Welcome to "Nonviolent Social Movements in the United States: The History of the African American Civil Rights Movement"!

The goal of this class is to help students understand the history of the African American non-violent Civil Rights Movement. This movement, which emerged during World War II, came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s in the struggle to win equality for African Americans in U.S. society. We will spend the first few weeks examining the historical background to the Civil Rights struggle including the development of slavery in North America, the development of racial inequality, and how African Americans resisted racism and developed their own lives and cultures within the boundaries imposed by slavery and racism. This background formed the context from which the Civil Rights Movement emerged. The second part of the quarter will be spent looking at the development of the Civil Rights Movement, its leaders, the strategy of nonviolence, and its context and significance.

Class is scheduled from 9.00 to 9.50 am each day from Monday to Friday. Check your schedules regularly to make sure you are going to the correct location as we will not always be assigned to the same classroom everyday. Students are responsible for all material covered in class and in the assigned readings.

Information on Class Assignments

Week 1: October 5-9

Introduction. Why study the history of the civil rights movement? Status of African Americans in U.S. society. Historic background to racial inequality in North America...why did slavery develop in American society? Capture of slaves in Africa, transportation to North America

Reading:

• Venture Smith's account of his captivity (Smith was captured in Africa and taken to North America as a slave)
• Alexander Falconbridge's description of the slave trade (Falconbridge was an Englishman who worked as a doctor on board ships bringing captured Africans to America for sale as slaves)

---

Week 2: October 12-16

Experience of African American slaves (family life, work, religion, culture, resistance)

Reading:

• The Secret Diary of William Byrd (Byrd was a wealthy white landowner in Virginia in the early 1700s. Like most wealthy Virginians he also owned large numbers of slaves who provided the workforce for his plantation. "Jenny," Eugene," "Daniel," "Anaka," and "Nurse" were all slaves owned by Byrd)
• Read arguments by two black slaves during the American Revolution - Jehu Grant and Boston King - about freedom and their very different responses to the American Revolution (1776-1783).  Grant fought on the side of Americans seeking independence from Britain, King fought on the side of the British.
• "American Slavery as it is" (Excerpt from a book by Theodore Weld about the conditions faced by slaves)

---

Week 3: October 19-23

Background continued: The Civil War, end of slavery and new barriers to African American equality.

Reading:

• "Reconstruction Amendments" to the U.S. Constitution (These amendments to the Constitution of the United States ended slavery, guaranteed citizenship to African Americans, and theoretically protected the rights of black men to vote)
• Louisiana's Black Codes indicated how some white southerners reacted to the end of slavery and tried to maintain control over the African Americans who had been slaves in their community
• "There was never any payday for the Negroes" shows how some ex-slaves reacted to the end of slavery

---

Week 4: October 26-30

Civil Rights efforts of the early 20th century: The Great Migration and white responses, Harlem Renaissance, the New Deal, World War II as turning point

Reading:

• Read about the two main alternative approaches to black civil rights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
• A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington; Executive Order 8802 (these documents show how African Americans challenged segregation in defense industries and the military in the U.S. as the nation prepared for the possibility of war in 1941)
• Desegregation of the U.S. military, Executive order 9981

---

Week 5: November 2-6

Midterm exam on Tuesday

Challenging racial segregation in the school system, Brown v. Board of Education, Montgomery bus boycott, emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Civil Rights leader, nonviolence as a strategy

Reading:

• Integrating Little Rock's Central High School...The Little Rock Nine
• Dr. King and non-violence "Give us the ballot
• Here are links to video clips about the Little Rock Nine:
  

  Little Rock Nine Part 1

  Little Rock Nine Part 2

---

Week 6: November 9-13

Wednesday is Veterans' Day, No Class

The crucial decade: The 1960s - New tactics and groups, Sit-ins, SNCC, Freedom Rides, Birmingham

Reading:

• Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
  
  

---

Week 7: November 16-20

The Civil Rights experience outside the South

Thursday: Field Trip to the Northwest African American Museum

Reading:

• Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech

---

Week 8: November 23-25

Thursday and Friday are the Thanksgiving Holiday, No Class

Freedom summer, the end of legal segregation - the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Reading:

• None...work on your group presentations

---

Week 9: November 30-December 4

Friday: first group of student presentations

Militancy: Malcolm X and the challenge to nonviolence,
Black Power and the Black Panthers, legacy of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement

Reading for Thursday:

• Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet"

---

Week 10: December 7-10

Final Exam, Thursday, December 10

Monday-Tuesday Student presentations

Wednesday: Conclusion and Final Exam review

Thursday: Final Exam

---