”-when his economic-cum-colonial policies led to the extermination of at least ten million Africans between 1894 and 1906 in the then "Congo Free State".
In terms of African American history in particular and the USA history in general, the American Civil War was a revolution which directly addressed and touched on some troubling aspects of the African American status, those troubling problems the Founding Fathers did not have the courage to deal with. Much as those in power might have liked to evade the issue the exigencies compelled American leadership to face the issue of slavery head on and come up with some definitive solution. The violence of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the decisive victory of the Union forces, and the Thirteenth Amendment would consign racial slavery to the compost heap of history. But not entirely! In the words of Gilbert Osofsky, “the social revolution that accompanied the Civil War was unfulfilled because it was unanticipated. Full equality for [African Americans] was not a commitment of the Northern War effort…” Osofsky goes on to say that the war amendments peripherally reflected the moral issues and not the substance of equal justice for African Americans.
The post-Civil War America was not as harmonious as many had hoped it would be. Were African Americans in particular and the nation at large about to embark on yet another false start? Time would tell. But it was soon found out that the new era had to deal yet with the demons and ghosts of the peculiar institution, the demons and ghosts which still haunt the nation today. The post-Civil War era in America it turned was thus plunged into an uncertain cathartic struggle in which efforts were made to exorcise from the body politic America's evil twin of slavery without addressing the equally potent issues of the other evil twin-racism. Lost in this false start and political confusion was the reality that American social evils had their roots in the Siamese twins of racism and racial slavery. As a social disease they required a double major surgery which official America was unwilling to undertake. Hence the challenge and indeed conundrum of the America race problem. America is unwilling to deal with the race problem decisively. This is today reflected in the nominations and the inevitable confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States.
A lot has happened since the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9,1865. The leitmotif of USA history since then appears to have been a Herculean struggle between those who want to, to paraphrase John W. Egarton's appropriate title to his book, "Americanize Dixie" and those who want to "Southernize America". This Titanic struggle has played its way out on and off with transient and not so transient victories shifting between the two contending sides. While the victory of the Union forces appeared to have initially given a decided momentum and advantage to those who were bent on "Americanizing Dixie" by 1903 the tide had decidedly turned in favor of those who were determined to "Southernize America". The Union, it was then clear might have won the war but it lost the peace.
Early 20th Century America witnessed the triumph of White Supremacy and the proliferation of Jim Crow Laws all over the United States. It is one of the objectives of this course to analyze this see-saw battle from 1865 through the de facto selection of George W. Bush as the forty-third President of the United States to the forced resignation of C. Trent Lott as the incoming putative Majority of the United States Senate in 2002. But if Trent Lott was demoted in 2002 he has, since the 2006 elections, been promoted to second highest position among the Republicans in the United States Senate. This Shavian development in Trent Lott’s saga gives us an opportunity to revisit the history and problems of the Southern Strategy and how it controls National politics and negatively affect African American experiences since 1776. This study will of course lead us to examine the state of race relations in pre- and the post Brown decisions in America, which is part and parcel of the eras of both the legal Jim Crow and illegal or extra-legal "neo-Jim Crowism" or “neoracism”. [Mumia Abu Jamal asserts that the idea or notion of this being the era of “neoracism” is spurious if not altogether mythical because he believes that “old imperious racism” never left America.] This means we will do some reflective analysis on the origins and history of Jim Crow practices and laws and see how they have been adapted to each changing phase in American history.
In this era of “neoracism” we realize that old habits die hard. Thomas Clarkson,
the famous English abolitionist had warned in 1839 that "for evil once sanctioned by governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and nay, unless seasonably checked becomes so ramified as to effect the reputation of a country and to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the political concerns of the state". In other words, once a government endorses and legitimizes something like racism and racial slavery, the two twin evils, cannot be ended peacefully or through reforms but through a revolution! And his observation is what has exactly happened with racism. We are learning a painful truth that it takes more than the repeal of racist and racialistic laws in order to end racism. Like colonialism which did not end with the mere process of political liberation and has since adapted itself to new realities without shedding any of its essential aspects, it will not do to attack racism merely through the mere sum of its parts. It will take a holistic approach to realistically tackle racism and confine it to the compost heap of history. Desegregation is one thing and integration is quite another. The nation is for the moment suspended now between the era of Jim Crow and acts of selective desegregation with no integration in sight. The nation is failing to achieve both. We should therefore not be surprised to learn that in this era of “affirmative action” and “desegregation” there are more segregated schools in America today than were there at the time the US Supreme Court rendered its Brown decisions. On racial matters the nation seems to have been condemned to the Sisyphean curse. While we await pessimistically for the [anti-Civil Rights] US Supreme Court to issue its pronouncements on the Louisville and Seattle 2006 cases of voluntary integration, in Michigan the voters votes against Affirmative Action and the vote was upheld by an appeal’s Court.
But we hear that that the ranks of African American middle class have quadrupled and that this is the clearest sign of the success of social integration and the “up-ward” mobility of the race. While the presence and role of African Americans in American Sports world appears somewhat impressive their status and roles are secondary. And the political pre-eminence of such African Americans as Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in Government and the dominance of people like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson in the field of Sports and the likes of Reins in the corporate world and others in intellectual and entertainment industry is testimony enough to the progress of the race. But can we look with equanimity at not only the secondary roles they play we have to be sobered by the almost unchanging number and suffering of the vast majority of African Americans-the so called armies of the “underclass”, the unemployed and the unemployable to say nothing about those who are incarcerated. And if the racial problems are globalized can African American people sit back and bask in the almost meaningless success of just a tiny few among a billion people frozen in the so-called the curse of Ham? This is the paradox of American history-the ethos of the continuity of the essential aspects of racism in the midst of change! The more things change the more they remain the same at home and abroad.
There are no simple answers to the paradox save to recognize that more work needs to be done to deal with the problem. While African Americans “have come a long way…they still have a long way to go”. In spite of some progress racism still condemns the majority of African Americans to the racial Ghettos where they eke a bare subsistence under sub-normal economic conditions. What are we to make of this persistence of this social abuse and economic deprivation? Is America beyond redemption? Is it a result of the built-in limitations imposed as a result of "glass-ceiling"? How does the nation deal with or respond to William H. Rehnquist's observation that : "It is about time the Court face the fact that white people in the South don't like the [African American] people"? He could have just as well said the “nation” because the nation’s swing to conservative Republicans is in part inspired by party’s clever use of the “Southern Strategy” and the “Southern Manifesto” besides racial hatred is not only confined to the South. But can African Americans get an honest answer by asking the same question America is “asking” in the wake of “9/11”, “Why do they [white people] hate us?” Given the political record and rhetoric of American Presidents since
The Brown decision we have no choice but to agree with Emmanuel Todd’s conclusion in After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, that the USA is incapable of overcoming its racism.
