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Course Syllabus (Word Document)
INTRODUCTION:
This undergraduate colloquium will critically examine
the five centuries of African American history in the American
West. Most of the course will examine readings that address
the emerging historiography of the field as well as the most
important texts that explore that history. The last weeks of
the seminar will focus on the crafting of individual papers
with sessions devoted to critiquing drafts. The goal of this
seminar is twofold. First by critically examining major texts
in the field we hope to significantly enhance each student’s
knowledge of African American history in the region. Secondly,
the research papers generated through the seminar should expand
that knowledge base for future students of African American
history in the West.
SEMINAR READINGS:
Selecting important and yet available books and articles
for a colloquium is always a daunting task. I have tried, within
the limits of our institu¬tional and personal resources,
to include the best of the methodologically and theoretically
critical works now extant in the history of western urban people
of color. All of the assigned articles are on electronic reserve
through Suzzallo Library. The books are on standard reserve.
I would encourage you to purchase used copies to reduce the
library demand. Unless otherwise indicated, each book or article
that appears on the weekly reading schedule should be read in
its entirety.
RESEARCH PAPER:
Each colloquium participant will write a 15-page paper
assessing some impor¬tant figure or episode in the history
of African Americans in the West. Your paper should draw on
primary and secondary sources but should reflect the development
of your own interpretation of the issues and events addressed
in your topic.
You should observe the following dead¬lines
for your paper:
Fourth Colloquium Meeting: A Preliminary title
and one-page prospectus of your pap¬er.
Sixth Colloquium Meeting: A four page selected
annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources to be
used in your paper.
Wednesday of Final Exam Week (noon): Your
Paper is due in my office.
PARTICIPATION IN COLLOQUIUM:
Each colloquium participant is expected to complete
and be prepared to discuss all of each week's assigned reading.
Each student 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 partici¬pants as
well, but she or he, if necessary, should review related readings
beyond the colloquium assignment.
GRADING
Your grade will be based upon three components: the
quality of your partici¬pation in weekly discussions (20%),
your performance as chair of your particular session (30%),
and the quality of your research paper, (50%)
Required Textbooks (Purchase):
Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson, Moore,
eds., African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2003)
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 Textbooks (on library reserve):
Delilah L. Beasley, Negro Trail Blazers of
California, (Oakland: Oakland Tribute, 1919)
Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land:
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1982)
Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black
Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005)
Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration
to Kansas After Recon¬struc¬tion, (New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 1976)
W. Sherman Savage, Blacks in The West (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976
Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and
the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2003)
Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American
Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003)
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier:
African Americans in the American West (New York: W.W. Norton,
1998)
READING ASSIGNMENTS
Week 1: Introduction: Discussion and Determination
of Weekly Assignments
Week 2: Historiography
Lawrence B. de Graaf, “Recognition, Racism and Reflections
on the Writing of Western Black History,” Pacific Historical
Review 44:1 (February 1975)
Elsa Barkley Brown, “Introduction” to Delilah L.
Beasley, Negro Trail Blazers of California
W. Sherman Savage, Blacks in the West, Chapters 1, 5, 6
Week 3: Slavery and Freedom in the West
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
Paul Lack, “Slavery and the Texas Revolution,” Southwestern
Historical Quarterly 89:2 (October 1985):181-202
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, pp. 73-93.
Week 4: To the Frontier
Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After
Recon¬struc¬tion, Chapters 12, 15.
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, Chapter 5
Week 5: The Black Urban West
Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land, Chapters 1-3
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community, Chapters
1, 4
Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom, Chapters 1-2
Week 6: World War II
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community, Chapter 6
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.
Stuart McElderry, "Building a West Coast Ghetto: African
American Housing in Portland, 1910-1960, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
92:3 (Summer 2001):137-148
Week 7: Civil Rights/Black Power
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
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community, Chapter 7
Robert O. Self, American Babylon, Chapters 6-8
Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits, Chapters 5-6
Weeks 8-10: No Class Meeting, Prepare Research
Papers
Week 11: Presentation of Paper Topics
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