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UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Department of History
Winter 2006
Professor Quintard Taylor
Office: Smith 316-A
Office Hour: 10:00-11:00 MWF
Grader: Casey Nichols
Email: qtaylor@u.washington.edu
Grader: caseydn@u.washington.edu
THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
HSTAA 313
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
African American history in the
American West represents a paradox for historians. Most scholars
who study the African American experience limit their focus
to the Old South and the cities of the East and Midwest, only
occasionally describing Los Angeles as an example of national
trends in black history. Scholars of the American West usually
focus on Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans if they
discuss people of color at all in the region. Yet black history
in the West is as old, complex, and compelling as Western or
African American history. This course will examine black western
history tracing its origins from the period when Spain controlled
much of the region through the first decade of the 21st Century.
The course will present the diverse array of women and men who
helped shape the history of the region, of black America, and
of the entire nation.
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Required Textbooks:
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial
Frontier: African Americans in the American West
Shirley Ann Wilson Moore and Quintard Taylor, African American
Women Confront the West, 1600-2000
Quintard Taylor, The African American Experience
in The American West: A Manual for the History of Black Americans
from 1528 to the Present (online manual can be accessed
through my website http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/)
Related Resources:
Blackpast.org (www.blackpast.org)
Supplemental Readings:
I have placed some articles on reserve to help explain the black
West. As the need arises I may add other articles and books
to the reserve room holdings.
Examinations/Grading:
Your course grade is based on three exercises: a midterm exam,
a final examination and a 10 page research paper which I describe
more fully later in this syllabus. The midterm is scheduled
for the end of the fifth week. Some students will be unable
to take the midterm exam with the rest of the class. In that
case I ask them to take a makeup exam scheduled for 5:00 6:00
p.m. on the last Friday of instruction during the quarter. The
room will be announced later. Since the makeup exam will be
penalized 10 points on a 100 point exercise, all students should
make every effort to take the exam at its scheduled time.
Those students who perform poorly on the midterm
exam (69 or below) have the option of writing a book review
to offset that grade. Should you choose to write the review,
it can be handed in no later than the Friday of the ninth week
of the term. Please read the page titled Optional Book Review
Assignment in the manual before initiating your review.
My grading procedures are simple. Since each
exam is worth up to 100 points I will average your numerical
score. I will also assign a numerical score for your research
paper, "C"=75, "C+"=78, etc. Your numerical
scores will then be averaged to determine your course grade.
Thus if your overall average is 76 your course grade will be
the numerical equivalent of a "C" in the UW grading
system.
I do not normally issue "incompletes"
to students who by the end of the quarter have not taken an
exam, handed in an assigned paper or otherwise met the course
requirements. If you have not completed all of the course requirements
by the end of exam week, and you have not, by that point, explained
why, your grade will be lowered accordingly.
READING ASSIGNMENTS
Week 1: Spanish Origins
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 1
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 1
Dedra S. McDonald, “To Be Black and Female in the Spanish
Southwest: Toward a History of African Women on New Spain’s
Northern Frontier Jack " in Moore and Taylor, eds., African
American Women Confront the West, pp. 31-52
Week 2: Slavery in the Antebellum West
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 2
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 2
Quintard Taylor, "Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the
Oregon Country, 1840-1860," Oregon Historical Quarterly
83:2 (Summer 1982):153-170
FILM: Black Indians
Week 3: Free African American Communities
in the Antebellum West
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 3
Lynn Hudson, “Mining a Mythic Past: The History of Mary
Ellen Pleasant,” in Moore and Taylor, eds., African
American Women Confront the West, pp. 56-70.
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 3
Week 4: Reconstruction in the West
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 4
Barbara Y. Welke, "Rights of Passage: Gendered-Rights
Consciousness and the Quest for Freedom, San Francisco, California,
1850-1870,” in Moore and Taylor, eds., African American
Women Confront the West, 73-93.
Frank H. Goodyear, "Beneath the Shadow of Her Flag":
Philip A. Bell's The Elevator and the Struggle for Enfranchisement,
1865-1870," in California History (Spring 1999):26-39
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 4
Week 5: Post Civil War Migration and Settlement
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 5
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 5
Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas
After Recon¬struc¬tion, (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 1976), Chapters 12, 15.
MIDTERM EXAM
Week 6: Buffalo Soldiers and the Defense of
the West
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 6
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 6
Michael C. Robinson and Frank N. Schubert, "David Fagen:
An Afro-American Rebel in the Philippines, 1899-1901,"
Pacific Historical Review 44:1 (February 1975):68-83.
FILM: Buffalo Soldiers
Week 7: The Black Urban West, 1880-1940
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 7
Taylor, In Search, Chapters 7-8
Quintard Taylor, “Susie Revels Cayton, Beatrice Morrow
Cannady and the Campaign for Social Justice in the Pacific
Northwest,” in Moore and Taylor, eds., African American
Women Confront the West, pp. 189-206.