When Rehnquist uttered those words there was no doubt which side he sympathized with. It might have been innocuous then because he was but a lowly Law clerk. William Rehnquist was Chief Justice [1987-2005] of the United States Supreme Court [who owed his original nomination and his subsequent elevation to his resentment of the Brown decision] who left behind him a legacy which has contributed to the history of suspended desegregation without integration! Where did his sympathies lie when he was the Chief judiciary officer of the United States? It is both sobering and instructive to note that it was precisely that kind of thinking and his stated support for preserving Plessey that made him politically attractive to President Nixon and President Reagan. The former nominated him to the Supreme Court and the latter promoted him in their effort to win the South through their undisguised support for the “Southern Strategy and the “Southern Manifesto”. And during his lengthy tenure on the Bench the Chief justice has largely delivered as expected. But the demands and impact of the “Southern Strategy” and the “Southern Manifesto” on American politics have not only determined the nomination, confirmation, and promotion of Rehnquist but they influence and have influenced the nominations of most if not all of Federal Judges including five “conservative” Justices on the Supreme Court. The conservative politics and power in USA today function as [to quote Ronald Segal] the “Chains of Emancipation”.
It is about time we heeded George Santayana, the American/Spanish philosopher, who observed some time ago that “those who do not remember their history are condemned to repeat it”. If the tail end of the nineteenth century was marked by the rise of the confederate culture which established Jim Crow culture, the end of the 20th century was marked by the rise of conservative Republicans who are now poised to reverse the Civil Rights gains through the manipulation of the Courts. As we begin the new millennium we have to wonder if we have really left the old millennium behind or that the old social habits keep intruding on the present. The social facts on the ground remain unchanged although our calendar suggests that we are indeed in a new era. We are relieving the 20th Century with its unchanging social problems-the problem of the color line, among other problems, is still with us. With George W. Bush idolizing the likes of Clarence Thomas and Antonine Scalia, as the kind of judges he would appoint [do you detect “Southern Strategy” of “strict constructionist” in the White House today?], and his effort to build a bridge to the 1980's tells us more about his mind set on racial matters. We are "back to the future" and it seems we will have to re-fight some of the old battles all over again.
But as Karl Marx observed: history repeats itself as a farce. It lends itself
To conscious human manipulation. Thus more often than not the historical repetition takes place on a selective basis and in a more tragic fashion. So Santayana’s observation must be tempered with a remark made by Karl Marx. Thus when the serious racial problems are treated lightly or are covered in deceptive cloaks or respectability and affability the second or third time around then the tragic becomes comical and leaders are able to cover up their tracks while prolonging the deprivation, humiliation, and forced isolation and discrimination. Beware of affable politicians who use their charm to con the unsuspecting.
If the “Southern Strategy” of the “Revolutionary” era and the ante-bellum period neutralized the anti-slavery forces 20th century southern, sundown town strategies in combination with the Southern Manifesto have effectively neutralized the Civil Rights legislation and programs for many years to come.. They have not only enabled the opponents of Civil Rights programs to be the gadflies of such laws they have built a very solid political base, in the judiciary and legislative bodies, which is poised to negate any meaningful advances on Civil Rights. The Southern, sundown town Strategies and the Southern Manifesto provide the checks on Civil Rights. To paraphrase Ronald Segal the Civil Rights Laws came with their own “Chains of Emancipation”. Preserving the “chains’ of the “Chains of Emancipation” is the raison d’etre of the conservative wing of the republican party and their democratic allies.
Most of the conservative Republicans who are in commanding political
positions today, from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, through the Executive Branch to the current Leadership and numerical strength of Republicans and conservative democrats in both the House and the USA Senate are the American conservatives who subverted the passage of the Civil Rights Laws and are still in a position to check and control the pace of desegregation and prevent meaningful integration. Do not let the death of Rehnquist and his replacement by Justice Roberts deceive you. A new label on the same bottle did not change the contents in the bottle. The conservative Republicans retain the same political agenda they had approved before Rehnquist’s demise.. Like the conservative Democrats of the 1860's and 1870's who were organized to scuttle the Reconstruction program of the "radical" Republicans, today's conservative [southern and northern] Republicans and their [Democratic and Libertarian] allies are working to reverse the gains of the Civil Rights achievements of the 1960's. This conservative struggle against Social, economic and political equality in the Post-World War II while prompted by other diverse developments in the 30’s and 40’s was nevertheless sparked and energized by the Brown vs. the Board of Education decisions of 1954 and 1955. The South did not waste anytime in organizing its effort to reverse the mandates of the Supreme Court decision. The Southerners served notice to the nation through the “Southern Manifesto” that it did not accept the Court’s “interfering” with its internal matters and “way of life” [read their right to abuse, isolate and dehumanize African Americans]. Like John C. Calhoun of the ante-bellum era they invoked the doctrine of “States Rights”. The opportunistic [conservative] Republicans saw their chance to become a majority Party by making political inroads in the bastion of the Democrats in the South. The Republican Party under Barry Goldwater and Richard M. Nixon revived and shamelessly exploited the "Southern Strategy" wherein the Republican Party would cut back if not completely roll back the Civil Rights gains in exchange for political support. Reagan and Bush I continued the campaign. And “W” remains on course. His choice then of Ashcroft as Attorney General and now Alberto Gonzalez [a heartless Latino] are not only inspired by his ideological loathing of Women’s Right to Choose and workers Right to organize but also by his ideological opposition to the Civil Rights agenda since the Brown decisions. Of course in the 2004 elections “W”’s animosity for racial change was disguised under the cover of “cultural” and “religious” issues about “gay marriage” and “abortion” rights. Hence his announced preference of Clarence Thomas and Scalia as “the kind of Judges I like”.
Thus the conservatives denunciation of “Big Government” cum "liberals" and "liberalism" and “gay marriages” and “abortion” are veiled denunciation of Civil Rights agenda among other progressive issues. The fact that some African Americans have joined the band-wagon in denouncing “gay marriages” and abortion rights does not diminish the primacy of race in the dynamics of the 2004 political decisions. So is the issue of terrorism. Like “gay-marriages” and abortion rights issues “terrorism” is used as a cover for the promotion of more sinister domestic and global agendas which include the reversal of Civil Rights gains at home and roll backs abroad, among other gains. Eighty-nine percent of African American voters [the largest single group to oppose Bush] who rejected Bush this time around [2004 election] understood the issues better than any other American minority groups.
Ever since the Brown decision and the resultant issuing of the Southern Manifesto and the revival of Southern Strategy, the dye was cast as the [white]Southern Democrats began to defect en mass to the Republican Party. These Democratic defectors boosted the Conservative wing of the Republican Party
And the Party responded enthusiastically by shedding any remnants of moderation it had and vowed to define its politics in terms of “crimes” of Liberals, liberalism, and “big government” and the racial discord in America. The rest is, as they say, history.
The Southern Democratic Party realignment with the Republican Party is largely a function of regional and national racism. The conservative southern Democrats and their northern counterparts [the so-called Reagan Democrats] switched to the Republican Party where their open and disguised articulation of racial politics, views, and racism were “more” acceptable. They could, in the spirit of the “Southern Manifesto” oppose the policies and politics of desegregation and integration. As northern “Reagan” [read conservative] Democrats became Republicans and/or vote with Republicans for conservative agenda the arithmetic of racial oppression electorally weighs heavily on African Americans and others similarly situated.
