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Course Syllabus (word document)
Office Hours: 3:30-5:00 MW
Fall, 2002
INTRODUCTION:
This seminar will examine the growth and evolution
of the African American urban west in the 20th Century. The seminar's
goal is twofold: first, to introduce you to the historiography and methodology
of black western urban history; and second, to determine the manner in which
that experience shaped the contemporary world of African American and other
westerners.
In addition we hope the various histories discussed
over the quarter, and our critical scrutiny of the texts will encourage you
to engage in fresh perspectives and creative approaches to the reconstruction
of African American western urban history. Although our knowledge of
that history has risen dramatically in the past three decades, we still know
woefully little about black urbanization process in this region and we have
yet to learn much about the impact of gender and class on the shaping of contemporary
black urban communities. We should use this seminar, and particularly
the papers that will come from it, as the opportunity to expand our knowledge
of those and other specific areas of the western urban past.
SEMINAR READINGS:
Selecting important and yet available books and articles
for a seminar is always a daunting task. I have tried, within the limits
of our institutional and personal resources, to include much of the methodologically
and theoretically critical works now extant in African American western urban
history. Although some of the book chapters and article copies are on
reserve in Suzzallo Library, please copy the assignments
directly from the books or journals in the general collection to reduce the
demands for reserve materials. Given previous rushes at the last minute
to obtain articles, copy the materials long before they are
scheduled for class discussion. Please consider your fellow students;
do not check out books assigned for the seminar. Unless otherwise indicated,
each book or article that appears on the weekly reading schedule should
be read in its entirety.
RESEARCH PAPER:
Each seminar participant will write a 10-page paper
assessing some important figure or episode in African American western urban
history. Your paper should critically analyze the literature available,
specifically delineating its strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, drawing
on your primary and secondary sources, develop your own interpretation of
the issues and events addressed in your topic. Finally, advance specific
suggestions for future research.
You should observe the following deadlines:
Third Seminar Meeting: A Preliminary title and one-page prospectus of your
paper.
Fifth Seminar Meeting: A four page selected annotated bibliography of primary
and secondary sources to be used in your paper.
Seventh Seminar Meeting: Conference with each student in my office sometime
during this week to determine progress on seminar paper.
Wednesday of Final Exam Week (noon): Paper is due in my office.
PARTICIPATION IN SEMINAR:
Each seminar participant will be
expected to chair at least one seminar meeting. One's responsibilities
as chair include leading the discussion of the week's readings. The
student chairing the seminar will be expected to
have completed all of the assigned readings, as I expect all of the other
participants as well, but she or he, if necessary, should review related
readings beyond the seminar assignment.
GRADING
Your seminar grade will be based
upon three components: the quality of your participation in weekly discussions
(20%), your performance as chair of your particular session (30%), and the
quality of your research paper, (50%)
NEW BOOKS FOR CONSIDERATION:
Robert
O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the
Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003)
Andrew
Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth
Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)
Required Books (Purchase):
Lawrence
B. de Graaf, Kelvin Mulroy
Quintard Taylor, eds., Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California
(Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2001)
Gerald
Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising
and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995)
Shirley
Ann Moore, To Place Our Deeds: The African American Community in Richmond,
California, 1910-1963 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
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)
Required Books (on library reserve):
Scott
Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1982)
Robert
Gooding-Williams, ed., Reading Rodney King, Reading Urban Uprising
(New York: Routledge, 1993)
Kenneth
W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, eds., The New African American Urban History (Thousand
Oaks, Ca.: Sage Publications, 1996)
Char
Miller and Heywood T. Sanders, eds., Urban Texas: Politics and Development (College
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990)
Quintard
Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American
West, 1528-1990 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998)
Emory
J. Tolbert, The UNIA and Black Los Angeles: Ideology and
Community in the American Garvey Movement (Los Angeles: UCLA Afro-American
Studies Center, 1980)
On Reserve
indicates that an individual article is available through the reserve room.
If the reading is from a scholarly journal such as Arizona and the West,
please go th the library
and copy the article directly from its source. Be sure to return the
journal to its proper location so that it will be available to your classmates.