Week 8: World War II and the Black West
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 8
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 9
Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, “’Women Made the Community’:
African American Migrant Women and the Cultural Transformation
of the San Francisco East Bay Area,” in Moore and Taylor,
eds., African American Women Confront the West, pp. 251-275
FILM: Local Color
Week 9: The Civil Rights Movement in the
West
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 9
Taylor, In Search, Chapter 10
Linda Williams Reese, “Clara Luper and the Civil Rights
Movement in Oklahoma City, 1958-1964,” in Moore and
Taylor, eds., African American Women Confront the West, pp.
328-343 or
Jane Rhodes, “Black Radicalism in 1960s California:
Women in the Black Panther Party,” in Moore and Taylor,
eds., African American Women Confront the West, pp. 344-362.
Week 10: The Black West: Into the 21st Century
Taylor, Manual, Chapter 10
Taylor, In Search, Conclusion
RESEARCH PAPER REQUIREMENT
Each student enrolled in HSTAA 313 will write
a 10 page research paper (including footnotes) assessing some
impor¬tant question in the history of the African American
West. Avoid simply describing some episode in black western
history such as “the 1879 Migration to Kansas” or
“Seattle in World War II.” Instead pose a research
question and given the resources at your disposal, answer that
question. Thus your paper should ask why significant migration
in the 1920s did not occur in the Pacific Northwest or how the
1960s campaign for civil rights differed in this region, or
determine the evolving role of African American women in the
Black Panther Party.
I will accept a paper based largely on secondary
sources if your research is centered outside the Pacific Northwest.
However if you examine questions of particular relevance to
our region, I would expect you to use primary sources as evidence
to support your argument. Your paper should conform to the citation
standards followed in the In Search textbook and should include
at least 10 sources. Please note the citation style. Papers
with improper citation styles will be marked down.
Please observe the following deadlines:
Fourth Friday of the Term: Please email me a paper title and
a paragraph explaining your topic and why you chose it.
Fifth Friday of the Term: Present by email
a one page outline and bibliography of primary and secondary
sources to be used for your paper.
Seventh Friday of the Term: Present by email
a brief progress report on your paper. This is an opportunity
for you to describe any difficulties you may be encountering.
Your report should, if necessary, include a request for a meeting
to discuss those difficulties.
Tenth Friday of the Term: Turn in research paper by 5:00 p.m.
to the History Main Office (the office closes at 5:00 p.m.)
or send it to me as an email attachment.
Suggested Topic Areas
- Susie Revels Cayton and the Communist
Party
- The Garvey Movement in Portland (or Seattle)
- The Campaign to Change the Name of King
County to Martin Luther King County
- W.E.B. DuBois and the Racial Politics
of the Pacific Northwest
- The Rise and Fall of Affirmative Action
in Washington State
- The Nation of Islam in Seattle
- Blacks in New Spain or Northern Mexico
(1821-1848)
- Black Fur Traders and Trappers in Pacific
Northwest
- The Slavery Controversy in the Antebellum
Pacific Northwest
- African American Slavery in one of the
Five the Indian Nations
- African American Rights in Antebellum
Oregon
- Reconstruction in Nevada (or California,
Texas, Colorado Territory, etc.)
- Civil War African American Communities
in Kansas
- Black Women in the 19th Century Urban
West
- The UNIA (or the NAACP) in the West
- World War II Migration to Seattle (or
other western cities)
- Blacks and Asians in World War II Hawaii
- African American Labor in the American
West
- The 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Arizona
(or some other western state)
- Black Power in the West: The Black Panther
Party and US
BOOK REVIEW ASSIGNMENT
Those students who perform poorly on the midterm
exam (69 or below) have the option of writing a book review
to offset that grade. The books eligible for review can be found
on the course bibliography. Your review should be a candid appraisal
of the work. As with most book "reviews," you will
describe the book's major thesis or argument. But I also request
that you follow these guidelines in your assignment:
- Assess whether you were convinced by the
author's argument.
- Discuss the most important new information
you learned about the African American West from the book.
- Describe how the book reinforced or challenged
ideas about African American history that you have learned
from the assigned readings, my lectures, and the discussions.
- State whether you would recommend the book
to others, and include specific reasons for your decision.
Your review should be approximately five typewritten
pages, 1,500 words for those of you who use computers. I recommend
that you devote the first three pages to a review of the book
itself and the remaining two pages to respond to the four guidelines.
Please number your pages. I will accept reviews attached to
emails.
The first page of each review should have
information on the book which appears as follows:
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community:
Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights
Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 330 pages.
You may choose, although you are not limited
to, the books that appear on the website reading list. If you
choose a book not on the list make sure that it is primarily
a history which covers some topic related to African American
western history. Avoid books that are assigned readings for
the course or that are general African American history books
(e.g. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love: Black Women, Work and
Family From Slavery to the Present). Also not eligible are regularly
assigned textbooks for any other course.
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