For the real issues in modern times dividing liberals and conservatives on
one level is on the legitimacy and indeed constitutionality of the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision and the culture it fostered. It is perhaps
instructive if not ironic that prominent opponents of the Brown decisions, namely, John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and the Federalist Society, among others, wield a lot of power and exert a lot of influence in the nation today. A man who asserted that "morality and humanitarian considerations" must not interfere with constitutional matters now occupies the highest seat on highest Court of the land, albeit as primus inter pares. Ashcroft is being succeed by a person who believes that the President of the United State has absolute power above and beyond the USA Constitution and the Geneva Convention. That this is the situation today is a sad commentary on how the nation has wittingly or unwittingly embraced the letter and spirit of the Southern Manifesto and the “Southern Strategy” and the Pinochets of yesteryear. In essence this is the conundrum that faces the nation and the struggle for racial, gender, ethnic and class equality in the United States of [Anglo] America.
Plessy, in spite of its defenders, was, logically speaking, a flawed
decision from an equally flawed Supreme Court decisions of the post-First
Reconstruction era [Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter then, said so! And The USA Supreme Court struck it down in 1954]. Plessy envisioned a permanent socially bifurcated nation on the basis of color and race. Similarly the Southern Manifesto was premised on a erroneous previous Supreme Court Decisions, decisions which either ignored or trivialized the mandates of the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The enslavement of the Africans and African Americans and the colonization and extermination of the Native Peoples were rooted in self deception which celebrated freedom in the midst of egregious oppression and boasted of equality sustained by scandalous inequalities. Although President Lincoln believed that this nation could not for long live half free and half slave he had no viable solution for the problem of racism. Hence his hesitations and confusing signals in the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamations and social assumptions compounded the problem by confirming the American belief and tradition that African American rights like those of the Native people could be sacrificed for supposed pragmatic reasons. But the nation is paying a heavy price because of racism!
Slavery and racism, we are assured, could be tolerated for the "[supposed]progress of the nation". But this belief was predicated on the assumption that a "perfect union” could be curved out of colonial system based on plantation capitalism and the perpetual colonialization of the indigenous peoples. Neither assumption would stand the test of time. Both the War of Independence and the Civil War were never meant to end plantation capitalism and the colonialization of the indigenous peoples. While colonialism was unacceptable the young nation also learnt later on that racial slavery was not a functional component in the calculus of a "perfect union".
What about the persistence of racism, far-reaching gender, ethnic, and class subordination? Lincoln and some white abolitionists, to say nothing about others who took white superiority for granted, we read, believed nothing could be done to end racism in Amerikkka! Both Thomas Jefferson and an immature Lincoln believed that while racial slavery was “compatible” with free white Americans free blacks were incompatible with free America. While the intimate, and indeed symbiotic, relationship between racial slavery and racism is not much in doubt now, the nation and its leaders, however, continue and continued to subscribe to an incongruent notion that somehow the nation can find both internal and external peace by merely ridding itself superficially of racial slavery without seriously addressing its causes and its long term social, economic, psychological, and political uses and consequences. Thus while the formal emancipation put the nation on a path toward some limited racial [slavery] liberation it did not of its own or on its own weight secure to African Americans an equivalent change in economic,, social, and political status. The emancipation was preceded by two centuries of legalization and institutionalization of white supremacy, social oppression and abuse of people of color, and the denial of equal economic opportunity and political rights.
Soon after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War social and some legal steps were taken to rehabilitate African Americans and transform them into citizens with political rights afforded to other Americans. The creation of the Freedom Bureau, the enactment of the “War Amendments” and the passage of two Civil Rights Acts put African Americans on the path to enjoy civil liberties and civil rights taken for granted by other Americans. But the path toward enjoyment of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights was sabotaged by white supremacy and plantation capitalism. If Abraham Lincoln issue a flawed Emancipation proclamation his opponents, the Confederate leadership, responded by issuing a “Counter-Emancipation Proclamation” which threatened to revert all free African Americans to slavery. If the Thirteenth Amendment was developed in two different, opposite and opposing, stages, there was no national consensus to the ultimate Thirteen Amendment. The Slave Codes which faded with abolition of slavery were initially revived through the “Black Codes”. And when the Black Codes were ruled illegal the various white communities came up with a set of Jim Crow Laws and while Congress failed to strike down to these Jim Crow Laws as illegal practices the Supreme Court through a series of several negative decisions [1876, 1883, 1896, and 1908] legitimized them and wrongly gave Jim Crow advocates a constitutional backing. It took almost hundred years of national and international developments and struggles to force the Supreme Court to declare Jim Crow Laws unconstitutional.
More than hundred years after the Plessy Decision, and in spite of and because of the Brown v. the Board of Education at Topeka decisions, the United States of America remains essentially a racially bifurcated society. More than hundred years later, in spite of and because of the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, among others Civil Rights Acts, African Americans have yet to stage a meaningfully dramatic and impressive entry into the main stream of American society, socially , economically, politically and otherwise. More than hundred years later, the vast majority of African Americans and others [in spite of the isolated successes of a Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or an Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice] have yet to be spared of their collective American nightmares and enjoy the American Dream many others take for granted. Why this resilience and persistence in Racism?
A lot may have to do with the fact that African Americans in the United States, like most of their counter-parts in Africa, the Caribbean region, and the rest of the Americas have been partially emancipated without being liberated from their historical civil inequalities and disabilities. A lot of the African American problems may have a lot to do with what Ronald Segal, in his illuminating book,: The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience Outside Africa, refers to as the "Chains of Emancipation". Segal's work in part exposes not only the problems of newly found or attained "liberty" but how, in most cases involving black and brown peoples, their newly given "liberty" is invariably compromised with so many limitations and paradoxes that sometimes it is nothing but a well calculated "bourgeois swindle". For example colonial situations of various people of color have ended not with genuine independence or freedom but with a bourgeois swindle known as “neocolonialism”. In fact there is even a question about referring to them as “post-colonial” situations because the essence of colonialism remains intact even after the granting of formal and external political independence. Similarly in the case of settler colonies like the USA or any other country similarly situated, racism is legally abolished but persists in practice in essential spheres of the polity. If the “post-colonial” world of people of color is subject to “neo-colonialism” the “post-Jim Crow” era of African Americans has yet to overcome white supremacy and “plantation capitalism”. How else is one to explain the African American “crucifixion” through scandalous and imbalanced incarceration, higher mortality, poverty, and unemployment rates in the supposed post-Jim Crow days? Economic exclusion and poverty remain essentially unchanged.
How else can one explain the shocking preponderance and majorities of people of color in USA prison system? So are the scandalous vital statistics, higher mortality rates and shorter life expectancies and so forth.