At the end of this syllabus you will find a list of books, dissertations and theses under the heading: Supplemental
Reading List: Black Western Urban History
WEEKLY READING
ASSIGNMENTS:
Week I:
INTRODUCTION: DISCUSSION AND DETERMINATION OF THE WEEKLY SEMINAR ASSIGNMENTS
Week II:
AN URBAN BACKGROUND
Joe
W. Trotter, "African Americans in the City: The Industrial Era, 1900-1950,"
in Goings and Mohl, The New African American
Urban History, pp. 299-319 (on reserve)
Taylor,
In Search of the Racial Frontier, Chapter 7 (on reserve)
Taylor, The
Forging of A Black Community, Chapter 1
Cary
D. Wintz, “The Emergence of a Black Neighborhood:
Houston’s Fourth Ward, 1865-1915,”
in Miller and Sanders, Urban Texas. (on
reserve)
Week
III: THE BLACK URBAN WEST:
1900-1920
Scott
Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land, Chapters 1-3 (on reserve)
Emory
J. Tolbert, The UNIA and Black Los Angeles, Chapters 2 (Los Angeles:
The Black Community to 1930) and 3 (The UNIA in Los Angeles, 1920-1923) (on
reserve)
Albert
Broussard, “Organizing the Black Community in the San
Francisco Bay Area,
1915-1930,” Arizona
and the West 23:4 (Winter, 1981):335-354.
Taylor, The Forging of
a Black Community, Chapter 2.
Week IV:
PROSPERITY AND DEPRESSION: 1921-1940
Moore, To Place Our Deeds, Chapter 1
David
W Stowe, “Jazz in the West: Cultural Frontier and Region During
the Swing Era,” Western Historical Quarterly 23:1 (February 1992):53-73.
Randy
Sparks, “Heavenly Houston or Hellish Houston: Black Unemployment and Relief
Efforts, 1929-1936,” Southern Studies 25 (Winter 1986):353-366.
Taylor, The Forging of
a Black Community, Chapters 3-4
Week V:
WORLD WAR II AND THE BLACK WEST: 1941-1945
Kevin
Allen Leonard, "'In the Interest of All Races': African Americans and
Interracial Cooperation in Los Angeles
during and after World War II," in de Graaf,
Mulroy and Taylor, Seeking El Dorado, pp. 309-340.
(on reserve)
Moore, To Place Our Deeds, Chapters
2-3.
Taylor, The Forging of
a Black Community, Chapter 6
Week VI:
THE POST-WAR BLACK WEST: 1946-1960
Stuart
McElderry, "Building a West Coast Ghetto: African American
Housing in Portland,
1910-1960, Pacific Northwest Quarterly 92:3 (Summer 2001):137-148
Moore, To Place Our Deeds, Chapter 4
Gretchen
Lemke-Santangelo, "Deindustrializaton,
Urban Poverty and African American Community Mobilization in Oakland, 1945 through the 1990s," in de
Graaf, Mulroy and Taylor, Seeking
El Dorado, pp. 343-376 (on reserve)
Week VII:
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE WEST: 1961-1965
Carl
R. Graves, “The Right to be Served: Oklahoma
City’s Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, 1958-1964,” Chronicles
of Oklahoma 59:2 (Summer, 1981):152-166
Robert
A. Goldberg, “Racial Change on the Southern Periphery: The Case of San Antonio,
Texas, 1960-1965,” Journal of Southern History 49:3 (August 1983):349-374
Mary
Melcher, “Blacks and Whites Together: Interracial Leadership in the Phoenix Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Arizona History 32:2
(Summer 1991):195-216
Taylor, The Forging of
a Black Community, pp. 190-216
Week VIII:
BLACK POWER IN THE URBAN WEST
Gerald
Horne, Fire This Time, Chapters 1-2, 10-11, Epilogue
Taylor, The Forging of
a Black Community, pp. 216-232.
Week IX:
AFFLUENCE AND POVERTY: THE BLACK URBAN WEST, 1975-2000
Henry
Louis Gates, "Two Nations...Both Black," in Gooding-Williams, Reading
Rodney King, pp. 249-254
Lawrence
B. de Graaf, "African American Suburbanization
in California, 1960-1990," in de Graaf, Mulroy and Taylor, Seeking El Dorado, pp. 405-449
Raphael
J. Sonenshein, “Coalition Building in Los Angeles,
The Bradley Years and Beyond,” in de Graaf, Mulroy and Taylor, Seeking El Dorado, pp. 450-473
Sumi K. Cho, "Korean Americans vs. African Americans: Conflict
and Construction," in Gooding-Williams, Reading Rodney King, pp.
196-211
Week X: No Assignment. Prepare Research Papers