In Africa and elsewhere the colonial situations in their essential aspects remain unchanged long after formal Colonialism has been ended. The “Chains of Emancipation” were even more evident in the original Emancipation of 1863. Its flaws and limitations sought not to free ALL slaves but only on some of the slaves. Nor was it issued because slavery was immoral and harmful to both the enslaved and the enslavers. It also did not address the origins and causes of racial slavery. So the Lincoln Emancipation did not address the essence of slavery, its origins, its causes, and its results. The Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation were never meant to address the essence of oppression and abuses African Americans and other people of color were facing. Most white abolitionists were concerned only with slavery in its limited political meaning but once slavery was abolished they were not prepared to join the civil rights struggle. Racial prejudice derived from alleged racial inferiority and inequality were never questioned by most white people including liberals. So for social reasons reflected through white supremacy and economic goals reflected through plantation capitalism produced incomplete and flawed emancipation. Even William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most famous white abolitionist, did not support the struggle for equality between the races. The same can be said about Lincoln and the “Party of Lincoln”. The “Chains of Emancipation” thus undermined and limited the ability of the “War Amendments” the Civil Rights Acts to put America on the path to genuine social, economic, and political equality. The “Chains of Emancipation” also perpetuation white people’s rejection and dehumanization of the people of color.
It will be noted that W.E.B. DuBois, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Derrick Bell, Patricia J. Williams, Marcus Garvey, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, Richard Delgado, and Dick Cluster, among others, have also written on the variation of the themes of "Chains of Emancipation". James W. Loewen deals with this subject but under a different headline. His book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, discusses today’s White supremacy throughout the United States as the force behind the rejection and isolation of people of color in all the regions of America. The “Southern Strategy” which defines today’s Republican political attitudes and policies is complemented by the American “Sundown Town Strategy”. Today’s American conservative politics and success are achieved through “southern and sundown town strategy”.
This raises a question about the persistence of racism in the face of so many changes. A variation in the theme of Segal’s “Chains of Emancipation” is one of the themes propounded by Robert Cook in his illuminating tome, Sweet Land of Liberty?: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century and in James W. Loewen’s book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.. It is a theme which can be simply summarized as that of “[limited]Change and enduring Continuity[in essence of oppression and abuse]”. Somehow, the curse of the past, the long dark shadow of slavery and Jim Crow Continue to plague the nation and to dictate and determine the lowly status of the people so accursed. The question is why the persistence of old habits and practices long after they have been outlawed? The "Chains of Emancipation" and the problem of “Change and Continuity”, as constant elements in the African American Struggle were dramatized in the de facto-selection by the US Supreme Court of George W. Bush as the next American President in the 2000 presidential elections. George W. Bush, who presented himself as candidate who would unify Americans, was at the same time sending out subliminal messages to assure his ideological soul mates, the traditional opponents of the Civil Rights agenda of women and people of color that he could be trusted to act properly on those hot issues. And sure enough while his mouth keeps on uttering something about "bipartisan" policies and approach his key cabinet appointments expose him for what he is-an unrepentant champion of dixicrats. His ideological fealty not only to the extreme Christian right but also to the rabid opponents of the Civil Rights agenda remains unshaken. The fact that his de facto selection was made possible by the systemic exclusion of the poor makes the situation worse. This systemic and automatic disfranchisement of the poor, the failure of the Court to intervene positively and the official resistance to correct acute social problems are symptoms and manifestations of the inherent American forces which have made a mockery of the Constitution and the African American struggle for equality. For once Americans were forced to see through the prism of the electoral system and to experience through inconclusive presidential elections problems which had for long plagued the system and inordinately victimized racial minorities and the poor, the majority of Americans succumbed to the “southern and sundown town strategy”. The elections and re-elections of Nixon, Reagan, and “W” guaranteed the promotion of a negative racial agenda through public appointments, laws, and policies.
For far too long most African Americans and others similarly situated have known that the US Supreme Court and other related institutions more often than not act out of partisan and ideological interests instead of the dictates of organic law. For too long most African Americans looked to the Court for redress and the Court more often turned them down. In 1956 the “Southern Manifesto” promised to reverse the Brown Decision. In 1968 the conservative Republican Party promised the anti-civil Rights people to promote and carry out their desires by appointing special judges to do so. In June 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States of America started its serious campaign to reverse the Brown decision by striking down voluntary school desegregation programs in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education. Bush forty-three comes across as a failure in many areas but in one of his major successes, the judicial packing, when he
Retires he will bequeath to the nation a judicial system designed to undermine and repeal the gains and rights of the poor, women, and the socially-down-trodden to people of color in the United States. The Supreme Court he successfully shaped acted as expected in its negative decision of “voluntary desegregation” in June 2007. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down, as unconstitutional, a program designed to prevent de-facto segregation in individual public schools encouraged opponents of the Brown decision to resist any campaign to end discrimination in America educational system.
This latest chapter in the workings of the American jurisprudence will enable
us to not only understand the whys of Civil Rights Cases (1883), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),and The City of Richmond v. Croson (1989), among others, but also the a origins, objectives and the persistence of what politically has come to be known as the "Southern Strategy". The positive and reassuring message from Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) was just a temporary relief given the determination of “W” to re-shape the Courts in the image and spirit of Clarence Thomas and Antonine Scalia. After all candidate George W. Bush flaunted his exploitation of the "Southern Strategy" by asserting during the 2004 campaign that “I am a strict constructionist”. Although he tried hard to confuse and mislead some of the electorate by suggesting that he was “opposed to the Dred Scott Decision” both the opponents and supporters of his strategy got the message. This explains why in part he carried out all the former “slave” states and territories and why African Americans generally rejected him nine to one.
The major concern, therefore, of this course is to investigate through historical inquiry, readings and research the significant experiences of African Americans in the United States in particular and in very general terms the conditions of other kindred people in Africa and in the Diaspora. This will of course entail some reflective analyses, comparisons, contrasts, and
presentations, and interpretations of the historical experiences and present conditions of Africans at home and abroad.
Since our focus will be on those experiences which have foisted on the African peoples what has come to be known as the Black Man's Burden what is crucial for this class is to explore how valiantly the African Americans have responded and met the historical challenge head-on. The so-called Slave Codes, Black Codes, and the Jim Crow Laws were not empty or mysterious white American initiatives against the African Americans. They were responses, preemptive and/or direct reactions, to African American historical behavior in their predicament. African
Americans did not with equanimity accept their ascribed social status and economic roles. This course tries to make understandable how and why the transition from the naked special oppression of the antebellum period to the promised era of freedom through Black Codes, Jim Crow, and neoracism has been a disappointing mixture of the development of liberation in the midst of intractable racial oppression and social abuse.
This, therefore, is essentially a history of the African American struggle against special oppression. And undoubtedly one of the most effective ways of studying a people's struggle for liberation is to study their formal and informal movements and their changing leadership and its shifting strategies.
However, the study of a struggle which does not specify and elaborate on that which the people are struggling for is invariably incomplete. That which the people are struggling against and/or for must be spelled out. Consequently another important objective of this course is to shed some light on those
American initiatives which created a veritable hell for the African Americans and their kindred brothers and sisters. Opportunities will be afforded to enable students to explore the origins, dynamics, and enduring results of the two "unequal and hostile nations" in America.
The tenacity and persistence of racism would have made some people give up the struggle and "run". But this was not and will not be the case with African Americans. In the face of enormous, not to say overwhelming, odds, in very difficult times, outstanding men have risen up to the occasion and contributed
tremendously to the goals of liberating not only the African Americans but also the Euro- Americans.
This course will concern itself with the last two of the three main historical phases which have distinctly shaped the goals and the directions of the African American struggle would follow. The first of these two stages involves the era of the Second American Revolution, 1861-1893 and the second phase is what transpired after the "Sell-out of 1877" and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of
1896. This one lasted roughly from about 1876 to 1968. This second phase prompted a struggle, perhaps the most difficult one, to translate purely Civil (legal) Rights into political and economic rights. One deals with the problems of the Civil War and the First Reconstruction Programs through the Second Reconstruction era up to the Kerner Report and the Executive Order 11246.
This brings us to the third phase, the most challenging phase of the post-Civil Rights era. It is a period where legally racism through Jim Crow is supposed to have been repealed, abolished and confined to the compost heap of history. But we know better. RACISM is ALIVE AND WELL in America. We have entered a period which some students of American race relations call the era of “neoracism”, an era wherein racism has been adapted to the new legal situation and has found subtle and more than subtle avenues and ways to express and manifest itself. We have entered upon a scene where continuity of essential racial attitudes and practices vitiate the changing outward anti-racists policies. It seems that the confusing legal racist proscriptions and prescriptions have encouraged an obdurate populace guided by immovable institutional racism to be the judge and jury of what is and is not racist. So affirmative action is now called “reverse discrimination”. And everyone from Republican Leaders to precinct alderman agrees that affirmative action, we are assured most people believe today, “is the most unfair thing to have happened in American history”. Right wing think tanks and their pollsters have amassed “overwhelming” data to prove their point. The Constitution is selectively used to defend the indefensible. Thus the Confederate culture is tolerated because it is allegedly supported by the First Amendment and we are assured it has nothing to do with the celebration of white supremacy and the concomitant oppression and humiliation of all peoples of color. While the KKK is prowling around in its full regalia others have opted for the subtle three-piece suits and they are now criss-crossing the corridors of power. They are pontificating about “States Rights” and are passing “appropriate legislation” to enforce the mandates of the Southern Manifesto. We are now reaping the bitter harvest of the combined imperatives of the Southern Manifesto and the “conservative” “Southern Strategy”.
Efforts will be made to dispel numerous myths and misconceptions of what passes for African American experiences. "New" information and alternative interpretations will be offered to challenge what has become stereotyped history of the African Americans, Euro-Americans, Africans, and the Americas. The
African American condition does not only manifest a more insidious and complex form of injustice characterized by shocking disparities, socially, economically, and politically between the races. These shocking socioeconomic disparities have created, as the "OJ Verdict" dramatized more painfully, an equally alarming
chasm of attitudes and perceptions. African Americans, as Ralph Ellison eloquently reminded us are not only supposed to be "invisible" but unlike other ethnic groups they are not allowed to cry or act their pain. In this class, therefore, you will not only be expected to learn something new but it is hoped that in the process you will also go through another equally important process of education-and that is the unlearning process.
The much touted mid-term electoral successes of the Democratic Party which resulted in their narrow dominance of the two Federal legislative Institutions of Federal Government cannot be expected to bring any meaningful relief to people of color. But the polls indicate a national political and ideological dissonance. While the people polled say they do not like Bush and his “War on Iraq” terrorism” most are supportive of his domestic policies especially as they affect race relations. The partial electoral success of the Democrats in 2006 did not necessarily come with a new mandate on race relations. One can only hope that this is not yet another example of national [white] reconciliation at the expense of the racial minorities and other disadvantaged groups, women and poor whites. The 2006 elections returns may and may not have given Bush II the mandate to steamroll his conservative agenda from steep targeted tax cuts for the rich to massive slicing social components of the budget, to launching and fighting two and half wars capped by “packing” the Courts with Judges who share the president as a “strict constructionist” and a subscriber to the doctrine of “original intent”. That may be the democratic privilege of the voters. But remember that the democratic process in USA history has been used negatively more often than not. Slavery was not abolished through democratic process. If the nation had relied on the democratic process some of us would still be on the plantation today. Jim Crow Laws were not repealed through democratic process either. And we must note a cautionary warning Alexis de Tocqueville made about American Democracy: “The more democratic the United States becomes, the more racist it will be”. This is especially true if the voters remain “ignorant” and “biased”. What does all that mean in terms of racial politics and African American experience today? A lot!
This Democratic partial take-over of Washington is hardly a "new beginning". It is vintage American history almost repeating itself in its traditional rhythmic, "one step forward and two steps backward" moves which has done much to slow if not to freeze the forward social march and advancement of the nation. The official and unofficial retreat on social legislation simply shows how America has perfected the art of historical moonwalking.
Nor is the new craze over new studies claiming that public policies or programs cannot do much to bring meaningful changes to deprived and disadvantaged groups. Again at the precise juncture when the "Sell-out of 1877" was taking shape, "new" sciences, academia, and all sorts of intellectuals through their "learned" works endorsed the Jim Crow culture. If we can learn anything in history we should brace ourselves for worse and continue to resist those who are leading us "...into accepting evil as deliverance from evil". We should be questioning our leaders and those who purport to be our leaders. We should take most pronouncements with a grain of salt.
To find out what is happening we must go beyond the politics of the day, the clever and misleading political pronouncements, and the "learned" scholarship of a savant and a learned judge. We must not also be deceived by public relations and the politics of affability and mesmerizing smiles. Politicians are usually two faced. They have a social ax to grind and what they grind is not necessarily in your interests. So we must see beyond presidential appointments. We must analyze the politics of appointments and as we must check the politics of Congressional and Presidential actions and words. We must greet all commissions with skepticism. Especially those Commissions appointed to address our main concerns. For example, we must go beyond the two major commissions on "race problems" like the Chicago Commission on Race Relations (1922) and the Kerner Commission Report (1968). We must ask harder questions the judges and the members of the Commission never asked. We must realize that because of its cultural content and manifestation it takes more than idle laws to fight and end racism.
Because of its global pervasiveness efforts will be made to analyze African American experiences, compare and contrast their manifestations globally. Documentaries like “Slavery’s Buried Past”, “Black History”, “Last Grave at Dimbaza”, "Global Africa", “Slavery and the Making of America” and others like it will be viewed to bring both the global and historical points home about the experiences of Africans in the Diaspora and those at home.
Finally, if we are seriously going to reject racism at every stage of our experiences we must begin by identifying and rejecting racist historiography and guard against defending the indefensible. To reject Jim Crow or apartheid history one must begin to see race and racial slavery and slavocracy as continuing to play social and economic havoc on all who must live by their
legacy. Finally we should make efforts to see all sides of this troublesome issue and resist the temptation of making unreasonable accommodations. We agree with many in Black Studies we assert that instead of becoming a declining issue race and racism are very much alive and affecting us invidiously.
What follows now are (i) general policies for the course; (ii) text books and other reading materials [required, recommended, and suggested]; (iii) Timetable for scheduled quizzes and major examinations; (iv) the chronology of the lectures/discussions.
A. Attendance: Since there will be many activities in and the class, including viewing a number of documentaries and since the class activities like quizzes, examinations, class contributions account for 90% of the final grade one is warned against taking too many unexplained cuts. A maximum of THREE cuts are permissible after that you have to account for your absences. Ten points will
be added to your final semester examination points as a bonus for perfect attendance.
Extracurricular activities: (i) Make note of the anniversary recognition and celebration of major Civil Rights Disasters and developments in the past twenty years. Find where they will be recognized etc. (ii)This year happens to be the hundred and fortieth anniversary of the passage of one of the most significant constitutional amendment among the “War Amendments” and the hundredth anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in the Berea College v. Kentucky case. Relate them to their historical origins and significance and to relevant recent events. (iii) How is the history of the SCLC related to these developments etc…
(iv)
Expect some extra-curricular outings related to these historical events.
Since this semester also happen to coincide with the commemoration of both
Birthdays and Assassinations of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and
El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz,
(v)
Black History Week, Black and Women History Months, and the Brown decisions,
among other notables, various groups on and off-campus will organize special
events and functions for the occasion(s). We will take part in some whenever
possible. PBS and HBO may feature special programs as well. Some of these
events will tie in with some of our readings and class discussions. Be
alert and participate in as many excursions as possible. Set some time aside
to be involved in some of these events. Some of these functions will be
discussed in class. You may be quizzed on some of these events. Some points
will be added to your total exam points at the end of the semester as a
reward for attending or taking part in all announced extra curricular
activities. [However such excursions are not substitute for adequate class
performance.] Evidence of taking part in these activities must be confirmed
with the instructor 24 hours after the said event!
(vi) “t
N.B. One of these extracurricular activities is the scheduled
Martin Luther King Annual lecture to take place shortly at SRU. Time and
venue for this particular lecture will be given later.
C. Testing practices: There will be THREE SCHEDULED (mandatory)
quizzes and THREE (indispensable) MAJOR examinations. They will
account for about 90% of your final grade. If you have to miss
a scheduled quiz or examination, your ability to take a "make-up"
depend on (1) promptly advising the instructor preferably within
twenty-four hours BEFORE the scheduled test, (2) having a
reasonable excuse-Do not ask for a "weekend break" (beginning on or
before Friday) if an exam or a quiz is scheduled for any of those
"weekend" days. [Most questions of the tests will require responses
in an essay form.] Scheduled tests do not rule out pop quizzes!
You are all to submit a paper on how the [conservative] "Southern, Sundown
town Strategies" and Southern Manifesto greatly and differently influenced
the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. This paper is to be submitted on
the last day of class, May 1, 2008.
This paper must be at least eight pages long.
N.B. All out of class major and minor assignments must be
type-written and submitted on time. Failure to do that will result
in the loss of points.
D. Documentaries: Try to be in class when a documentary is scheduled
to be shown.
E. Course lecture/discussion outline: The material to be covered is
both extensive and intensive. The most we can do is to try to
cover it all. Some regularly scheduled topic on a given day may
be pre-empted to incorporate in the course offering a relevant
news event.
F. REQUIRED TEXT BOOKS:
1. *James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American
Racism.
2. *Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense
of themselves, 1894-1994
3. *Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X [With the Assistance of
Alex Haley] (New York: Grove Press 1992 or latest edition)
4. *Paul Le Blanc, ed., Black Liberation and the American Dream: The
Struggle for Economic and Racial Justice, [Humanity Books,
2003].
5. * “The History of Jim Crow”, to be read on “line” which can be
accessed through this link:
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/resisting2.htm
6.[] Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of
Black Women on Race and Sex in America.
7.[] Mualana Karenga, An Introduction to Black Studies,
+Richard Kluger, Simple Justice,
+Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro, From Rutherford Hayes
to Woodrow Wilson.
+Loius R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader
1856-1901
+C.R.L. James, On the "Negro Question"
+Jerrold M. Packard, American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow
+Peter Irons, Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promises of the Brown
Decision
+Richard Bardolph, The Negro Vanguard.
+ Vernon J. Williams Jr., Rethinking Race: Franz Boaz and His
Contemporaries.
+Paul LeBlanc, Black Liberation and the American Dream: The Struggle
for Racial and Economic Justice.
* Required and to be purchased in the SGA University Bookstore.
[]Optional
+ Recommended
N.B. Additional readings are either posted on my page of the SRU History Department Homepage which can be found on the SRU web site or they are on line.
To view and review my Course Outlines and the “Assigned Readings” please enter or go to:
http://srufaculty.sru.edu/m.matambanadzo.htm
TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE ASSIGNED READINGS FOR THE CLASS YOU NEED A PASSWORD [which will be given in class and should you not be present you can inquire from the instructor through ext. 2411.]
If the link above is not producing results you can try to reach my page through the SRU Web site and through the History Department page.
G. SCHEDULED QUIZZES AND EXAMINATIONS:
There will be THREE SCHEDULED QUIZZES and THREE SCHEDULED
EXAMINATIONS including the final plus a paper. This does not rule out
pop quizzes and oral contributions during class. What
immediately follow are the tentative dates for the scheduled
tests.
(a)
Homework I: Read (i) the THREE WAR Amendments, (ii) “An Adamant ‘No’”, (iii) “White Man’s Guilt”, (iv) “Constitutional Language of Slavery” [The first seven pages] and (v) and gather some statistics on the slave population after every ten years between 1790 and 1860 and in 2006 in USA. Due on January 21, 2008.
Homework II: Read from “Assigned Readings” on my page of History Department Web site: Dr. Martin Luther King JR's “"I Have a Dream"(1)
John Lewis's "A Serious Revolution" (two versions), Frederick
Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" and Edmund Morgan, “The Paradox of Slavery” read them, discuss their themes and show how they are all related to each other and to the African American struggle and write a brief type written paper on issues presented. Due week of 1/28/08.
(b) Credited tests, SCHEDULED exams and quizzes [These dates are tentative.]
Scheduled Quiz #1, week of 2/04/08 to be based on the following
readings on reserve in Bailey Library: (i) "The Civil War as a Revolution:
Abolitionism's Culmination",(ii) "Beyond Chaos, Black History and
the Search for the New Land", and (iii) "Introduction" to To Serve the Devil.
Scheduled Examination #1, week of 2/25/08 material to be provided
later.
Scheduled Quiz #2, week of 3/17/08-mtbgl.
Scheduled Examination #2, (take home examination-to be type-written),
week of 4/07/08-mtbgl.
Scheduled Quiz #3, week of 4/21/08 -mtbgl.
Scheduled Examination #3, The Final, 5/08/08, 8:00-10.00]
-mtbgl.
Third Homework: Write a brief essay on the intricate or intimate relationship
in the origins and uses of the “Black History Week” and “Women’s History
Month”. Due week o 4/28/08.
Course outline:
1. INTRODUCTION
(i) Pop Quiz on (a) USA Citizenship Test and (b) How the Alito nomination and inevitable confirmation are in part a negative response to African American struggle, among other struggles—women, class, and gay, and (c) Civil War Map of and General knowledge of USA and African American History and trivia.
(ii) Introduction to the course and ground rules.
(iii) The first homework- [see above]
(iv) Second Homework- [see above]
2. Issues in Black/Negro Thought: History as an aspect of Black
Liberation.
State of the Black Nation and the Black World at the beginning of the
new millennia-a discussion.
Unfinished business on slavery:
(i) impact of the system on the enslaved and the “free”
(ii) impact of the system of the enslavers and white people
(iii) “Slavery’s Buried Past”-a documentary-“What is new about slavery?”
(iv) The 110th anniversary of the Plessy Decision.
Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies, 3-57
Noam Chomsky, “The Haitian Tragedy”
Le Blanc, “Understanding Racism”, Black Liberation and the American
Dream, 13-60,
Documentaries: “Slavery’s Buried Past” and “True Colors”.
“Lynching and the ‘crucifixiton’ of African
Americans”,
Dr. James H. Cone, interviewed by Bill Moyers
(i) “the Meaning of the Civil War” a lecture by Ira Berlin.
(ii) "Black History: Lost, Stolen, and Strayed" (documentary)
(iii) "Afrocentricity" (Molefe Asante on Film).
(iv) New Direction in the Study of American and African American
History/Experiences-Taking Responsibility for our actions
And the problematique of “victimology”
(v) Americans and Hyphenated Americans: Problems of identity and
self-definition,
Cook, 265-287.
Karenga, ibid.
Kluger, Simple Justice, ixx-26
Giddings, When and Where I Enter, etc. 33-35.
S. Landau et al., "Introduction", To Serve the Devil, (see the "Introduction")
Kenneth O'Reilly, Nixon's Piano: Racial Politics From Washington to Clinton.
John Hope Franklin, ed., From Slavery to Freedom: History of African Americans.
C.R.L. James, On the "Negro Question", 1-49 and 90-129.
Lerone Bennett Jr., Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream,
3. Slavery, Slavocracy and the Southern Strategy in the American Civil War
(i) The Revolutionary Impact and Limitations of the American
Civil War (1861-1865) on Black/White relationships
(ii) The False Start in the history of Race, gender, and
class relations-the dynamics and dialectics of the
Civil War
(iii) Emancipation: Freedom without Liberation.
(v) Abolitionism, Slave Revolts, and Emigration
Karenga,
Frederick Douglass, “What is American Slavery?”
Franklin, 171-219
Kluger, 27-50.
Giddings, 33-55.
Grant, 95-137.
4. "The Struggle for Freedom" Part II through 1865. ( a documentary).
Jim Crow in History, Jim Crow Laws before and after the Civil War.
Loewen, 3-23, 24-44
Cook, 1-4
Joanne Grant, 83-125, 125-131.
Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters,
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.
Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields et. Al., Free At Last: A Documentary
History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War.
“Slavery and the Making of America”, a PBS documentary.
“Racism in America today” CNN documentary.
5. The [First] Reconstruction Era and the Lost Opportunities
(i) Freedman's Bureau and the Reconstruction Acts
(ii) Americanization of Dixie and the War Amendments
(iii) The Americanization of the African Americans
Cook, 12-38.
Grant, 131-169.
Franklin, 220-246
Kluger, 51-83
Giddings, 57-74.
W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction,
Logan, 3-156.
Lerone Bennett Jr., Shaping of Black America: The Struggles and Triumphs
Of African Americans, 1619-the 1990's, 233-283.
John W. Egerton, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America.
Documentary: “Reconstruction”
6. Antebellum sources, Failure and Limitation of the Reconstruction.
(i) Southern Strategy in American Politics and Economics
(ii) The Tenant Farm Systems: the peon under peonage and sharecropping
(iii) 1876 and Beyond: The Courts, the Politicians and the Race issues
President Rutherford Hayes and the "Sell-out of 1877"
(iv) The Southernization of African Americans
(v) Prudence Crandall, Sarah Roberts, Mary Coger, and Ida Wells-Barnett
(vi) Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes
(vi) Pogroms and Lynching
Loewen, “The Nadir: Incubator of Sundown Towns”, 24-44
Grant, 55-93.
Franklin, Ibid., and 247-263.
Kluger, 27-49, and 84-105.
Nieman, Promises to Keep, 78-113.
Marable Manning, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, 23-67.
Giddings, 18-31.
Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters,
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow,
Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery.
Richard Stiller, Broken Promises: The Strange History of the Fourteenth
Amendment, N.Y. Random House, 1972, 36-50.
John A. Garraty, ed., Quarrels that Shaped the Constitution, N.Y. Harper
Colophon Books, 1966, 128-158.
7(a) The Politics of Race, 1865-1910: Jim Crow before and After the Civil War
(i) Rossetta Douglass, Sara Roberts, Sara Harris. Mary Cager and Ida
B Wells-Barnette
(ii) From the Thirteenth Amendment to the 1875 Civil Rights Act
(iii) From Slaughterhouse Case to Berea College v. Kentucky,
Presidential Reconstruction from Abraham Lincoln through Andrew
Johnson to Theodore Roosevelt:
(i) Lincoln and the military and political necessity of the
Emancipation
(ii) Lincoln and his blue-print for Reconstruction
(iii) Lincoln and the Sioux and a "flexible" Lincoln
(iv) Race and President Johnson and his flawed "antislavery
Sentiments"
(v) Reconstruction through Vetoes and Impeachment
(vi) From the calculating Grant to the racial opportunism of
Rutherford Hayes through "Southern Policy" and the fatal
"Sell-out" of 1877
(viii) The Brethren legitimize "White Supremacy", from the "Slaughter
house case of 1873 to Plessy v. Ferguson
Loewen, 45-89
O'Reilly, Nixon's Piano, etc., ibid.
Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro, 159-339
Eric J. Sundquist, “Mark Twain and Homer Plessy”
“Case of a Louisiana Traveler” and “Case of the Prejudiced Doorkeeper”.
George Sinkler, The Racial Attitudes of American Presidents: From
Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt.
Grant, 170-174.
Franklin, 247-263.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy. Vol. I, 429-705.
Documentary: “Reconstruction”
7(b). African American Response to the Second Race Crisis. I
(i) Conservatives and the politics of Accommodation
(ii) Moderate and Militant Response
(iii) Radical Response
(iv) Exodus of 1879
West and Mooney, Part I.
Loewen, 57-59
Kluger, 84-125.
Giddings, 17-32
Franklin, 264-303. T
Lerone Bennett Jr., The Shaping of Black America, Ibid.,
Grant,175-187.
Loius R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1956-1901.
Le Blanc, 109-141
8. African American Women and the Struggle for Liberation
(i) The Quest for Self-Definition
(ii) Black Women and the Two Civil Rights Struggles
(iii) Women Suffrage Movement
White, 13-86.
Giddings, 33-143.
Franklin, 524-525.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Southern Horrors and other Writings, (Jacqueline Jones
Royster, ed.)
9. African American Response to the Second Race Crisis. II
(i) The populist Movement, Class v. Race
(ii) Great Migrations , 1880-1900, 1900-1915, 1915-1920
(iii) Black Power Philosophy: pre-World War II variants.
(v) African Americans and Organized Labor
“W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America”, [Reviewed by Keeanga-yamahtta
Taylor.
Gilbert Osofsky, The Burden of Race, etc.
Kluger, 126-154.
West and Mooney Part 2.
Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America,
Eric Foner, The Reconstruction.
Cook, 39-69.
Grant, 153-202.
White, 87-109.
10 Plessy, Jim Crow Laws, the Southernization of America
and the Betrayal of the African Americans.
(i) Permissions to Hate come from (a) USA v. Harris, Civil Rights Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson; and
(b) Plessy v. Ferguson and Berea College v. Kentucky.
(ii) Imperialism, Manifest Destiny and Racism.
(iii) The Mississippi Plan, Williams v. Mississippi,
and the Berea College Case.
(iv) The overthrow of the Reconstruction and The triumph of White
Supremacy.
(v) Booker T. Washington and the Policy of Accommodation-the
(vi) Tuskegee Idea and the "Atlanta Compromise"
Kluger, 73-104, 274-284, 598-616, and 669-707.
Franklin, 159-263
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. "Sold down the River" a documentary.
Grant, 153-202.
Richard Stiller, Broken Promises: The Strange History of the Fourteenth
Amendment,
"Birth of a Nation" a documentary.
11. African Americans 1900-1925: New Illusions and New Dreams.
(i) Anti-African American Violence, Lynching and Pogrom-the Springfield
Illinois Pogrom. 1908
(ii) The Niagara Movement and The NAACP and the National Urban League
(iii) UNIA and the Rise of Marcus Garvey
(iv) Pan Africanism and Survival
(vii) President Wilson, World War I and the African Americans.
Loewen, 90-136, 137-191.
Kluger, 399-424, 470-507, and 553-581.
Le Blanc, 123-140
Giddings, 135-181.
Franklin, 312-360.
Bennett, The Shaping of Black America,., 95-142.
Grant, 206-214,
Osofsky,201-205, 337-364,
Cook, 39-69.
12. Marcus Garvey, Black Nationalism, Harlem Renaissance and the
"New Negro"
(i) The Garvey Trans-continental enterprise and the Garvey ideas
(ii) A. Philip Randolph and Chancellor Owen
(iii) The Red Hot Summer of 1919
(iv) The "New Negro" and the Harlem Renaissance
(v) Fard and the rise of the Nation of Islam,
"Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Revitalization", by L.W. Levine
"A. Philip Randolph: Labor Leader at Large", by Benjamin Quarles.
Franklin, 357-360.
Giddings, 193-195.
Bennett, op. cit.,., 95-142.
Grant, 215-250
White, 110-175.
E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism;
The "fine-tuning" of the NAACP: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Civil Rights Movement.
Grant, 199-203.
(i) The transformation of the NAACP: New Strategies
(ii) NAACP and sister movements and organizations
(iii) Houston and the antecedence of the Brown decision
"Charles Houston: Social Engineer for Civil Rights", Genna Rea McNeil
Kluger, 105-118, 125-180, and 186-224.
West and Mooney, To Redeem a Nation, Part 4.
Cook, 62-97.
Grant, 198-202, 320-321,
14. African Americans on the eve of the modern Civil Rights Struggle.
(i) The Great Depression and the New Deal Years
(ii) The reawakening of the revolutionary spirit 1935-1945
(iii) A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement
(v) The Rise of Congress of Racial Equality
Cook, 70-111.
Franklin, 379-401
Quarles, "A Philip Randolph: A Labor leader at Large",
Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980.
Giddings, 199-230, and 231-258.
West and Mooney, Part 3.
Grant, 203-283, 285-319.
Loewen, 192-226
15. External Forces and their Impact of American Race Relations.
(i) Second World War and the legal desegregation of the USA Army
(ii) the 1936 Olympics
(iii) Cold War
(iv) Decolonization of Africa and Asia.
Cook, 112-150.
Grant, 320- 391.
White, 176-256.
16. Internal Forces:
Cook, ibid.
White, ibid.
Grant, ibid.
The Great Depression and the Alphabet Programs
The rise of Black militancy and revolutionaries
Charles Houston and the NAACP
World War I and the March on Washington
Grant, 215-250.
17. The NAACP and the Pre-Brown Decisions
Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938)
The McLaurin v. State Regents (1950) case
Sweatt v. Painter (1950).
The Brown Decisions:
Kluger, 509-747.
Grant, 246-264.
18. Historical Background:
Sarah Roberts, 1849
Mary Coger, 1872
Plessy 1896
Results of Brown and the development of the Civil Rights Movement.
Brown I and Brown II and Brown III
Grant, 251-280.
19. The response:
The South
The Nation
And the Politicians
African Americans
Le Blanc, 61-84,
The Southern Response
(i) The Ku Klux Klan and the rise of the Governor George Corley
Wallace.
From the “Southern Manifesto” to the White Citizens' Council through the
KKK to the Militia to the Conservative Citizens Council of
America and the Confederate Culture.
The desegregation of America, the Americanization of Dixie and the
Southernization of America. From Montgomery through Selma to Birmingham.
The SCLC, CORE and SNCC.
Grant, 251-280, 280-402.
Loewen, 299-378.
20. The Congressional and presidential Response: From the Civil Rights laws
Of 1957 and the formation the Civil Right Commission to the 1960, 64, 65
And '68 Civil Rights laws to Alan Bakke.
The Rightwing response:
Southern Strategy and the rise of a conservative Republican party
The repeal of Civil Rights laws....
21. Reagan, Nixon, Rehnquist and the right of blacks and others to be
equal....
The impact of Southern Manifesto and the Southern Strategy!
22. Militants, conservatives and moderates in the African American Communities
(i) Black Nationalists and the Nation of Islam
(ii) The Nation of Islam, The New Republic of Africa, and the "MOVE"
Community
(iii) NAACP, CORE, SCLC and SNCC
(vi) BPP and Leftists
Cook, 217-250, 251-187.
Grant, 403-456.
Loewen, 379-452.
23. Black Revolution and White backlash......
Grant, 433-558, 403-482.
Cook, 176-216, 251-287.
Le Blanc, 149-189,
23. Black Liberation and Black Manifesto!
Black Power, Black Liberation, and Black Marxists...
Grant, 486-530
24. Black Feminism,
White, 212-265
Le Blanc, 265-311
Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and
Sex in America,
25. Prison Industrial Complex, the Death Penalty and the African
Americans.
(i) Political Prisoners-Mumia Abu-Jamal
(ii) Consequences of War on Drugs
(iii) Soledad Brothers
Frances Berry, Long Memory.
26. Miscellaneous, etc.
le Blanc, 191-263,
A LUTA CONTINUA!